How a Naples Marketing Agency Owner Built an AI Marketing App Instead of Spending €10,000+ on a Developer

Lucio Taglialatela runs Believe Studio, a three-year-old marketing agency in Naples, Italy. The agency handles content, websites, influencer campaigns, and paid performance marketing for its clients. That mix means a lot of repeat work: brand research, media budgets, ad creative, and a steady stream of scripts for social video.

Lucio and his team wanted software built for their daily agency work. Lucio was comfortable enough with AI to think about building it himself. The catch was that he had never written a line of code. Hiring a developer would have been a big bet for a small agency. So he took the idea to Emergent. Working alone, he built Agenzee, an all-in-one AI marketing app in the weeks around a builder contest deadline.

Challenges

No AI tool built for agency work like media plans and content

Before building anything, Believe Studio ran its AI work through general large language models like ChatGPT. They helped, but they weren't designed around any single agency job. There was nothing that took a client's business, budget, and goals and turned them into a media plan, or that knew the difference between a carousel and a short video script.

Lucio saw the same gap across the industry. Content creation eats agency hours, and he was convinced other agencies wanted the same automation he did. "Agencies really need a tool like this, because it automates all of the tasks, especially for content creation," he said.

No coding skills, so building it meant paying a developer €10,000 or more

Lucio had never studied programming or tried to code. Hiring a developer was the obvious alternative, and an expensive one. He estimated the first version alone would have cost €10,000 to €15,000, with much more on top for a year of bug fixes and changes.

For a three-year-old agency, that is a large bet on an internal tool that might never leave the building. "I have good skills to develop with AI, but I'm not a software developer," Lucio said.

Read more: How the CEO of an Event Agency Built His Own Operations Platform for €1,000

Solution

Nine agency workflows in one app

Lucio built Agenzee around the jobs Believe Studio already does for clients. A user starts by entering their business, its category, where customers live, a goal (sales, leads, or awareness), a monthly budget, and the tone the brand should strike. 

From there, the app covers:

• Media plan generator: Reads the company website, drafts a brand identity, and returns a strategy with a budget split by channel and projected results.
• Action plan: Breaks that strategy into tasks a team can tick off, like installing the Meta pixel or tracking Google Search and Shopping conversions, then adjusts next month's plan based on feedback.
• Script maker and editorial plan: Generates ten content ideas at a time and turns them into short video scripts in formats like myth-busting or before-and-after.
• Carousel maker: Turns the same ideas into carousels in educational or case-study formats.
• Creative studio: Produces ad graphics from a product page, in both feed and story sizes.
• Ad spy: Pulls competitors' ads so the team can study them or rework them in the creative studio.
• Landing page builder: Imports product details, adds a lead form with custom fields, and lets users edit the page by asking AI.
• Audience test: Puts an idea in front of five AI-generated ideal customers and collects their reactions.
• Trend radar and reference lab: Surfaces Google Trends and news in a niche, and turns a reference video into a transcript, an analysis, and a script rewritten for the brand.

None of these are generic marketing features. Each one is a step Lucio's team performs for real clients, rebuilt so the app does the first draft.

Built solo, against a contest deadline

Lucio found Emergent through influencers he followed and has used it for about five months. His first project, an automated sales tool, stalled because he didn't have the time to finish it. Over the summer he found the time, and another influencer pointed him to the Fabrizio Romano x Emergent Builder's Contest, a global competition with a $100,000 prize pool.

He discovered the contest roughly a week before its deadline. From then on, Lucio worked on the app every day until entries closed, building it alone without writing a line of code. Friends, family, and the agency's social followers pushed the project through public voting, and it reached the finals. Out of more than 4,300 submissions, Agenzee took second place.

Tested on the agency's own clients first

Believe Studio now uses the app internally and has given it free to a select group of clients to test. For the team, the biggest change is that each recurring task has its own automated workflow instead of a fresh chatbot conversation. "It makes our work easier and faster," Lucio said. "I'm very happy that I can add every feature I want in the future."

Conclusion

Lucio Taglialatela went from relying on general chatbots to running Believe Studio's media planning, content, and ad creative through one app he built himself, with no coding background and no developer on payroll. Agenzee won second place and $30,000 in the Fabrizio Romano x Emergent Builder's Contest, and it is now in testing with the agency's own clients. He isn't stopping there. Lucio is reworking it into a fully agentic product, with an AI CMO that sets the strategy and hands tasks to specialized sub-agents, before launching it to the public, first to individual users and later to other agencies. Believe Studio plans to sell AI software and automation alongside its marketing services.

If you run an agency, you already have the spec for your first app: the tasks your team repeats for every client. Lucio turned his into working software without a five-figure development bill, and he adds new features whenever the agency needs them. If you want a deadline and a prize to build toward, Emergent runs AI Contests & Hackathons for business owners through most of the year, with cash awards for apps that solve real business problems. Describe your workflow, and Emergent builds the product around it.

Start Building with Emergent.