Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 21 Patrick Lafferty, who became CEO of marketing production consultancy APR this summer, in his Old Greenwich office. HBJ Photo | Steve Laschever Productivity Paradox CT ad agency executive tackles gap between AI adoption and financial returns seven years in the U.S. Army and worked at the advertising agency Leo Burnett. He credits his military experience with teaching him about teamwork, communication, human behavior and "what motivates folks to take action." APR, originally known as Advertising Production Resources, was founded in 2000 by Jillian Gibbs to help marketers make decisions about creative production and improve efficiency. Gibbs recruited Lafferty as president at the beginning of 2026 as part of a succession plan and remains with the company in a reduced role. Lafferty said AI use is currently most advanced at the beginning and end of the advertising production process. During the initial stages, AI can accelerate strategy and visioning for an advertisement or broader marketing campaign, serving as what he called "another form of workforce." Near the end of production, AI can create multiple versions of an advertisement, such as translating it into different languages or changing individual elements. The creative work in the middle of the process is where companies continue to wrestle with the technology's use, Lafferty said. He has encountered brands willing to use AI to create every element of an advertisement except the product itself. He also described a company whose executives could not decide whether they wanted their advertising agency to disclose the extent of its AI use, because not knowing would allow them to preserve deniability. "It sounds a little crazy, but it's the reality of something that's so new and so different and so impactful that there's all those aspects — the PR aspect of it, the cultural aspects of it that these organizations are wrestling with," Lafferty said. By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com A rtificial intelligence is making employees more productive, but for many companies, those gains have yet to translate into stronger earnings. That disconnect is among the challenges facing Connecticut resident Patrick Lafferty as he takes over as CEO of APR, a remote-first global marketing production consultancy with approximately 120 employees, including about 15 in the tristate area. APR advises about 400 global brands on billions of dollars in advertising production across television, digital, social media and other platforms. From that vantage point, Lafferty said AI has become pervasive throughout the advertising industry, even as agencies and their clients struggle to determine how to use it, what it should accom- plish and whether the investment will pay off. "We're at the point where so many things are possible that you really have to start by asking clients what they want and come up with a playbook that is specific to them," said Lafferty, who lives in Old Greenwich. For many companies, the goal is to reduce costs and improve efficiency. But Lafferty said adopting AI can require significant upfront spending before producing savings. "There are some things that can save money, and there are some things, frankly, that for a little while are going to actually cost a little more money if you want to make this transition," he said. ROI disconnect That challenge extends well beyond the advertising industry. A recent McKinsey survey of more than 1,700 people worldwide found a wide gap between AI's impact on workers and companies. While 80% of respondents said the technology had improved their productivity, only 37% reported a positive contribution to their organizations' earnings. One in five respondents said rising AI expenses were already limiting their organizations' use of the technology. Even so, about 60% said their organi- zations planned to increase AI invest- ments over the next year. Tanguy Catlin, a senior partner at McKinsey and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, said artifi- cial intelligence adoption and invest- ment are increasingly dividing large companies from smaller ones, particu- larly as agentic AI — systems that can independently perform multistep tasks with limited human supervision — is rolled out. "Scale matters," Catlin said. "It's about orchestrations of workflows, and those are large investments. So 40% of organizations that have more than $1 billion in revenue are scaling AI agents. It's 27% for medium size, and it's only 20% for small organizations." The paradox in the survey findings, he added, is that most companies are experiencing improvements in produc- tivity and decision-making because of AI, but fewer than half are seeing an impact on their bottom lines. "If you just deploy the tools in terms of the existing workflow, you get very little" return on investment, Catlin said. "What they have to do is redesign end-to-end business workflows. You need to change the job to take advan- tage of the technology." Making those changes requires commitment from company leaders and also takes time, he said. Leadership challenge Lafferty is drawing on decades of leadership experience as he helps APR's clients determine where AI can deliver meaningful results. Before joining APR, he held senior leadership positions at several major advertising and marketing companies. He served as chief operating officer at Acceleration Community of Companies, CEO of North America at Bartle Bogle Hegarty and chief operating officer of North America at McCann. He moved with his family to Old Greenwich in 2012 while working for McCann in Manhattan. Earlier in his career, Lafferty served

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