How Liganova MaSH! turned AI agents into operational infrastructure, not another tool to ignore.
Most agencies have bought AI tools. Very few have made them work. Liganova MaSH!, the agency behind BMW's global social platforms, is in the minority that has. Not because they moved fastest. Because they started right.
They began with a blank sheet of paper, the Maybe* team interviewed 16 team members, mapped their entire creative process end to end, and asked one question: what do you want to stop doing?
The answer shaped everything that followed.
Podcast summary:
In a conversation recorded for the Future Week podcast, MD James Walkinshaw and Maybe* CEO Polly Barnfield unpacked what it actually took: the five guiding principles, the discovery process, the change management challenge, the AI Agents they built, and what Phase 2 looks like. The creative team, the group with the most scepticism at the start, are now the ones pushing hardest for what comes next.
Today, all Maybe* AI Agents run inside the Liganova MaSH Microsoft Teams under a single interface the whole agency uses. Resource planning, brand compliance checking, file retrieval, synthetic audience testing, and real-time news delivery all complete without anyone logging into another system. The team did not get a new tool. They got a colleague named Spud.
“We didn't come with a preconception as to what the final output would be. We started with a blank sheet of paper."
"If you create more time for those people, they're more energised, they're more inspired with their work, and the numbers look after themselves."
“That is how we came up with a colleague named Spud.”James Walkinshaw, Managing Director Liganova MaSH!
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