How I used AI to create a complete pitch toolkit—and why the process itself became the pitch.
There's a moment in every new business pitch where you wonder if you're spending more time on the proposal than the project would ever be worth.
I decided to test whether that had to be true.
Last week, I set myself a challenge: create a complete campaign pitch—speaking proposal, presentation deck, content calendar, outreach emails, the lot—in under an hour. Not rough drafts. Production-ready assets I'd actually use.
The target? DataFest 2026, Scotland's premier data and AI conference. The client? Faur (which is to say, myself—but I treated it as a genuine new business exercise).
The result? Fifty-three minutes from blank screen to finished toolkit. And here's the twist: the article you're reading now is part of that toolkit. Meta, I know. But that's rather the point.
I've been experimenting with Claude Projects for a few months now. For the uninitiated, Projects let you create persistent workspaces in Claude where you can upload reference documents, set custom instructions, and maintain context across conversations. Think of it as giving Claude a dedicated desk for a specific client or task.
For this exercise, I created a project with:
The beauty of this setup is that Claude doesn't need re-briefing every time. It knows Faur uses Inter for headlines and Lora for body copy. It knows the brand voice is "confident without being arrogant." It knows Dark Pink (#E25967) is for CTAs and Navy (#293C82) is for headlines.
This front-loaded investment pays dividends across every asset.
I started with research. Claude searched the web for DataFest details—dates, venue, speakers, themes, partnership options. It pulled information about The Data Lab's positioning and previous events. Within ten minutes, I had a comprehensive brief that would have taken an hour of tab-hopping to compile manually.
Then came strategy. Rather than jumping straight to assets, I asked Claude to think through the opportunity: Why should Faur be at DataFest? What's the unique angle? What are the risks? This produced an executive advisory note—the kind of document I'd normally write for a client considering an opportunity like this.
With strategy established, asset creation moved quickly:
Speaking proposal: A two-page document with session abstract, speaker bio, audience relevance, and technical requirements. Properly formatted with headers, pull quotes, and Faur branding.
Presentation deck: Twelve slides outlining how AI can transform communications workflows. Bold visual design using Faur's colour palette. Speaker notes included.
Content calendar: Twelve weeks of social media content across LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads—both for Faur's company channels and my personal profiles. Pre-event thought leadership, event-day coverage, post-event follow-up.
Outreach email: Ready to send to datafest@thedatalab.com.
This article: Which documents the process and serves as supporting evidence for the speaking proposal.
I won't pretend it was entirely smooth. There were moments of back-and-forth—clarifying brand voice, adjusting the presentation's visual approach, refining the article's angle when I decided to lean into the meta framing.
But these were creative refinements, not tedious rework. The kind of iteration that makes outputs better, not the kind that makes you question your life choices.
The time breakdown looked roughly like this:
Total: 53 minutes.
I'm not sharing this to suggest AI replaces strategic thinking. The decisions about what to create, why this opportunity matters, and how to position the pitch—those required human judgment informed by twenty years in communications.
What AI replaced was the mechanical translation of those decisions into polished deliverables. The formatting. The consistency checking. The "make this a proper document" phase that usually consumes hours.
For a consultancy like Faur, this has real implications:
For new business: We can respond to opportunities faster and with more comprehensive materials. The pitch itself demonstrates capability.
For client work: The same approach—brand skills, project context, structured workflows—applies to any campaign development. What took a day might take an hour.
For positioning: "We don't just recommend AI tools—we implement them" becomes demonstrably true when the pitch materials were AI-assisted.
A few things made this work that won't apply to every situation:
I know my own brand. The brand skill I'd built drew on guidelines I wrote myself. Creating that skill was a separate investment.
The brief was clear. DataFest is a specific event with specific requirements. Vaguer briefs would require more iteration.
Quality control still matters. I reviewed and refined every output. AI-generated doesn't mean AI-approved.
This was a real project. The stakes were real (I actually want to speak at DataFest), which focused the effort. Hypothetical exercises tend to sprawl.
I'm submitting the speaking proposal this week. The angle—using AI to create the pitch materials for a talk about using AI—felt too good to waste on a theoretical exercise.
If The Data Lab's programme is already finalised for 2026, so be it. The assets exist. The article exists. The process is documented and repeatable.
And that's perhaps the real point. Traditional agency pitches are one-shot efforts. If you don't win, the work evaporates. This approach produces content with multiple uses: the article serves Applied Comms AI regardless of the DataFest outcome; the presentation deck can be adapted for other speaking opportunities; the content calendar provides a template for future campaigns.
The pitch becomes inventory, not overhead.
Michael MacLennan is the founder of Faur, a communications consultancy specialising in practical AI implementation, and Applied Comms AI, a platform testing AI tools for communications professionals. He holds an ML/AI certificate from Imperial College London and serves on the board of ScotlandIS.
The assets described in this article are available to view at [link]. If you're interested in how Faur can help your organisation implement AI for communications, get in touch: info@faur.site