Strategists have more time to think but fewer are meeting consumers: WARC

Strategy desks at agencies across the world are breathing a little easier, but not without looking over their shoulders. WARC's The Future of Strategy 2026 report finds that cautious optimism has returned to agency-side planning, with 66% of strategists agreeing there are clear reasons to be hopeful. Yet the same study carries a finding that planners and creative heads may want to pause on: even as AI buys strategists more time to think, the habit of stepping out to meet real people is quietly shrinking.

WARC, the global authority on marketing effectiveness and part of LIONS under Informa plc, based the study on a survey of 489 strategists fielded in August 2026, the majority were agency-side. The picture it paints is of a discipline recovering from a rough patch of agency consolidation, trimmed headcount, senior talent exits and AI-led disruption, and trying to work out where its value now sits.

Optimism returns, and so does the AI anxiety

The recovery shows up most clearly in how clients see planning. The share of strategists who feel the function has gained influence with clients jumped to 50% from 41% in 2025, a sign that clients are leaning on strategic thinking just as agencies have scaled back parts of their offering. Internal influence, however, has stayed flat at 46%, which suggests the gains are felt across the table from clients more than inside the agency itself. The mood is also tempered by fear, with 56% of strategists naming AI replacing their roles as the top expected threat, up 15 percentage points from 41% last year.

Lena Roland, Content Director, WARC Strategy, sums up the turnaround from the gloom of the last edition. "Last year's report painted a gloomy picture of agency-side strategy. Twelve months on, the mood has shifted with 66% of agency-side strategists agreeing there are clear reasons to be optimistic. As growth gets harder to find, strategists are moving upstream, beyond the brief and into the questions that matter most to CMOs."

More time to think, less time in the field

The more interesting tension sits in what strategists are doing with the hours AI is giving back. According to the survey, 65% are reallocating freed-up time towards more nuanced strategic work, while 55% believe AI will refocus strategy on human perspectives. In theory, that is the ideal trade: automation takes over the grunt work and planners get to chase the sharper insight that makes creative work land. Strategists themselves flag bland outcomes and a lack of cultural nuance or emotional resonance as AI's biggest limitations, which is why judgement, intuition and a real feel for people are being pitched as the new advantage.

The behaviour data, though, points the other way. Only 23% of respondents say they conduct in-person research at least monthly, down from 35% in 2025, a fall of 12 percentage points. In other words, the industry is saying AI will bring strategy closer to people while the one activity that literally puts planners in front of people is happening less often. The findings shared so far do not spell out what is filling that gap, but it is a question every planning head would do well to ask of their own team.

Elizabeth Paul, Chief Brand Officer at The Martin Agency, a Richmond-based creative agency, draws a clear line on how the saved time should be used. "AI should not give strategists permission to do less human research. It should give us the time to pursue more extraordinary truths with greater depth."

Proving value and moving upstream

The pressure to justify the seat at the table is the other force pulling strategists in new directions. While demand for strategy is high, 57% of strategists say they need a new value proposition as compensation models need to improve, and nearly 80% agree the profession must build stronger arguments and evidence to prove its impact on business. The report's answer is for strategists to link recommendations to business outcomes, explain the specific problem that was solved and speak the language of the board.

It is a language clients such as Stacy Taffet, Chief Growth & Marketing Officer at The Hershey Company, already speak. "The ROI on strategy is very high because when you do the upfront work to clarify brand foundations and business problems, ongoing content creation becomes effortless and more cost-effective."

That upfront work is also pushing the remit outward. A full 83% of strategists expect their role to increasingly involve shaping business strategy and not just communications, and an equal 83% foresee working more closely with data science and AI teams. Another 82% see the job connecting brand, product and customer experience, while 74% expect to help companies navigate cultural change. Then there is what WARC calls the "two audience problem," where brands must appeal to humans and machines at once, pulling strategists into spaces like CX, PR and agentic commerce.

Read together, the numbers sketch a strategist being stretched in two directions at once: towards the boardroom and the algorithm on one side and towards the consumer on the other. The first pull is getting louder while the second is getting less field time. Nikita Walia, partner, U.N.N.A.M.E.D., makes the case for breadth. "The strategist who only understands the 'front stage' of a brand: messaging, insight, positioning…will quickly hit their ceiling. The strategist who understands the backstage: how things get made, distributed, and measured, will become indispensable."

She argues that backstage knowledge of how ideas get made, distributed and measured is what separates the indispensable planner from the replaceable one. It is a fair read of where the job is heading, but the front stage she mentions, with insight at its core, is exactly where the dip in human research bites.

The full report is available to WARC subscribers, while a selection of expert opinions is open to all and a podcast will be available from 8 October.

The findings shared so far are global in scope, but the tension will sound familiar to any planning desk in India juggling tight pitch timelines and a client who wants both a sharper insight and a business case. If AI is truly going to make strategy more human, the proof will not lie in how much time it frees up but in how much of that time gets spent with consumers. Paul's advice is a fair place to start: "Ask the question the algorithm wouldn't know to ask. Find the strange behaviour, unresolved tension or cultural shift hiding in plain sight".

Two things to check before this goes up. I could not verify what U.N.N.A.M.E.D. is, so it has no descriptor yet and needs a one-line descriptor per your SOP. All the data is from a global survey, so I have not presented it as Indian market data.