AI bootcamp for EU affairs, day 4: stop theorising and start building
A special hands-on exercise. Prompts 1 to 5 of a ten-prompt workflow, built on the advocacy canvas: from researching your own organisation to campaign-ready messages, with you in charge the whole way.
Sebastián Rodríguez Pérez is a European campaign strategist with direct experience running and advising campaigns for some of Europe's largest pro-European organisations. He founded the European Campaign Playbook to codify practitioner knowledge across the EU's 27 political environments and make it accessible to campaign professionals, advocacy teams, and civic organisations working at the European level. His work spans electoral strategy, EU public affairs, digital campaigning, and the integration of AI tools into political communication workflows.
Disclosure
Sebastián Rodríguez Pérez is the founder of the European Campaign Playbook and Campaign Intelligence Library. He has worked with pro-European organisations across multiple EU member states. He maintains editorial non-partisanship in all published content; where articles relate to campaigns or organisations he has directly worked with, this is disclosed within the article. He holds no current positions in active electoral campaigns.
What it covers
A hands-on campaign exercise: researching your organisation, briefing your AI assistant, deep research, a public-narrative theory of change, stakeholder and audience mapping with a bias check, and campaign messages for every channel.
Who it is for
Campaigners, advocates and communications leads who have followed the first three episodes and want to apply AI to a real campaign.
When to use it
When you are starting or refreshing a campaign and want AI to speed up the research, story and messaging work without handing over the strategy.
Key takeaway
You lead the campaign and the AI supports you. Start from a framework, give the AI your real context, check what it finds against primary sources, and ask it who it left out.
In brief
- AI can’t run your campaign, and you’ll always need a human in the loop. These prompts show where it genuinely helps.
- Start from a framework: the advocacy canvas asks why we exist, who we’re reaching, what we want to say, and how, when and where.
- Research your organisation first, then turn that research into custom instructions so your assistant knows who you are.
- Build your why as a public narrative, map stakeholders and audiences, then ask the AI who it left out.
- Finish with messages for every channel, and test each one on someone who knows nothing about your campaign.
Stop theorising and start building
We’ve had the big conversations. We’ve explored the risks, the ethics, the potential.
Now it’s time to get your hands on the tools, and use them for real-world advocacy.
This is day 4 of the bootcamp: a special exercise, and the hands-on half of what we do in our live workshops. This time, it’s all about doing.
But let’s be clear: AI can’t run your campaign for you.
You’ll need way more than ten prompts to tackle any real campaign, and you’ll always need a human in the loop. That’s where you come in.
What these prompts do show you
- how AI can help you analyse, brainstorm and expand your ideas
- how to tackle challenges like inclusion, complexity and tone while you prompt
- how to stay in control of your message and strategy
Your first move? Have a framework.
As a senior campaigner, you need to know where you’re going. That’s what the advocacy canvas gives you, and these prompts are built to support it.
Our advocacy canvas is simple, didactic and made for training. It helps people understand campaigns step by step:
- why we exist
- who we’re reaching
- what we want to say
- how, when and where we do it
It also helps me plan internal comms, get buy-in from teams, and make sure everyone’s on the same page.
Open the tool you picked on day 1, start one new conversation, and work through the prompts in order. Each one builds on the last.