Right now, 92% of Fortune 500 companies run their AI through the same handful of tools. So does virtually every agency. Same models, same prompts, same outputs — which means the differentiation gap is narrowing fast.
Anthony Romano, CEO of Ad Age Small Agency of the Year Laughlin Constable, and Stu Amos, founder of Universal Agents and creator of Interplay, have a line that should make every agency leader pause: “Your AI strategy is a subscription. It’s not a strategy.”
Efficiency is a dead end. Amplification is the game.
Romano draws a sharp line between two questions agencies should be asking. Efficiency asks how to do the same things faster and cheaper. Amplification asks what you can do now that you couldn’t do before.
“I’m much more interested in that latter question,” Romano says. “For us, that has meant exploring new territories, prompting new debates, connecting more and new dots — pushing conversations to arrive at sharper, more original, more imaginative thinking.”
That distinction became the foundation for Interplay — an intelligent operating system Romano and Amos have spent the past year and a half building and pressure-testing on real Laughlin Constable work.
Lego blocks for your agency brain
At Interplay’s core are “living blocks” — containers of intelligence that can be shared, compounded and reused across an agency. Think Lego blocks meets distributed agents.
Here’s how it plays out: Laughlin Constable’s Chief Strategy Officer needs a brand campaign strategy for a major beer brand targeting Gen Z in Texas. She pulls a brand DNA living block, a Gen Z persona block built by one teammate, a Texas market dynamics block from another and beer category analysis blocks from two more. The system compounds that collective intelligence into a strategic North Star — which becomes the starting point for human debate, iteration and polish.
“All that is, ultimately, is an input to our human process,” Romano explains. “That’s where the debate begins. That’s where we bring soul to it.”
The bonsai garden theory of AI
Amos frames the philosophy through what might be the most useful metaphor in the AI-for-agencies conversation right now: tending a bonsai garden. Living blocks aren’t static snapshots grabbed from a marketplace — they’re skills tied to real people, continuously maintained and refined.
“The skill of the future is to tend to your prompts and the processes that you share with others,” Amos says. “If you do that, you’re creating something completely unique. But you’re also stopping things from going stale.”
Let it rot, and hallucinations creep in. Tend it well, and you’ve built premium skills you can charge for — because no one else has your formula, your people or your process.
Rebels vs. the Empire (with better taste in music)
Publicis is dropping $12 billion-plus on proprietary AI. For indie agencies in the 25-to-150 FTE range, that math doesn’t work. But Amos points out that 7 of the top 10 agencies on Ad Age’s recent list are independents — proof that capital isn’t the only competitive advantage.
“The rebels will always beat the Empire,” Amos says. “Train your agentic brain in your brand DNA, your processes, your philosophy — create that constitutional AI that’s rooted in everything you do, and you will compound your unique agentic IP that no one else can offer.”
Romano’s parting shot lands just as cleanly: “Stop thinking AI will replace your junior staff. Our obligation as leaders is to focus on how to make them better — how to amplify, how to train, how to invest in them. Not divest them.”
Alpha partners wanted
Interplay is available to all indies. Universal Agents and Laughlin Constable have spent a year building and pressure-testing Interplay on real agency work. They’re now looking for other alpha-phase agency partners to push Interplay through new use cases. Email Stu Amos at st*@*************ts.ai to get involved.
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Laughlin Constable Universal Agents Anthony Romano LinkedIn Stu Amos LinkedIn Laughlin Constable LinkedIn Contact: st*@*************ts.ai
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