Designing a Collaboration Space for AI-Enabled Marketing System

At the heart of the AI-Enabled Marketing System is a digital space where human knowledge and creativity meet the power of AI inference and scale. The Collaboration Space, supported by an AI Research Assistant, enables teams to work with AI systems to plan tactics, develop ideas, schedule activities, generate prompts, and analyze performance for continuous improvement.

This is the anchor post for an open research initiative focused on developing a practical framework for building an AI-Enabled marketing function. Marketers, vendors, and other stakeholders are invited to contribute. To participate as an attributed collaborator, email: chris@friendselectric.ca

AI Research Assistants support the collaboration layer of A-Enabled Marketing systems. Click to enlarge

Overview

The Collaboration Space module within the AI-Enabled Marketing Engine design establishes a digital space where human teams and AI Research Assistants work side-by-side on key marketing tasks and initiatives. It take insights from the Marketing Knowledge Base a high-octane fuel for the co-creation of plans, creative ideas, structured prompts, and operational insights.

Tools like NotebookLM and ChatGPT Projects make it relatively simple to build an AI Research Assistant that supports the entire marketing function when properly configured.

Inputs/Outputs For AI Collaboration Space

Key Inputs

• Insights synced from the Marketing Knowledge Base

• Operating Manual defining system procedures and best practices

Key Outputs

• Structured prompts and creative briefs for AI tools

• Content ideas and performance insights surfaced through AI collaboration

• Knowledge Base updates and refinement suggestions

• Clear, repeatable workflows that improve speed and creative consistency

Pro Tips For Human-AI Collaboration Space

AI-Enabled Marketing Systems are not about handing over creative control to soulless robots. They are about collaborating with AI to make marketing smarter, more personalized, and more consistent.

The following best practices show how AI Research Assistants can be used to combine human creativity with AI to move to a structured, dynamic process that drives results.

Sync Knowledge Base Insights

Most Generative AI tools interpret plain text far more reliably than CSV files. The best practice to connect your Knowledge Base to your Research Assistant is:

1. Sync the master list of insights to a Google Doc (as a .txt file)

2. THEN connect that doc to your AI Research Assistant

This enables your AI Research Assistant to be topped up with near real-time insights that will improve content collabs.

Add Custom Instructions

Write clear instructions so the assistant knows its purpose and function. This is where using a clear approach like the ROSES Prompt Framework can help to improve outcomes.

Here are the key tasks performed in the Collaboration Space:

• Generate creative ideas e.g. content

• Plan marketing schedule (optimize timing and sequencing)

• Generate prompts for AI marketing tools

• Suggest updates to Marketing Knowledge Base

• Suggest improvements to AI marketing operations

Add System Operating Manual

Once your Content Space connected, it needs clear guidance to perform well. That’s the purpose of the Operating Manual.

The Operating Manual defines how the AI-Enabled Marketing System works. It serves as a transparent reference document that describes the rules, settings, and best practices that guide how content is planned, created, and published. The manual includes the follow guides:

• Format Guide - provides guidance on content structure and composition

• Storytelling Guide - explains when and how to apply storytelling best practices

• Media Guide - sets parameters and best practices for publishing to specific channels

• Prompt Guide - identifies framework to improve content quality and reduce iterations

• Tool Guide - defines key parameters (e.g. max prompt length) for AI tools in the system

These can be maintained in a single doc with table of content and clear header structure to improve AI readability. Examples, diagrams, and images can be included if they are clear and simple.

Invite Stakeholders

Be sure to invite people from the wider content team who will benefit from having access to this vital resource. It's also a way to actively involve people whose first language is different than your own.

The goal isn’t to automate creativity, it’s to design systems that help it happen more often and with better results.

Explore Other Posts In This Series

1. Overview

2. Knowledge

3. Collaboration (this post)

4. Planning

5. Production

6. Orchestration

7. Tracking

Join This Research Project

For many marketers, AI is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.

Teams are testing its capabilities, but few are adopting operational systems to actually guide its implementation, mainly because so few frameworks actually exist.

This research project is all about learning in public and building smarter and more productive marketing functions through controlled human-AI collaboration.

If you have expertise in marketing, creative strategy, knowledge management, system design, or AI agents and would like to become an attributed co-author of the design and Build Notes doc, please get in touch.

Email: chris@friendselectric.ca

About Friends Electric

Friends Electric is a private AI marketing consultancy founded by Chris McLellan, a Certified Chartered Marketer and contributing member of the AI Marketing Committee at the Canadian Marketing Association.

He's also founder and producer of the Ask AI podcast, and serves as Technical Committee Lead and co-author at the Digital Governance Council for the Data Collaboration Framework, a Canadian and international standard governing human-ai innovation.

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