17554: Adland Hospitality Is A Nauseating Notion.

Advertising Age published a perspective opining Adland could enhance its value to clients by embracing restaurant-style hospitality.

It’s an odd notion, as most restaurants—especially in the QSR category—struggle mightily to survive.

The holding companies complicate matters by presenting similar menus and serving bland offerings.

What’s more, White advertising agencies are unhospitable to anyone who isn’t a White man or White woman.

And non-White advertising agencies must cook with crumbs.

Why hospitality is advertising’s most human competitive advantage

By Heather Freiser

Coming out of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, one message was impossible to ignore: in the age of AI, human connection matters more than ever.

Across stages and conversations, industry leaders debated how artificial intelligence will reshape creativity, productivity, and the future of agency work. That question has only grown louder as industry leaders debate AI’s impact on agencies.

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that AI could eventually reduce brands’ need for agencies, it sparked plenty of debate. Regardless of whether you agree with him, it raises an important question: what value can’t be commoditized?

I think we’ve been overlooking one answer: hospitality.

In advertising, we celebrate strategic thinking, creative excellence, and operational rigor. We rarely celebrate hospitality.

We should.

Hospitality is one of the most overlooked strategic capabilities an agency can develop. It’s not soft. It’s not a personality trait. It’s the ability to make people feel seen, supported, and genuinely cared for while you’re doing the work. And in an industry built on relationships, that capability compounds over time.

I didn’t learn that in advertising. I learned it in restaurants.

Before joining the agency world, I spent years working in—and eventually owning—restaurants. The restaurant business teaches you something agencies often forget: people don’t just remember what you delivered. They remember how you made them feel.

Restaurateur Will Guidara captures this perfectly in Unreasonable Hospitality: “Service is black and white. Hospitality is color.”

Service is delivering what’s promised. Hospitality is how you make someone feel while you deliver it.

Agencies have become incredibly good at service. We deliver on time, on budget, and on brief. We optimize workflows, build airtight processes, and obsess over execution. Those things matter. They’re the cost of entry.

But they’re rarely what people remember.

A few years ago, I was in New York during a production shoot with my kids. After a long day, they desperately wanted to visit the M&M’s store in Times Square. I kept saying, “Maybe tomorrow.”

While we were eating dinner at the hotel, the front desk manager walked over carrying a giant bowl of M&M’s.

“I heard someone was hoping to make it to the M&M’s store tonight,” he said. “Here’s your amuse-bouche.”

My kids were ecstatic. My stress disappeared. In one thoughtful gesture, he solved a problem I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.

Years later, I still remember his name.

That’s hospitality.

Guidara encourages restaurants to reserve a small portion of their time and budget for creating moments guests never expect. He calls it “the 5%.”

The 5% isn’t where the margin is. It’s where the memory is.

What would happen if agencies adopted the same philosophy?

Maybe it’s remembering something a client mentioned months ago. Making an introduction without expecting anything in return. Anticipating a problem before it becomes an email chain. Creating meetings that leave people energized instead of exhausted. Finding small ways to reduce someone else’s stress simply because you can.

None of those gestures appear in a statement of work.

All of them build trust. And trust builds loyalty.

As AI makes execution faster and more accessible, agencies will increasingly compete with firms using the same tools, the same models, and many of the same strategic frameworks. The gap between capabilities is shrinking.

The experience of working together isn’t.

AI can generate ideas. It can build decks. It can accelerate production.

It can’t notice that your client hasn’t eaten all day. It can’t remember the story they shared six months ago about their daughter’s graduation. It can’t create the small, thoughtful moments that transform a transactional relationship into a lasting one.

That’s hospitality.

If Cannes reminded us of anything this year, it’s that our industry’s future won’t be determined solely by the technology we adopt. It will also be shaped by the humanity we choose to preserve.

Great work will always matter.

But in a business where AI is rapidly commoditizing execution, hospitality may become the most valuable competitive advantage agencies have left.