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 actually cover?
Not prompts. Your people can learn prompts from a video. The training that changes an agency covers:
- Where the tools fit in your actual process. Brief to concept, concept to comp, comp to production. Which steps get faster, which steps get worse if you let the tool near them.
- The quality line. How to tell AI output that is good enough from AI output that will embarrass you in front of a client. Your seniors know this instinctively. 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 the production time just dropped by half. This is the part most agencies skip and it is the part that decides whether AI makes you money or just makes you faster at losing it.
Why does it have to be on our own client work?
Because generic examples teach the tool and your team goes back to the way they worked before. When the brief on the table is a real one 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 four other programs. The sessions that stuck were always 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 actually 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 briefs and the pricing conversation.
- A seat for a while. If what you really 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, in one page: what you use the tools for, what you do not, that a person reviews everything that ships, and that their confidential material never goes into a public tool. Clients are not afraid of AI. They are afraid of being surprised. The policy is how you stop surprising them.
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.