Can you do this remotely for a distributed agency?

Yes, in two half-day sessions rather than one full day. The hands-on part works fine on a shared screen.

Will this make our creatives feel replaceable?

Not if the owner says the sentence out loud: nobody is losing their job, we are taking on more work. If that is not the plan, do not run the session until it is.

Do you train on specific tools?

On whatever you already pay for, plus two or three I think you should know about. I do not sell any of them.

What about agencies that already use AI a lot?

Then the session is about the quality line and the pricing, which is usually where the money is leaking.

Can you also help us pitch AI services to our clients?

Yes, and that is often the second conversation. Once the team can do the work, the next question is how to sell it.

Who can train my agency's staff on AI?

Someone who has run an agency team and builds with the tools every day. The training should be hands-on, on your own client work, with the creatives and the account people in the same room. A half day is $2,000, a full day $3,500, and it should end with a one-page policy your clients can read.

Agency owners call me about this in one of two moods: a client just asked what their AI policy is, or a good designer just quit because the agency across town lets people use the tools.

What should agency AI training cover?

Your people can learn prompts from a video. Training that changes how an agency works covers four things:

Where the tools fit in your process. Kickoff to concept, concept to comp, comp to production. Which steps get faster, and which get worse if you let the tool near them.
The quality line. How to tell AI output that is good enough from output that will embarrass you in front of a client. Your seniors know it by feel. Your juniors need it taught.
The client conversation. What to say when a client asks whether you used AI. What to put in the SOW. What never goes into a tool because it is the client's confidential material.
The account side. Scoping and pricing work when production time just dropped by half. Most agencies skip this, and then get faster at losing money.

Why does it have to be on our own client work?

Generic examples teach the tool, and then your team goes back to working the way they did before. When the assignment on the table is real, for a real client, the room gets serious, the questions get specific, and people leave with something they made. I ran creative and digital teams at Olson, Carmichael Lynch, and my own shops, and I taught at Miami Ad School and six other schools. The sessions that stuck were the ones on real work.

Who should be in the room?

Everybody who touches the work: creatives, developers, account, project management, and the owner. Half the value is the account person hearing what the creative can now do in an hour, and the creative hearing what the client is worried about. Six to fifteen people.

What does it cost?

Half day, $2,000. The process map, the quality line, the client conversation.
Full day, $3,500. All of that plus a working session on two or three live client assignments and the pricing conversation.
A seat for a while. If what you need is a digital lead for three months while you hire one, that is the interim leadership page.

Every session ends with a one-page AI policy you can hand to a client.

What do we tell clients?

The truth, on one page: what you use the tools for, what you do not, that a person reviews everything that goes out, and that their confidential material never goes into a public tool. Clients mostly worry about being surprised. The policy covers that.

Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.