The Prompt: Strategy can go bigger with AIStrategists Sophie and Ellie take on today’s tools without compromising on quality or integrity.

AI has become part of the fabric of our everyday work.

Ellie Hennessey was one of the first Frameworkers to build an AI-powered tool in Claude. It conducts competitor analysis by reviewing a business’s website, content and things being said about it to uncover its positioning, content themes and recent activity. It does this for selected competitors, too, then identifies potential opportunities.

Ellie is resolute that it’s still her final say that matters, though: “I wouldn’t use the results verbatim to a client, but it’s helpful to validate a point of view.”

Sophie Meadows’ favourite use for AI is interrogating hypotheses. This allows her to sense-check her hunches, flag blind spots and turn ideas upside down — before the client does.

“I say, ‘This is what I think, this is my client: why might they think it’s a good idea and why might they disagree?’. Working with AI in this way offers another perspective to push the work forward, which doesn’t just speed things up but can make ideas stronger.”

AI is enabling us to build new products and capabilities.

Recently, as a studio team, we challenged ourselves to quantify the value of not just what we do for clients, but how we do it. Using Claude, Sophie vibe-coded an AI-powered tool that can be integrated with Fireflies AI to analyse meeting transcripts against success criteria, which could allow us to price work based on outcomes.

She says: “Successful delivery should be table stakes. But often the difference between a good and a great agency is flexibility, being collaborative and, above all, ensuring what the client needs is delivered. The trick is being able to measure that.”

Ellie has been deeply involved with our new AI-powered managed service, Brand Proximity. It tackles the challenge every brand is now facing: getting seen and cited in AI search. The platform opens up new possibilities for understanding a brand and its context faster and more deeply, from audience insight to content strategy to an early-warning system for where brands need to adapt.

“It’s really exciting to explore what the underlying technology can do in so many different ways, but all to strengthen what we’ve always done as an agency: helping businesses get closer to their customers”.

As our use of AI deepens, so must confidence in our own ability.

The only way we can create anything good with AI is by experimenting and learning how to move it forwards. But Ellie and Sophie agree that we shouldn’t just default to AI for everything, or get too comfortable choosing the path of least resistance. We have to think beyond the task at hand to the creative and innovative capabilities of future generations.

The worldwide reading ability for teenagers has dropped by around two years compared to a decade ago. For Ellie, this is a worry. For those entering the job market in future, “the important thing will be having a point of view and developing that where you can, exposing yourself to as many different industries or arts as possible. Curate what you think about the world and have enough exposure to things that you know your own mind.”

The Economist reported on a study of secondary school children that found a correlation between regular AI use and long-term negative performance in exams.

“It seems like it undermines resilience and persistence; the more that you use AI, the less interested you are in sitting with something and trying to solve it,” suggests Sophie.

The businesses that will succeed integrate AI with a discerning workforce.

Even as our use of AI and understanding of the breadth of its capabilities in our everyday work expands and deepens, it’s clear that what matters just as much are the people behind it.

Sophie cites an article in which the author asks a president of a billion-dollar tech enterprise what he would teach his sons. She writes: “He said he wouldn’t teach his children to use AI, because it will prepare them for nothing. He would teach them the humanities. Teach them who we are, who we have been, what we can make.”

“Ultimately, it’s about using AI to amplify the unique value we bring,” explains Ellie. Her advice to anyone starting in the business is to “encode your ways of thinking into AI, train it on your ways of working, thinking and approaching problems.”

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