Yes, and it's one of the quickest wins there is, because the hard part is already done: the knowledge is on the page. Give your AI the document, your logo and your website, and ask for a cleaner layout in your brand colours with no new claims. Then check every fact. A text-only slide deck took about two minutes of my time and about seven of Claude's.

A deck nobody wanted to build

A friend of mine, Liza-Lee, runs Aged Care Advocate. She helps families get the government subsidies and level of care they need. She is amazing at what she does, and building slides is her version of hell.

She had a presentation coming up, so I offered to help. The slides she sent were pure text. The content was solid; the layout needed work.

I gave Old Mate Claude her slides and logo, with a link to her website. My prompt took about 15 seconds to dictate. It asked for the brand colours from her logo, images to suit each slide and a QR code to her website at the end. Claude worked for about five minutes. A second prompt split her About Me slide in two, one on her as a person and one on her services. Two more minutes.

About two minutes of my time went in, including a check after each round, against about seven of Claude's. Every fact on the slides came from her. I'm not the subject matter expert, so the deck went back to her to check, and because it's in PowerPoint she can change anything she likes.

Watch the before and after (under seven minutes), including both prompts.

Why did it work so quickly?

The hard part was already done. Liza-Lee's knowledge was on the page, and the part she dreaded was layout and design. Claude also had everything it needed attached to the request, which was the whole argument of Issue 01.

What else can you use this on?

Any document you've written and never had time to make look right: proposals, capability statements, client onboarding packs, and marketing content such as brochures and social posts.

Try this week: restyle one document clients see

Pick one document a client or prospect sees that's mostly text. Give your AI the document, your logo and your website address, and ask for a cleaner layout in your brand colours with no new claims. Check every fact before you use it. Fifteen minutes.

Then make it stick

Do this once on your proposal template, or whichever document you send most. Check it properly, then make it the version everyone starts from.

Did you know?

People learn better from pictures and a spoken explanation than from pictures, speech and the same words printed on screen, particularly when the pace is quick. Richard Mayer calls this the redundancy principle. That's a speaker talking over slides full of text.

Sources

  • Richard E. Mayer, Multimedia Learning, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2020.