AI is transforming marketing, and this series by Monks provides marketers with a practical playbook to applying AI in their business. With tangible tools and solutions, learn how to identify and create momentum to start your transformation, and leverage AI throughout your business, from GEO, content and media, to measurement and marketing intelligence.
Monks experts will provide you with the essential tools and knowledge to address current challenges and apply these insights throughout your business to stay ahead.
Your AI Playbook to Applying AI is a new series of LinkedIn Live events from The Marketing Society in partnership with Monks.
Session 1 - Your AI Playbook to Applying AI : Where to start?
Monks shared their journey from AI hype to practical implementation at scale. The session explored how they've enabled 10 billion tokens through their organisation, not through big announcements or corporate emails, but through systematic process transformation, grassroots training and transparent conversations about what AI actually means for talent and workflows.
Session 2 - Your AI Playbook to Applying AI: Real-Time Brand Building
Jouke Vuurmans, Chief Creative Officer at Monks, challenged marketers to move from "Black Mirror" anxiety to "White Canvas" opportunity. The session explored how brands have lost cultural relevance and speed in a landscape where everyone with AI tools is now your competition. Jouke shared practical insights on transforming from traditional marketing cycles to real-time brand building through three key pillars: faster decision-making using AI-analysed data sets, rapid strategy development that turns insights into strategies in minutes rather than days, and quick concept generation that kickstarts creative work. The focus was on genuine transformation, not just tool adoption, demonstrating how AI requires tailored marketing applications alongside human expertise to deliver contextual relevance at the speed culture demands.
The Series so far
Your AI Playbook to Applying AI : Where to start?
With Monks’ Chief AI Officer Wesley ter Haar
In this session we address the million-dollar questions: where do you start, how do you identify and create powerful momentum, and how do you identify the key areas in your business to prioritise your transformation?
Applying AI: Harnessing AI to create your real-time brand
With Monks’ Chief Creative Officer Jouke Vuurmans .
In this session as we dive into how you move at the speed of culture. Using agentic workflows, you learn how to capture insights that create real-time opportunities.
Learn to construct and work with interactive personas, develop active listening tools. Harness AI to build a brand that gets smarter with every interaction and build briefs for success.
Coming up in the series on LinkedIn
2026 dates confirmed
- Tuesday 27 January: Content, Craft and AI
- Tuesday 17 March: Media and Performance
- Tuesday 19 May: Intelligence, Measurement and IQ
- Tuesday 7 July: Building your GEO Strategy
all at 12:30pm GMT/BST - booking links to follow
SESSION 1 5 KEY POINTS
Your AI Playbook to Applying AI : Where to start?
We're post-hype
This is the first technology cycle where capability outpaces understanding. The tech is good enough for most use cases. The real challenge isn't the technology itself but how organisations adopt it and adapt their structures to use it at scale.
Don't just send the email
Declaring your company 'AI-first' in an all-hands message solves nothing. Real transformation needs transparency about both excitement and anxiety, grassroots energy and concrete enablement, not corporate announcements.
Three lenses for transformation
Monks approached this through talent enablement (tools, training, compliance), applied AI (process mapping and workflow optimisation) and services evolution (moving from time and materials to outcomes and outputs).
Build your AI compliance core team
Bring together legal, data privacy, InfoSec and business leaders to vet tools quickly whilst maintaining protections. This unlocks speed and creates space for ethical conversations beyond just legal requirements.
Map your processes first
Intelligence is freely available for the cost of tokens. Your infrastructure and ways of working matter more than the models. Process mapping reveals where to add automation, which steps to collapse and which silos no longer make sense.
"This is the first hype cycle that I've seen where the bonus of the technology is ahead of most people's understanding of it."
Wesley ter Haar Monks
2 ACTION ITEMS
Start process mapping now
Pick one or two high-impact workflows you need to transform anyway. Document inputs, outputs and the steps in between. Identify where intelligence can replace manual effort and which steps should collapse entirely.
Create an AI compliance process with teeth
Don't let legal become a blocker. Get them working with AI partners (including early startups) to figure out what works internally versus commercially. Make sure everyone signs an ethical AI use policy.
SESSION 2 5 KEY POINTS
Applying AI: Harnessing AI to create your real-time brand
From Black Mirror to White Canvas
The anxiety around AI stems from a natural human resistance to change. Rather than focusing on what we might lose, marketers should embrace the progress and opportunities AI brings, shifting from fear-based thinking to opportunity-based action.
Marketing Has Been Overtaken by Reality
Brands are no longer fast enough to stay relevant. Consumer expectations have evolved rapidly, attention spans have diminished, and every person creating content online is now competition. Marketing needs to match the speed of culture.
Real-Time Requires Three Components
Effective real-time marketing needs faster decision-making through instant data analysis, rapid production capabilities to act on insights within hours rather than weeks, and continuous optimisation that learns and adapts in the moment.
AI is Not About Removing Humans
The transformation requires both sophisticated tools tailored for marketing applications and marketing expertise to manage these tools. Humans remain essential for turning AI outputs into solid strategies and creative work.
Social Understanding Over Social Listening
AI-powered tools can analyse massive social data sets in real time, identifying conversations and opportunities for brands to participate authentically. This moves beyond traditional listening to genuine understanding and instant strategic recommendations.
"The machines will make the work more human."
Jouke Vuurmans Monks
2 ACTION ITEMS
Establish 24-hour insight cycles.
Start each day by reviewing real-time data on what conversations are happening around your brand and category, then make fast decisions about whether and how to participate.
Build a live audience panel into your process.
Use AI tools to maintain constant access to audience insights and perspectives, allowing you to test concepts and strategies against real consumer sentiment before full production.
In Partnership with
Monks is the global, purely digital, data-driven, unitary operating brand of S4 Capital plc. With a legacy of innovation and specialized expertise, Monks combines an extraordinary range of global Marketing and Technology Services to accelerate business growth and redefine how brands interact with the world. From crafting tailored, outcome-focused campaigns to modernizing critical infrastructure for the ever-evolving digital landscape, Monks delivers solutions that engage audiences in real time, drive cultural relevance and sustain long-term impact—a tripartite approach that establishes it as a trusted partner to the world's most innovative brands.
Check out Monks 25 Minutes of AI for further inspiration here.
