Agency strategy: $28k vs. 11 minutes

A creator on X posted a branding-agency proposal that priced strategy work at $28,000, then said an artificial intelligence prompt reproduced the same kind of deliverables in 11 minutes, including a positioning statement and a competitive map. The post spread because it turned an abstract argument about “AI replacing strategy” into a stopwatch comparison with a dollar figure attached. (x.com) The work in question sits in the middle of branding, not at the logo stage. A positioning statement is the short sentence that tells customers who a product is for, what problem it solves, and why it is different, while a competitive map is the chart that places rivals against each other on two dimensions like price and simplicity. (musely.ai, jeda.ai) Those outputs have always looked expensive because they are usually wrapped in workshops, interviews, research, and presentation polish. Agencies do not just sell a sentence on a slide; they sell the process that gets executives to trust the sentence enough to use it in ads, sales decks, and product roadmaps. (forbes.com) Generative artificial intelligence attacks the draft stage first. OpenAI’s prompting guide says output quality depends heavily on the prompt, and Anthropic’s prompt-engineering guide makes the same point, which is why a shared prompt can suddenly turn a vague strategy exercise into a repeatable template. (developers.openai.com, platform.claude.com) That is why the 11-minute claim feels plausible even if the exact comparison is impossible to verify from one post. Public tools already offer automatic positioning statements and market maps, which means the “blank page” part of agency strategy is now cheap in the same way spreadsheet math became cheap once everyone had spreadsheet software. (brandermind.ai, taskade.com) The hard part did not disappear; it moved. If a model gives you five polished positioning options in minutes, the scarce skill is no longer writing option one but deciding which option matches the company’s real customer, real margins, and real product roadmap. (developers.openai.com, anthropic.com) Big companies are already seeing that pattern across other office work. Deloitte’s January 2025 enterprise survey said most organizations were still experimenting rather than scaling, with only 10% to 30% of generative artificial intelligence experiments expected to scale in the next three to six months, which means producing drafts is easier than changing decisions and workflows. (deloitte.com, deloitte.com) That is the real pressure on agencies. If a client can get a decent first-pass strategy deck from a model before the kickoff call, the agency has to justify the bill with original research, sharper judgment, stronger facilitation, or accountability for business results instead of charging mainly for formatted thinking. (forbes.com, deloitte.com) The same lesson applies in classrooms. Students used to be graded on whether they could produce a neat positioning statement or a two-by-two map, but free or cheap tools can now generate both on demand, so the more defensible assignment is explaining why one axis was chosen, what evidence supports the claim, and what decision the map changes. (jeda.ai, sureprompts.com) So the viral comparison is less about one agency quote and more about a pricing reset. When software can create the visible artifact in 11 minutes, the premium shifts to the invisible parts: access to customers, synthesis of messy evidence, political buy-in inside the client company, and the nerve to say the model’s polished answer is wrong. (x.com, developers.openai.com, platform.claude.com)