资深活动策划人分享AI工具实践指南：从Midjourney视觉设计到Manus赞助研究

This article is about how I use AI in my business and not a lecture on how you should use it.

Event planning has been part of my work for around 30 years, and 15 years ago I did the study and committed to it properly.

Since then, the landscape has shifted almost every year. We’ve had COVID-19, global financial crises, and a run of mega events here in Queensland that tested us.

Now we’re being tested again with artificial intelligence (AI) and this shift is big. It’s a little bit scary and making people feel they might be out of a job.

I started playing with AI in early 2023 when ChatGPT launched and a thought-leader I follow shared what was possible.

I love technology and was ready to explore how it could fill the gaps in my experience. The first gap it filled was my creative side.

My biggest challenge in event planning is that I can’t draw. I’m not artistic in the traditional sense and I find it hard to articulate what’s in my head. Vision boards and pitch decks took me days so I didn’t chase creative work. Then AI changed all of that.

The first tool I tried was Midjourney, a generative AI program that creates detailed images and short animations from natural language text descriptions.

I had an event idea I was struggling to describe to a client so I used it to bring visuals to life. I was blown away by how accurately it answered a plain, everyday description of what I wanted.

I’ve since used it to create the whole look and feel of a conference in about three minutes. A designer could have done it, too, but it would have taken at least a week, not because of their skill, but because of how long it takes me to articulate a vision to a professional.

Even without a logo, you still need to brand a conference through colour, style and font.

People look for visual cues to know they have landed in the right place, and that is the quickest way to give it to them.

If you are avoiding AI because you don’t think you’re good at prompting, the truth is, that’s a made-up gatekeeper.

I already felt locked out because I lacked creative skill, then along came tools to fix that, and the new excuse was I couldn’t write a prompt properly.

Not true at all.

My second example is site design. I was building an outdoor event for a school on a blank slate but helping a client visualise an empty space has never been my strongest skill.

It is like rearranging furniture at home; I don’t get the vision until I start moving things. But you can’t do that on an event site.

In the past, I’ve paid an architect to lay out a street festival so everything fits. Once I start, I’m fine, I just need the kickstart and that’s what AI gives you.

You take a seed of an idea and turn it into something using your mind. You’re not abdicating to AI; you’re using it to get to the next step and speeding up the process.

I also use AI to build client presentations, research prices and suppliers, and produce debriefs, evaluations and acquittals.

This includes everything from “give me a structure for this presentation” to turning my thoughts into something other people can digest.

I keep my toolkit basic with ChatGPT, Manus AI and Claude the main ones right now.

Manus is an excellent research tool. For sponsorship strategies, I don’t ask it to write the strategy, I get it to find organisations in my region that sponsor particular activities, read their annual reports, websites and strategic plans for keywords that match my proposal, and research how proposals are being structured.

Researching the marketplace this way is one of the most valuable things you can do with AI.

I also recommend following people who are genuinely invested in AI, and not only in events. They will flag the upgrades worth knowing about.

Don’t sign up to annual plans. It may feel counterintuitive for your budget, but everything moves so fast that you’ll switch tools constantly so stay month-to-month.

Also, test the AI already inside the tools you use such as Canva AI, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI. If it disappoints, leave it a few weeks and try again because it will have improved.

On that note, when you Google something now, you get a synopsis from Google AI, not the old top 10 links.

So your event website needs answer engine optimisation (AEO) alongside search engine optimisation (SEO).

You can also build and host websites quickly with AI; host on Manus and simply buy the URL.

This matters because event planners always work on a shoestring budget, in small teams and with limited resources.

Artificial intelligence is our superpower. If you refuse to touch it, you will be left behind doing the grunt work, and believe me, as you get older and in this business longer, you don’t want to be doing that.

Photo at top: iStock/Kenneth Cheung.

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