The best ideas about AI don’t always come from a California research lab.
Sometimes they emerge during a late-night chat between Madrid and Toronto, or on a Zoom call where the participants don’t share a common language, but do share a common purpose. Because when technology moves faster than strategy, the difference isn’t made by resources, but by how we organize ourselves in the face of what’s new.
The multinationals have already made their moves. They’ve secured partnerships with the tech giants, command massive budgets, and wield intimidating scalability. But we, the independent agencies, have a different kind of superpower: collaboration. We know how to put talent first, move fast, and share without fear of losing. And that is our most valuable competitive advantage.
At Darwin & Verne, we’re proud to lead the global AI task force within ICOM Network, an international alliance of independent agencies that has turned collaborative learning into both a form of resistance and a blueprint for reinvention.
This task force brings together the 14 most advanced AI agencies in the ICOM network. We’re diverse in culture, language, and time zones, but aligned by a clear commitment: to collectively solve any AI-related challenge facing a member agency.
Our strength lies in our diversity. Agencies from countries like Malta, Mexico, and Portugal play a key role. We stay connected through a WhatsApp group, for speed, proximity, and effectiveness, allowing us to react in real time, share tools, troubleshoot issues, and celebrate wins.
And although the chat never sleeps, we also meet formally once a month to dive deeper into projects, coordinate efforts, and keep learning together.
What can a Madrid agency do with an idea from Seattle?
The recent ICOM Global Annual Meeting, held this past April in Costa Rica, was a vivid showcase of the power of collective collaboration.
Take DNA&STONE, from Seattle. Their Persona AI project left us stunned. It enables real-time conversations with synthetic consumers generated by AI. We're not talking about basic buyer personas, but data-driven simulations built on public databases, census records, and psychographic studies. These personas react to brand messages the way real people would.
The result? Instant testing of narratives, creative ideas, and positioning strategies, with sharp cultural and emotional nuance.
The takeaway is clear: what Olivia, a fictional CMO from Spokane, thinks about a banking campaign in the U.S. can be mirrored locally — if we adapt the underlying data to our own market.
And why does this matter in Spain? Because through our network, Darwin & Verne can use the same technology, powered by local data, to engage with “María” or “Aitor”, synthetic profiles built for brands operating in our market.
We can even generate feedback from “Julián,” a lawyer in Valladolid, about a Spanish insurance company. No focus groups required, and with even more precision.
From Madrid to the world, with a custom accent
Darwin & Verne recently launched VoiceAd, a platform for generating professional-quality audio ads in multiple languages and accents.
Developed by our AI unit, Phileas, this tool enables any advertiser to create an audio spot in minutes, including creative scriptwriting, voiceover in the chosen language and accent, and music. It hits the target duration perfectly, with just a few clicks.
But the most powerful part? VoiceAd doesn’t stop at Madrid. It works just as well in Bogotá, Miami, or Buenos Aires. Need a radio spot in neutral Spanish? Done. A Spotify ad with a Panamanian or Puerto Rican accent? You got it. British or Texan English? No problem.
Collaboration as an act of resistance (and positioning)
AI has changed the rules of the game. And on this new playing field, independent agencies can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. We must play, not with the brute force of the multinationals, but with our sharpest tools: agility and collaboration.
In our ICOM AI meetings, we’ve shared not only tools, but also vulnerabilities. We've discussed copyright, ethics, governance, data protection, and how to embed AI into our workflows without losing our creative soul.
And we do it with equal parts humility and ambition. Everyone shares everything they know, without holding back. And that’s what makes this group so powerful.
From building custom GPTs for internal workflows, to using platforms for multilingual video production, creating hyper-realistic avatars, or analyzing emotions in video. The list of learnings grows every month.
Every conversation reveals new chapters that sound like science fiction, but are really just applied science.
Artificial intelligence, augmented by human collaboration
It’s almost poetic the fact that just when AI threatens to dehumanize creative work, human collaboration is what helps us tame it.
In a time when everything can be automated, collaboration is not just a virtue; it’s a strategy.
AI is trained on data. But the future of agencies is powered by collaboration. Yes, artificial intelligence is global. But real intelligence is working together.
Because, as the old African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”