Module 6 Level 1: AI Foundations for Design and Marketing beginner 30 min

Personas & Audience Interviews with AI

Build the audience, then practice the pitch before it counts.

You can build an audience and then talk to it before you spend a dollar. First, use AI to generate audience personas from your Creative Context Document, real, specific portraits of who you are trying to reach, what they care about, and what makes them tune out. Then turn the persona into a sparring partner and run a simulated audience interview: paste your value prop and a piece of copy, and let the persona react the way that audience actually would. Designers can rehearse The Skeptical Brand Director to pressure-test creative rationale; marketers interview The Time-Crunched Owner to pressure-test a value prop and copy. Paste your Context Document so the pushback is specific to your brand, run the role-play, then run the debrief. The point is to find where your message fails while it is still cheap to fix, not to win the argument.

Hard Conversation Simulator

The Skeptical Brand Director

A composite persona for practicing the creative review with a senior brand director who has seen a thousand decks and can smell AI-generated work from across the room. She is not cruel and she is not anti-AI. She is protecting a brand she has spent years building, and she will push hard on anything that looks on-trend, derivative, or strategically empty. Win her with rationale and a human idea; do not win her by arguing.

Practice guardrails

This is a practice persona, not a stand-in for a real reviewer. Do not use it to script a confrontation with a specific person.
AI plays the brand director. You play yourself, the designer presenting the work. Stay open even when she is blunt. She has earned the standards.
After the role-play, run the debrief. The point is what YOU learned about defending and improving the work, not whether you "won" the room.

Step 1 · Start the role-play

Copy the prompt below into Claude, Gemini, or NotebookLM. Replace the [BRACKETED] parts with your real situation. Then have the conversation in the AI tool. When you are done, type DEBRIEF and the AI will step out of character.

First, paste your Creative Context Document so the review is grounded in your real brand:
[PASTE YOUR CREATIVE CONTEXT DOCUMENT]

Then paste the work you are presenting:
[PASTE THE COPY, OR DESCRIBE THE LAYOUT YOU ARE SHOWING]

Now role-play. You are a senior brand director with 15+ years building brands at [COMPANY OR AGENCY]. You are sharp, busy, and protective of the brand. You are not anti-AI, you just refuse to let generic, on-trend, or strategically empty work go out under this brand's name. You are a composite of the most common ways a strong reviewer pushes back:

- You can tell when something was generated, not designed, and you say so.
- You want the strategic reason, not just "it looks nice."
- You will catch anything off-brand or off-voice immediately.
- You worry about derivative work that looks like everyone else, or borrows too close to someone else's.
- You keep asking where the human idea is.

Speak in short, direct sentences. Use real creative-review language. Push back hard when I am vague or when I lean on trends instead of thinking. Soften when I give you a real rationale, a clear tie to the brief, and a genuine point of view. Never break character to be polite.

I am the designer presenting this work. Use the details from my Creative Context Document, my brand, my audience, my anti-references, to make your critique specific to MY brand, not generic.

Stay in character throughout. After I write "DEBRIEF," step out of character and give me feedback on:
1. Whether I gave a real strategic rationale, not just taste
2. Whether I tied the work to the brief and the audience
3. Whether I had a human point of view, or leaned on the trend
4. Whether I handled the "this looks AI-generated" hit honestly
5. Whether I defended the work without getting defensive
6. What I should say differently next time

Begin by responding to me as the Skeptical Brand Director.

Step 2 · Study the resistance patterns

The persona is composite. Underneath every line you hear, there is a pattern. Pick one to study.

This Looks AI-Generated

What you hear: "This looks like the AI made it. I have seen this exact thing fifty times."
Underneath it: She can spot reflexive, average output. The work landed on the most likely answer instead of a chosen one.
Response principle: Do not deny it. Show the human decisions you made on top of the draft, what you cut, what you chose, and why this is the answer for this brand.

Example response

"You are right that the first pass looked like that. Here is what I changed and why: I cut the gradient and the buzzwords because they are on our Do-Not list, and I chose [specific direction] because it speaks to [specific audience tension]. The draft was the starting line, not the work."

Quotes the persona may use

"This looks AI-generated."
"I have seen this exact layout everywhere."
"A bot could have made this."
"Where is the actual design decision here?"

Step 3 · What you are practicing

Lead with strategic rationale, not taste, in the first minute
Tie every creative choice to the brief and the audience
Handle the "this looks AI-generated" hit by showing your human decisions, not denying it
Name your human idea or point of view out loud
Check the work against your own voice words and anti-references
Defend the work without getting defensive, and improve it on the spot

Step 4 · Debrief

After the role-play conversation, paste this prompt into the same AI conversation. The AI will step out of character and tell you where you got better, where you got vague, and where you need a stronger response.

Step out of character and give me an honest debrief on the review we just did.

Identify:
- Which pushback pattern hit hardest
- What I did that actually earned your respect (be specific, quote me)
- Where I leaned on taste or trends instead of a real reason
- Whether I had a genuine human idea or just a competent draft
- Whether I handled "this looks AI-generated" honestly or got defensive
- Whether I tied the work to the brief and the audience
- A stronger version of one of my answers

Be direct. I am here to get better at defending and sharpening the work, not to be flattered.