Marketing teams are caught in an uncomfortable squeeze: leadership expects AI-driven productivity yesterday, vendors promise magic, and practitioners are left figuring out on their own which tools genuinely improve output and which just add subscriptions. Self-taught AI adoption produces exactly what you would expect, uneven skills, inconsistent quality, and quiet risk in what gets pasted into public tools.
This workshop replaces improvisation with curriculum. It is the corporate delivery of Scott Wilson's teaching at McMaster University's DeGroote School of Business, where his AI Essentials for Marketing Professionals microcredential prepares business professionals to use AI strategically, adapted into an intensive hands-on format for working marketing teams.
What will participants learn?
- The applied AI landscape for marketing: what current models genuinely do well, poorly, and dangerously
- Hands-on tool fluency: content generation, research, analysis, and campaign workflows with live practice
- Prompt craft for marketing work: briefs, drafts, edits, and iterations that produce usable output
- Strategy and governance: where AI belongs in your marketing process, quality control, and data-safety rules
- Build versus buy thinking for marketing AI tooling, and how to evaluate the vendor flood
Who is this workshop for?
Marketing teams, from coordinators to CMOs, agencies upgrading their delivery capability, and communications departments. No technical background required; participants should bring a laptop and real work examples, because the exercises use them.
Who teaches it?
Scott Wilson, McMaster instructor and working AI consultant, whose curriculum comes from teaching this material to professionals and applying it in live client work. Two decades of digital marketing practice sit underneath the AI layer.
What formats are available?
Corporate private delivery in half-day or full-day intensives, on-site or virtual. A public-enrolment version runs periodically. For self-paced study, the companion online course covers the same foundations.
How do you book it?
Request a workshop quote with your team size and preferred dates. Marketing organizations often pair this with Dr. Ruhai Wu's AI in marketing keynote for a research-plus-practice event.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from free AI tutorials online?
Structure, currency, and accountability: university-derived curriculum, updated against the current tool landscape, delivered live with your team's real work and an instructor who answers the questions tutorials cannot.
Will the workshop use our brand and campaigns?
In private delivery, yes; exercises are strongest when built on your actual briefs, channels, and guidelines. Pre-work with your team sets this up.
What does the team leave with?
Working skills demonstrated in-session, a toolkit and prompt library adapted to your marketing workflows, and a governance starting point for safe AI use.