How Agencies Can Beat AI Advisory Firms Like 37arc

When Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter launched 37arc, a CMO-focused AI advisory firm, they didn’t just start another consultancy. They created a template for a new competitive category that most agency leaders haven’t even registered as a threat. The CMO-focused AI advisory firm is now a legitimate competitor to full-service agencies, and the playbook for fighting back requires more than better pitch decks.

What 37arc Actually Sells (and Why It’s Working)

37arc positions itself as a strategic translator. The firm sits between CMOs who know they need to adopt AI and the sprawling ecosystem of platforms, tools, and vendors that promise to deliver it. Wiener and Hofstetter bring serious credibility: former CEO and president of 360i, deep relationships across the marketing C-suite, and a track record that makes introductions easy.

Their value proposition is deceptively simple. They help CMOs understand which AI capabilities matter, which vendors to trust, and how to restructure their marketing operations around AI workflows. No media buying. No creative production. No campaign management. Pure strategic guidance at premium advisory rates.

This model works because it targets a real pain point. According to Gartner’s CMO research, over 60% of marketing leaders say they lack confidence in their ability to evaluate AI tools and vendors. That gap between executive curiosity and technical fluency is exactly where 37arc lives. And they’re not alone. Boutique AI advisory practices are sprouting across New York, London, and San Francisco, all chasing the same white space.

The Client Segments Most Likely to Defect

Not every agency client is vulnerable to this new category. The risk is concentrated in three specific segments.

Enterprise CMOs with large in-house teams. These leaders already have execution capacity. What they lack is strategic clarity on AI adoption. An advisory firm that charges $50K-$150K for a quarterly engagement looks like a bargain compared to a $2M agency retainer, especially when the CMO believes their internal team can handle implementation once the roadmap is clear.

Private equity-backed brands under margin pressure. PE operating partners love the idea of replacing ongoing agency fees with discrete advisory projects. A 37arc-style engagement feels like a one-time investment that “upgrades” the team, while agency retainers feel like perpetual cost centers.

CMOs who feel over-served by their agency. This is the subtle one. When a CMO suspects their agency is bundling strategic thinking into execution fees (and charging accordingly), a strategy-only advisor looks like an honest alternative. The perception of unbundled value is powerful, even when it’s misleading.

Why Strategy Without Execution Data Is a Liability

Here’s the core argument every agency leader should be making, loudly and repeatedly: AI strategy that isn’t informed by real-time execution data is academic. It’s theory. And theory without proof is a dangerous thing to sell to a CMO whose board wants measurable outcomes.

37arc can advise a CMO on which AI tools to evaluate. They can build frameworks and maturity models. What they cannot do is tell that CMO which audience segments are showing purchase intent this week, how creative variants are performing across channels in real time, or what cross-client benchmarks reveal about emerging platform opportunities. That intelligence only exists inside agencies that are running campaigns at scale, every day, across dozens of clients.

This is the moat. First-party intent data generated through hands-on-keyboard execution creates a feedback loop that no advisory firm can replicate. When an agency manages $50M in media across 30 clients, the pattern recognition embedded in that work product is a proprietary asset. An AI advisor reading vendor white papers and attending demos simply doesn’t have access to this layer of intelligence.

Think about it from the CMO’s perspective. Would you rather get AI strategy from someone who read about Meta’s Advantage+ capabilities, or from someone who has deployed Advantage+ across 15 verticals and can show you exactly where it works, where it breaks, and what the real performance curves look like?

A Framework for Counter-Positioning

Saying “we do strategy AND execution” isn’t enough. That sounds defensive. Agency leaders need a structured value narrative that makes the advisory-only model look incomplete by design. Here’s how to build it.

The Pricing and Packaging Question

One reason AI advisory firms gain traction is their pricing clarity. A $75K strategic engagement is easy for a CMO to approve. Agency retainers, with their blended rates and opaque deliverable lists, feel uncertain by comparison.

Agencies that want to compete need to get radically transparent about where value lives in their fee structure. Programmatic fee transparency isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a competitive weapon against advisory firms that claim agencies are hiding margin in execution fees. When you show a CMO exactly how their budget flows, the trust advantage shifts back to you.

Consider creating a tiered offering: a strategy-only tier (priced competitively with advisory firms), a strategy-plus-intelligence tier (adding proprietary data products), and a full-service tier (execution, optimization, and strategic counsel). This structure lets you compete at every level while demonstrating that each tier builds on the one below it. The full-service option becomes the obvious best value.

The Bigger Pattern Worth Watching

37arc is a signal, not an anomaly. Forrester has been tracking the rise of specialized advisory practices in marketing technology for several years, and the trend is accelerating. As AI capabilities become more accessible through platforms like Meta’s business tools and Google’s AI-powered ad products, the perceived complexity of implementation drops. That makes “strategy-only” look more viable to CMOs who believe their teams (or a cheaper execution partner) can handle the rest.

The counter is to prove that execution isn’t commoditized. The agencies that survive this shift will be those that make their operational intelligence visible, specific, and irreplaceable. Not “we run great campaigns.” Instead: “We process 4.2 billion intent signals monthly across our client base, and that data directly informs every strategic recommendation we make.” That’s a claim no advisory firm can match.

The agency that treats its execution data as a strategic moat, packages it as proprietary intelligence, and prices its services with radical transparency will not only survive the rise of AI advisory firms. It will use their emergence as a catalyst to command even higher premiums.

FAQs

What is a CMO-focused AI advisory firm?

A CMO-focused AI advisory firm provides strategic guidance to marketing executives on AI adoption, vendor evaluation, and operational transformation. Unlike full-service agencies, these firms do not handle campaign execution, media buying, or creative production. They position themselves as neutral translators between C-suite decision-makers and the AI platform ecosystem.

How does 37arc differ from a traditional marketing agency?

37arc, founded by Bryan Wiener and Sarah Hofstetter, focuses exclusively on strategic AI counsel for CMOs. Traditional agencies combine strategy with execution services like media planning, creative development, and campaign optimization. 37arc sells advisory engagements without ongoing execution responsibilities, which creates a fundamentally different fee structure and client relationship model.

Why should agencies be concerned about AI advisory firms?

AI advisory firms threaten to unbundle the strategic premium that agencies build into their retainers. When a CMO hires an advisor for strategy and then shops for lower-cost execution separately, the agency loses both margin and influence. The bigger risk is the reframing of the agency role as “just execution,” which erodes perceived value over time.

How can agencies counter-position against strategy-only AI consultancies?

Agencies should emphasize their proprietary execution data as a strategic asset that advisory firms cannot access. This includes cross-client intent signals, real-time performance benchmarks, and optimization intelligence derived from hands-on campaign management. Packaging these insights as distinct, branded deliverables makes the strategic value of execution visible and defensible.

What types of clients are most likely to switch from agencies to AI advisory firms?

Enterprise CMOs with large in-house teams, private equity-backed brands seeking to reduce ongoing agency fees, and CMOs who feel over-served by their current agency are the most vulnerable segments. These clients are more likely to view strategic counsel as separable from execution and to believe their internal capabilities can handle implementation.