The 5-day AI challenge - "The AI Marketing Accelerator"
This deliberately simple challenge is designed to move your team from passive reading to active doing. I often will create bespoke challenges in my AI workshops and frequently discussed in my CMO coaching, and here is an AI challenge that will save your department time and enable more creativity.
The Goal: By Friday, every member of your team will have saved at least 5 hours of future work and built a reusable AI asset.
Simple Rules:
Time Limit: Spend no more than 30 minutes on the challenge each day.
Privacy First: Do not upload sensitive customer PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or unreleased trade secrets to public AI tools. Ensure you anonymise data before using.
Monday: The "Content Multiplier" Challenge
Focus: Repurposing high-value content efficiently.
The Challenge: Take one high-performing piece of existing content (a blog post, whitepaper, or video transcript) and turn it into five distinct assets for different channels without writing a single word from scratch.
The Tools: ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini (for text generation). Hemingway Editor (to check the readability of AI output & ensure it is simple enough).
The Prompt Strategy: Use a "Role-Based" prompt. "Act as a social media manager. Read the text below. Generate: 1) A LinkedIn carousel outline, 2) Three Twitter/X threads, 3) A 150-word newsletter blurb, and 4) Two Instagram captions. Match the tone of [Insert Brand Voice]. Text: [Paste Content]"
✅ Completion Goal: You have a Google Doc containing 5 new pieces of content ready to schedule for next week.
Tuesday: The "Visual Velocity" Challenge
Focus: Creating on-brand visual concepts rapidly.
The Challenge: Create a "Brand Concept Board" or 3 unique ad creative variations for an upcoming campaign. You must not use stock photos; you must generate them or edit them using AI.
The Tools: Canva (Magic Media/Magic Edit): For integrating AI images into designs & Nano Banana (Gemini), Bing Image Creator or Midjourney: For generating raw concepts.
The Prompt Strategy: Focus on style descriptors. Instead of "A dog in a park," try "A golden retriever running in a sunny park, cinematic lighting, photorealistic, wide angle, brand colours #FF5733 accent."
✅ Completion Goal: You have 3 distinct image files saved that are usable for ads or social headers.
Wednesday: The "Data Detective" Challenge
Focus: Uncovering insights from messy data.
The Challenge: Take a raw dataset (e.g., an export of last month’s social media comments, a CSV of email open rates, or a list of keyword rankings) and use AI to find the "hidden story."
The Tools: ChatGPT (Data Analyst Mode) or Claude: Upload a CSV file (ensure data is anonymised).
The Prompt Strategy: "Analyse this dataset. 1) Identify the top 3 patterns in high-performing content. 2) Spot the biggest anomaly or outlier. 3) Suggest 3 specific actions to improve performance next month based on this data."
✅ Completion Goal: A bulleted "Insight Brief" shared with the team that reveals one trend nobody had noticed before.
Thursday: The "Hyper-Personalisation" Challenge
Focus: Writing at scale for specific personas.
The Challenge: Write 3 versions of a cold outreach email or landing page copy, strictly tailored to 3 different buyer personas (e.g., The CFO, The Marketer, The IT Manager).
The Tools: Copy.ai (Free tier) or ChatGPT.
The Prompt Strategy: Use the "Critique & Refine" loop. First, generate the copy. Then ask the AI: "Critique this email from the perspective of a busy CFO who hates jargon. Tell me what they would hate, and then rewrite it to appeal to them."
✅ Completion Goal: Three distinct versions of copy side-by-side, where the tone and value proposition clearly shift for each persona.
Friday: The "Master Workflow" Challenge
Focus: Automation and standardisation.
The Challenge: Create a "Mega-Prompt" or a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for a task you do every week (e.g., "Monthly Report Generation" or "Friday Newsletter"). The goal is to reduce a 1-hour task to 5 minutes.
The Tools: Notion AI or Google Docs.
The Prompt Strategy: Document the perfect instructions. "I want you to become my Newsletter writing assistant. Here is the structure we always use: [Structure]. Here are 3 examples of 10/10 newsletters we have sent: [Examples]. When I give you a topic, generate a draft following these exact style rules."
✅ Completion Goal: A saved "Prompt Template" that you can paste into an AI tool next week to instantly do 80% of the work.
Reviewing the Week
At the end of the week, hold a 30-minute "Show and Tell" meeting.
Ask: "Which prompt gave the surprising result?"
Ask: "Which task will you never do manually again?"
