You might have noticed that AI is suddenly everywhere. And while it’s exciting and potentially incredibly transformative, it’s also new, somewhat misunderstood, and can have some concerning use cases. 

At Battenhall, we’re enthusiastically curious, and as strategy specialists, we’re particularly interested in how AI can help us work smarter and more creatively - while remaining purposeful and ethical. Our work with AI has been eye-opening, fun and a little unhinged at times (AI hallucination is real, folks!). As a result, we’ve developed a toolbox of techniques that we use regularly for insights and strategy development. Here are three we’ve found to be highly effective.

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1. Persona development

A great technique is to use a conversational AI to develop personas and content tactics. This is a handy way of diving into the thought processes of audiences, unearthing crucial insights and exploring ideas.

First, we share a thorough description of our audience, sourced from in-depth market, audience and social research. Then, we ask the gen AI tool to act as a person within our chosen audience, and start to have a conversation with them.

By using a wide range of our tried-and-tested prompts to develop an ongoing dialogue, we can unearth behavioural data, attitudes and marketing preferences, as well as road-test initial tactics and concepts. This is particularly effective when used for brand categories that have broad appeal and penetration, as there will be far more information for the AI to reference. It takes time, and a lot of doubling back, sense-checking and building on previous questions, but the information it teases out is gold.

A great example is in education. On a recent project, we asked ChatGPT to roleplay a UK-based school pupil. Using prompts that tied into the content concepts we were developing (e.g. ‘What’s the funniest thing a teacher could do? Give me five examples’) helped inspire some great creative angles that we hadn’t considered. 

This insight is then used to add character to any audience personas we are developing, ensuring these always remain firmly rooted in market research.

Of course, it’s important to caveat that all AI answers should be sense-checked; if something doesn’t sound or feel right, it probably isn’t. But as an early soundboard, it’s a great addition to our strategy process.

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2. Sourcing and playing with research

Data is at the heart of all our strategies, so the first step on any project is to conduct a thorough situation analysis. In the past, this required extensive and time-consuming manual research - tasks that AI can now do at speed. 

Tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT Pro help us source market and consumer insights quickly, which are then sense-checked by our team for accuracy. This is then combined with non-confidential and anonymised research we’ve conducted, such as surveys, focus groups, reporting and GWI - our market research partner’s - data, as well as information about the client’s offering and products.

Once we’ve built up this resource, we can dive in and query the data to easily unearth all sorts of information. This might include asking about the market dynamics and which brands have the edge, as well as delving into audiences’ opinions of the product category and company, and perhaps even the cultures associated with the audiences. This insight acts as the foundation for our strategies.

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3. Idea development

Brainstorms are also a natural part of our strategy development, and using AI to structure them can help tease out ideas that might not have come up otherwise.

Fun and useful prompts might include: 

• If our product was a superhero, what characteristics would it have? 
• What funny or dramatic problems could our audience face if they didn’t have the product?’
• Write 10 newspaper headlines that describe the effect the product has on its audience. 

These questions can open all sorts of doors, and lead to unusual ideas that can be developed further to ensure brands stand out. AI can also capture, summarise and even critique the ideas developed during the session, to help explore more after.

This is only a glimpse into how we’re using AI for social strategy, but there are endless possibilities and techniques we’re playing with and adapting. 

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‍If you’re interested in finding out more or working with us to develop a strategy for your brand, send us an email to hello@battenhall.com.