Tier 3 · Where Work Happens

An AI Workflow Plan for the Marketing department


A repeatable program for bringing AI into how marketing actually works — enabling the team, building the structure their work lives in, capturing the knowledge that makes the work theirs, and creating the workflows that turn recurring requests into reliable production.


Who's Involved

The working group

The members of the marketing department at GMFS and Plainbox Studio who will participate in implementing AI-supported workflows and standalone AI tools.

GMFS Marketing
Tom D'Armond
Joyner Brown
LeeAnne Noel
Becky Richards
Rebecca Squyres
Plainbox Studio
James McMahon
John Spivey

The Sequence

Four phases, in order

The phases are dependent, not parallel: each one produces what the next needs. Select a phase to see its detail.

Enablement

Every team member will have Claude installed and configured, will have been introduced to the surfaces where they'll use it, and will have enough foundational understanding of how AI works — and how to prompt it — to participate meaningfully in the phases that follow.


What this phase does not do

Phase 1 delivers access and foundation, not proficiency. Proficiency comes through doing the work in Phases 2–4 alongside Plainbox.

Block 1 Working Foundations
How AI actually works
What an AI agent is, how it reasons over what you give it, why context matters, and where it fails. Aimed at people about to use the tool.
Prompting and prompting techniques
Explicit instruction on how to write prompts that work — specificity, examples, structure, what to include and what to leave out. The literal mechanic behind everything Phases 2–4 will produce.
Why folder structure and context files exist
Introduce the mental model the rest of the plan is built on: Claude needs to be told where to look and what to follow.
The full interactive walk-through — what AI is, the vocabulary, how an LLM works, and a short conclusion. This is what the team experiences in the session.
Block 2 Setup & Orientation
Set up credentials for the working groupPlainbox
Handled by Plainbox as administrators on the account, ahead of the first session.
Install Claude on each machine and confirm access
Install, log in, and verify everyone can reach Claude before any work begins.
Verify Claude inside the working tools
Confirm Claude is available and functioning in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
Tour the product surfaces
A guided walkthrough of where Claude lives — Claude Chat, Claude in Word / PowerPoint / Excel, Claude design, and Claude Code as appropriate. The goal is recognition, not mastery.

Structure

We will build the containers and fill them — a folder architecture that matches how marketing works, populated with the right (rebranded) material.


Use the FRAME model as the starting hypothesis: underscored inputs (Company, Audiences, Assets, Templates, Skills) plus Workstreams and Projects for the work itself.
Populate with gathered reference materialGMFS
The reference set the team is already gathering:
  • Flyers (especially customizable open-house)
  • Radio scripts & brochures
  • Marketing templates
  • Rebranded marketing pieces
  • Marketing & loan-officer photos
  • District Director photos & packets
  • Finalized Mesh rebrand guidance
  • Select social posts
  • Agent marketing folders
  • JV-builder marketing folders
Content rulePrioritize already-rebranded (post-Mesh) materials — not legacy work, unless a specific legacy piece is genuinely worth keeping.
How Cowork reads reference material from the U-drive, writes output to the local drive, and how finished work gets saved back to the S-drive for the team.
Observe & adjust — togetherPlainbox + GMFS
Once material is in place, James, John, and the team walk the structure together as a group, then determine whether anything needs to change and why. The structure isn't final until this session happens — it's the gate before Context begins.

Context

We will author the knowledge that doesn't exist yet — the files that will teach Claude who GMFS is, who it speaks to, and how it sounds.


Why this is its own phase

Structure organizes things that already exist. Context creates things that don't. A company profile, a brand voice, an individual's writing voice — none of these live in a folder yet. They have to be written, often by distilling what's in people's heads. Different work, so it sits in its own phase, after the shelves are built.

Company profile
Who GMFS is, what it does, the institutional facts and positioning Claude should assume in everything it produces.
Brand & design-system documentation
The GMFS design system as a context file the agent follows — palette, type, the signature elements, the rules. A primary input for any on-brand output.
Audience definitions
Who the work speaks to — loan officers, District Directors, agents, JV builders, and the end borrowers behind each program.
Voice profiles
How the brand sounds, and how key individuals sound where their personal voice matters. Captured through the people themselves, not pulled from a file.

Workflow Creation

We will turn recurring marketing requests into documented, repeatable Claude workflows — consuming the structure and context already built.


Before you build
The four moves behind every workflow

Every workflow in this phase runs through the same four moves — the 4Ds. Walk them once here, one at a time. From this point on, every workflow we build comes back to them.

The first move
Delegation

Decide whether, when, and how to bring Claude into the work.
On a workflowSplit the task before you start. What should Claude draft or do, what stays with you, and what should it never touch?
Goal & task awarenessKnow what you’re actually trying to make, and break it into pieces.
Platform awarenessKnow what the tool is good and bad at, and pick the right one.
Task delegationSplit the pieces between you and Claude.
The second move
Description

Describe the goal and the task well enough to get useful output back.
On a workflowThe gap between a vague answer and a usable one is the instruction, not the model. Context, task, constraints, format — then refine in the back-and-forth.
Product descriptionSay what the finished thing should be.
Process descriptionWork it out with Claude in the back-and-forth.
Performance descriptionSet it up to behave a certain way next time.
The third move
Discernment

Judge whether what comes back is actually any good.
On a workflowYou are the expert on GMFS marketing, not Claude. Read it critically — accurate, on-brand, nothing invented? Good to use, or does it need another pass?
Product discernmentJudge the output — accurate, on-brand, usable?
Process discernmentJudge the back-and-forth — is it working?
The fourth move
Diligence

Take responsibility for what you do with AI, and how.
On a workflowClaude assists, you stay accountable. Check the facts, protect anything sensitive, and stand behind the final piece as if you made it by hand.
Creation diligenceUse it responsibly — mind bias and sensitive data.
Transparency diligenceBe clear about where AI was involved.
Deployment diligenceVerify it, and stand behind what ships.
The repeatable method
How any marketing request becomes a workflow
1
Document the team's process
Capture how marketing currently produces this kind of material as a written Markdown document.
2
Locate the examples
Identify where similar materials the team has produced in the past live in the folder structure built in Phase 2, so the workflow can reach them.
3
Locate the templates and design system
Identify the location of the templates and the GMFS design system the output must conform to, in the structure built in Phase 2.
4
Write the agent's instructions
Combine the process and the locations into a single instruction file the agent follows when this kind of request arrives.