Unearthing the Reality Beneath the Hype: How ICP Matches Tech to Real Needs
A global brand excitedly brings in a shiny new “AI” tool. Within days, ICP’s studio team tries to break it. They assess it and provide feedback on how well the tool can match their ambition and workflows.
ICP's Content Studio, led by Yvonne Powles, isn’t just a production facility. It’s a reality check for MarTech: a place where tools are picked apart, put through real workflows, and evaluated without bias. In a landscape oversaturated with tech that promises the world for marketers, ICP asks and answers the question, “but does it actually work?”
ICP's global studio team collaborates with Dan Hunt, centre of excellence lead for studio operations and automation, to simulate real production environments, recreating campaigns using legacy files that require complex outputs. ICP’s content studio regularly works on live projects with global Fortune 500 clients, so they know how to put it to the test and understand how the tools compare to traditional workflows. “Studio artists will tell you very quickly if it isn’t good,” says Dan, appreciative of his team’s candour. ICP’s goal is to validate if a tool can effectively deliver what it promises in context, not in isolation. “We find the weak points in the execution and make recommendations on how to mitigate, which may sit outside of the tech itself. We look at these tools as holistically as we possibly can, including the people and processes governing the end-to-end workflows,” Dan added.
With so many tech tools on offer, clients often don’t know what they’re buying, and ICP helps demystify the difference. Dan notes that it’s impossible to go for more than a few minutes in 2025’s industry without hearing about AI, and many tools look like AI when they’re in fact something else.
“Something that happens quite a lot is that there is a misunderstanding between automation and AI,” says Dan. “The word has become so overused. What we're finding is that when a client comes to us to talk about something that they believe AI is going to solve, what they're actually talking about is automation.”
Navigating a highly saturated tech landscape and AI hype requires an in depth understanding of client needs, not just their ask. “The real challenge for a lot of clients is understanding what they should be asking for, that’s where we help,” says Dan. “Every brief is different, and not all require the same amount of AI. One brief may need copywriting, translation, generation of background images, so maybe 75% is done leveraging AI. But another brief may require a swap of some logos and 60 versions of each, translations are already done, so there is no use of AI in that scenario.” Many clients won’t understand the nuances of that spectrum, so ICP's Creative Operations team ask the right questions to better define their needs and provide recommendations on the best way to deliver against them.
Vendors blur the lines to win business. ICP decodes these tools in plain English - what they really do, and who they really help. A tech giant recently came to ICP to help it understand the practical use of a particular tool. The team wanted to understand how the tool was performing and figure out if it is in a place where it can be utilised by marketers. Dan, alongside a lead designer, have been helping to do that as an ongoing program, training people to use the tool, partnering with their creative agency and the tech tool’s team to help them with bug testing, ultimately helping them find ways of improving the tool itself.
“What’s interesting is that we’ve been asked to assess the tool alongside the people who built it,” says Dan. “Our role isn’t to promote a particular technology or push an agenda, we don’t have a product to sell. We’re here to give an independent, unbiased view, helping to identify where the tool shines and where it might need support, always with the client’s best interests in mind.”
Clients, particularly large corporates, often can’t bring new tools into their workflows easily. Dan recognises, “they have a huge number of regulations to go through, VSAs and contracts, all these things, just to be able to even log into a tool. We don’t have that, so brands will come to ICP and ask them to give the tool a go.”
From that process, ICP is able to keep an inventory of tools that could be used by different kinds of clients for different tasks. “We’ve got a huge matrix of tools that we believe are suitable in particular areas, whether that might be DAM or MAM or creative operations or really anywhere in the end-to-end process,” says Dan. “And each has been evaluated based on real-world variables like resizing, file formats, compatibility with PM or designer workflows.”
The sheer quantity of tech tools out there is daunting. “The difficulty most of our clients have is they have to have multiple tools, because not one tool can do everything they need,” says Dan. “Brands will have a tool that does print well, one that works on video assets, others for digital outputs, some with generative AI built in and some that are specifically designed for automating resizing."
Then there’s how all the tools link up and output to each other in a workflow. One tool might be perfect except that it doesn’t output to Photoshop. “You have all these random challenges,” says Dan. “You’ll always have a blocker, but as a consultancy team and experts in this area, we have to give the clients an understanding of where those blockers are, what the mitigations are, or what the acceptance criteria should be. With so many factors to consider, you can’t always expect one tool to meet every requirement. It goes beyond how one tool fits into your ecosystem, it’s how all these tools should be connected.” If not thought through strategically, it starts to get very complex, and very expensive.
“It's not just about the tool, it's everything around it, the governance around when and how to use it,” says Dan. That’s why ICP’s studio tests them cross-discipline, specialists can easily tell if something is going to help a particular task. Dan’s team make sure they answer questions like: “Is it a tool that a PM would work in, or is it a tool that they would just brief the designer to use?” Those questions need to be answered early on, says Dan, “That changes the way that you're going to be working, so you have to understand all of these things.”
Creative tech is frantic with competing offerings today. “Everyone is trying to win the race,” says Dan. “And from that, they’re all bolting on things that are sometimes not ready for release. We’ve seen it a lot of times. With innovation moving so quickly, some features are launched before they’re truly ready. It shows great ambition, but taking the time to balance speed with reliability will help them deliver real, lasting value.”
In an industry full of marketing about marketing, ICP offers something better: evidence. Everything gets put through studio tests. Success isn’t defined by promises. It’s put to work by people who do the job. Dan sees his team’s role as to interrogate these tools and determine if the proof is in the product. “So, you’re telling us that it can do X, Y and Z? OK, well, we’re going to put it to the test based on our clients’ requirements and let them know how it measures up, and/or what would need to change in order for it to work for their needs.”
