8 WEEKS, 2-HOUR LIVE TUTORIAL PER WEEK
The future of advertising.
ABOUT
The advertising landscape is undergoing its most significant transformation since the dawn of the internet. Generative AI is no longer a future technology; it’s a present-day tool for enhancing creativity, efficiency, and strategic depth.
Presented by Advertising Council Australia in partnership with Time Under Tension, Australia’s first generative AI experience agency, this new course for ACA members is designed to move agency professionals beyond basic chatbots. As the industry pivots toward AI-integrated workflows, the 8-week program provides a structured, hands-on environment to master the tools that are redefining how we communicate with customers and manage agency operations.
Who’s it for and what you'll gain
This program is specifically tailored for those who drive agency business and strategy.
- Client Services & Account Managers
- Strategists & Planners
- Producers & Project Managers
- Agency Leadership Teams
You’ll walk away with:
- Prompt engineering mastery: Transition from basic prompts to advanced reasoning and digital twin creation.
- Media multi-tasking: Gain hands-on experience with state-of-the-art tools for generating images, audio, voice, and video.
- Data & research proficiency: Learn to use AI for deep research, data connection, and complex business tasks.
- Operational intelligence: Understand how to build GPTs, knowledge bases, and agentic platforms to automate workflows.
- Strategic roadmap: Identify high-impact AI use cases specific to your business and develop a practical adoption roadmap.
meet your facilitators
Simon Hillier
Simon is Head of AI Learning at Time Under Tension. He has over two decades experience as a digital-and-AI content and training specialist. Since 2022, he has trained nearly 8000 people in generative AI tools and large language models (LLMs), working with major brands, all levels of government, agencies, industry bodies and education providers. His approach focuses on practical, real-world applications of AI that go beyond the hype to deliver tangible business value for the creative industry.
Cat McGinn
Cat is the founder of Liminal & Co. and the creator of humAIn – Australia’s first community and event dedicated to AI in media and marketing. With 20 years of experience as a marketer, agency strategist, and industry commentator – including her work at Mumbrella and Unmade – Cat brings deep creative industry credibility to the AI conversation. Her work now focuses on helping leaders move beyond the hype to build AI-integrated practices that are coherent, sustainable, and genuinely fit for the way modern agencies work.
Course structure and Content
The Academy runs over 8 weeks via live, virtual 2-hour sessions. The curriculum is split into two streams: Basic (Sessions 1–4) and Advanced (Sessions 5–8), with attendance required across both.
Certification
This is a participation-based course focused on practical, in-session learning. A Certificate of Attainment will be issued upon completion.
Participants will complete guided exercises and will participate in live Q&A throughout each session to apply learning in real time.
SESSIONS:
Session 1: AI Foundations for Agency Work
Benefit and focus: Participants build a shared understanding of generative AI and how it can be used safely, practically and effectively in everyday agency work.
What’s covered:
- The current generative AI landscape and key tools
- Responsible use in agency and client contexts
- Prompting basics: context, task, format and refinement
- Everyday use cases for planning, writing, summarising and ideation
- How to spot weak outputs and improve them
Outcome: Participants leave with a practical prompting framework they can use immediately in their role.
Session 2: Research and Insight Foundations
Benefit and focus: Participants learn how to use AI to support the early stages of agency thinking, from asking better research questions to turning information into useful themes and insights.
What’s covered:
- Framing better audience, market, category and competitor questions
- Using AI to support quick research and information gathering
- Summarising and comparing findings
- Identifying themes, tensions, gaps and opportunities
- Knowing when AI outputs need verification or human judgement
Outcome: Participants leave with a simple AI-assisted research workflow for moving from raw information to early insight.
Session 3: Better Outputs: Prompting, Reasoning and Critique
Benefit and focus: Participants improve the quality of AI-generated work by learning how to brief, guide, challenge and refine AI outputs.
What’s covered:
- Structuring stronger prompts for more reliable results
- Using examples, criteria and constraints to guide outputs
- Applying critique loops to improve strategy, copy and recommendations
- Using reasoning models for more complex thinking tasks
- Comparing, refining and improving AI-generated work
Outcome: Participants leave knowing how to turn rough AI outputs into more useful, role-relevant work.
Session 4: Creative and Presentation Prototyping
Benefit and focus: Participants explore how AI can help develop ideas, prototype creative directions and shape clearer client-facing presentations.
What’s covered:
- Using AI for ideation and concept development
- Image generation for mood, direction and creative exploration
- Light overview of audio, voice and video generation
- Turning ideas and research into presentation structures
- Practical limitations, risks and responsible use of generated assets
Outcome: Participants leave with a creative or presentation prototype built through an AI-supported workflow.
Session 5: Claude, ChatGPT and Reusable AI Workspaces
Benefit and focus: Participants learn how leading AI platforms can be used for deeper work, reusable processes and more organised agency productivity.
What’s covered:
- Comparing Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini for agency use cases
- Using Projects, GPTs and Gems to organise recurring work
- Understanding Claude Skills and reusable workflow knowledge
- Where agents, workspace automation and tools like Claude Cowork are heading
- Designing AI workspaces for briefs, documents, campaigns and business writing
Outcome: Participants leave with a clearer understanding of which AI platform structures suit different agency tasks, and how to design a reusable workspace or assistant.
Session 6: Advanced Research and Strategic Development
Benefit and focus: Participants build on the earlier research session by using AI for deeper synthesis, document analysis and strategic development.
What’s covered:
- Advanced research workflows and deep research techniques
- Working with longer documents, reports, transcripts and data inputs
- Synthesising multiple sources into implications and opportunities
- Using simulated perspectives or digital twins to test thinking
- Developing strategic territories, opportunity maps or recommendation pathways
Outcome: Participants leave with a more advanced method for turning complex inputs into strategic direction.
Session 7: Custom Assistants and Workflow Design
Benefit and focus: Participants learn how to move beyond one-off prompting by designing reusable assistants and repeatable AI-supported workflows.
What’s covered:
- What makes a useful custom assistant
- Building or blueprinting GPTs, Gems and similar assistants
- Structuring instructions, knowledge and examples
- Designing repeatable workflows for common agency tasks
- Understanding where agentic workflows and automation can add value
Outcome: Participants leave with a custom assistant or workflow blueprint for a recurring task in their agency or role.
Session 8: AI Adoption, Governance and Agency Roadmap
Benefit and focus: Participants identify where AI can create the most value in their agency and develop a practical plan for responsible adoption.
What’s covered:
- Identifying high-impact AI use cases across agency workflows
- Prioritising opportunities by value, feasibility and risk
- Setting practical guardrails for responsible use
- Building team confidence, capability and experimentation habits
- Creating a simple adoption roadmap for next steps
Outcome: Participants leave with a practical AI adoption roadmap they can take back to their team or business.
Tools covered include: Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Weavy, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Runway, and more.
Participant Feedback
Everyone left feeling confident in their ability to get the most out of AI and use it in the context of their jobs. I highly recommend this training to any organisation looking to optimise their use of GenAI tools. Simon’s dedication to crafting a fully customised experience for maximum impact is exemplary.
Nadege Morray
Head of Category, Sanitarium Australia
We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our members who attended the AI Academy training curriculum delivered by Time Under Tension – it was practical, hands-on and highly relevant using the latest AI tools.
Janki Shah
Learning Chair at Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Perth
The team created an engaging, informative, and exciting day that stretched the team’s understanding and abilities. The day was well thought through, took into consideration varying levels of understanding around generative AI and ensured a great balance of theory and practical application.
Lauren Fields
General Manager Brand and Portfolio
Asahi Beverages