Frostenden
Southwold
About 10 minutes away
Who I am, and what I’m looking for
I’m Rufus. I’m 18, I live in Frostenden, and I’m obsessed with AI.
Obsessed is the honest word for it. I’ve just finished my A Levels at St Felix, and I spend more or less every spare hour learning this, building with it and finding out what it actually does, rather than reading about it.
What I don’t have is a way to turn that into a career. That’s what I’m looking for, and I’d love to explore it with you. I don’t know yet whether we’re right for each other. I’d like the chance to find out, both ways.
I built this entire page with AI. That’s rather the point. It’s the clearest sample of how I work I can give you, and you’re already looking at it.
What I found
The market grew. Agencies shrank.
I went looking at this because I wanted to understand the industry I’m asking to join. These are other people’s numbers, not mine. Clients spent more on marketing last year, and agencies earned less from it. That gap is the whole thing, and it isn’t a forecast.
Industry reporting, 2026 · Big Six share of US ad spend fell from 44.6% in 2019 to 29.6% by Q1 2024 (Advertiser Perceptions, via EMARKETER)
The other half of it
Agencies are shrinking. AI roles are growing.
Both of those are true at once, which is the part I find interesting. The work is being redistributed, not deleted.
UK job postings vs the pre-pandemic baseline · Indeed Hiring Lab, March 2026
“Agencies without mature AI infrastructure will struggle to compete on speed and cost.” EMARKETER, advising clients on how to choose an agency — January 2026
- That’s a research firm telling your prospective clients what to ask in a pitch. Meanwhile employment at creative IPA member agencies fell 14.3% in a year, and 30% of them expect AI-driven cuts in the next twelve months.IPA Agency Census 2025
Marketing postings are falling. Marketing postings that mention AI have more than doubled.
What I’m already doing
Here’s what I’m already doing.
I’m 18, I’ve never worked in an agency, and I know I’ve got a lot to learn. But I’ve been building real things for a while, and I’m happy to open up any of it and walk you through it.
Billy’s Firewood
A live client site I built and still maintain, including delivery mapping and billing address tooling.
Real customer, real orders, still my responsibility when something breaks.Southwold Tennis Ladder
A ladder system for Southwold Tennis Club. PHP and MySQL, challenges and ELO ratings, tournament displays, and a pipeline that puts it live on every commit.
Built and deployed. No members on it yet, so I won’t claim users.BSL to Text
Reads British Sign Language fingerspelling through a webcam using hand-landmark tracking, and builds it into text.
A prototype, not a finished product, and I’d rather say so.Opus Trading
A bot on a live account where the model makes the calls and the system sets the limits. Broker-side stops that survive a crash, a market-hours gate, retry backoff.
The interesting part is the guardrails, not the trades.That includes this page, and the assistant in the corner of it, which is a working AI integration rather than a mockup. Ask it something while you’re here. I’ve also done Anthropic’s AI Fluency, AI Capabilities & Limitations, Claude 101 and Claude Code in Action; worth mentioning, worth less than the four above.
What I want is to do this properly, and to do it somewhere like Spring rather than on my own at a kitchen table.
The question
How does AI fit into Spring’s workflow today?
The question I keep coming back to is a simple one. Who at Spring is keeping an eye on what is going on in the world of AI?
There are twelve of you, covering strategy, creative direction, design, copy, marketing, digital, project delivery, finance and web. Every one of those remits is already full. None of them is this, because until very recently none of them needed to be.
I think the answer is nobody. That isn’t a failure. It’s a gap that opened faster than anyone could hire for it.
What your clients are doing
Three of your clients went live with AI this year.
I assumed Spring was already using ChatGPT, maybe Claude. Most agencies are. What surprised me was how much your clients already have running.
- Suffolk Police switched on AI cameras that spot drivers on their phones or without a seatbelt. Live since 27 July.Suffolk Police & Crime Commissioner, July 2026
- Anglian Water runs an ecological digital twin, and machine learning that catches sewer bursts before they pollute.Avanade; Ovarro
- Suffolk County Council has published a position statement on how it uses AI.Suffolk County Council, October 2025
None of that is creative work, and none of it came through Spring. That’s the point. They’re deciding about AI without their agency in the room.
There’s a quieter one, and it lands on every website you’ve built. When Google writes the answer at the top of the page, far fewer people click through to anyone’s site at all.
Pew Research Center, 68,879 real searches, July 2025. US data, and it hits question-style searches hardest — so not that number for everyone. The direction isn’t in doubt.
Spring has already written the answer to this, in your own journal:
“It’s far better to use AI as a tool… it will never replace the human brain’s ability to embody your brand’s values and tone of voice.” Spring’s journal — The SEO Heist, January 2024
That’s Richard’s point about slop, made by Spring itself, and it’s exactly what I think. I’m not proposing you let a model make the work. AI in the process, not the output: reach the work faster, spend the difference on the thinking.
Spring calls the problem the Sea of Sameness. Generative tools are raising the tide.
My proposal
Here’s what I’d like to ask.
I’m working full time as a lifeguard in Southwold until the start of September. After that I’m free, and I’m trying to work out what I do next.
I have days off. Could I spend some of them at Spring, sitting with the team, watching how work actually moves through the place, and finding where I’d be useful rather than where I’d like to be?
If that’s been worth anyone’s time, a proper trial. A defined stretch, real work, and a date in the diary where we both decide whether it carries on.
That’s the whole ask. The first part costs you a few afternoons. The second part has an end date written into it before it starts.
Let’s chat
I’d love to come in for a chat.
One conversation, in Southwold, whenever works for you. I’ll fit it around whatever’s easiest at your end.
