‘It lets marketers get the job done’: Aussie consultancy plans to make AI easier
After 18 months in market helping brands to create and implement AI tools in their operations, AI consultancy Time Under Tension has launched new software to make utilising artificial intelligence easier than ever.
Launched mid-last year by former Reactive bosses Tim O’Neill, Tim Fouhy, and Jason Ross, Time Under Tension has described its methodology as sitting at the intersection of design, user experience, and artificial intelligence.
“We’re Australia’s first generative AI experience agency essentially,” O’Neill told Mumbrella. “What that means is we’re 100% focused on generative AI and helping clients to understand it, getting them excited, then working out with them where they can use it.”
Said to make a meaningful impact on efficiency, productivity, and creativity, Time Under Tension helps businesses – including the likes of Foxtel and Asahi – in three key ways: Inform, design, create.
“The first step of that is importantly informing about what the tech is, and how a marketer can use it in their business,” Ross explained. “Then, we do design workshops for clients, then they are able to go off and create.”
An example, described by Fouhy, is for retail clients who have a common problem – hundreds of suppliers whose products need to go through a product management system before hitting shelves or a consumer-facing website.
“When they have all these suppliers coming in, they need to go through the system. And you can imagine the varying levels of quality and details that they send about a product. So what the AI does, is rewrite the product descriptions in the retailer’s tone of voice, with consistency, making sure it is answering all the questions that consumers would have, making sure it addresses any compliance issues, the whole works really.
“And it saves them so much time – its an aspect of the job nobody really wants to do, and now they don’t have to do it.”
After speaking to “hundreds” of marketers over the past 18 months, taking on agency clients more recently, and solidifying the consultancy’s position as a leading AI expert with over 40 clients, the trio found a number of common problems people were facing with the technology.
“Their experimentations with AI would normally be pretty hodgepodge, scattergun approaches,” O’Neill explained. “So within a team, one person would be using ChatGPT, one would be using Gemini, another might be using the free version of Claude, while another uses the paid version… and they’re kind of all over the place.
“These tools are all useful, some are better for a task than others, I mean we use them all ourselves, but these models all have their strengths and weaknesses.”
Plus, according to O’Neill, it is getting almost impossible to keep up with the growth of AI unless you’re spending all your time in the space.
So, the solution? A one-stop shop where marketers can access all the different AI tools for their individuals needs.
Introducing Peak.
“It lets marketers get the job done and use AI to do it, but we take care of all of the AI – that’s all behind-the-scenes,” O’Neill continued. “A marketer can log in and click on what task needs to be done, and we make all the AI decisions – what model is best to use, what the best prompting is, what the data set up is, all that jazz.”
Ross added: “We’re essentially doing a whole bunch of complex things that the user will never see. Peak just speeds up some of the traditional tasks that marketers might spend a lot of time doing.”
The trio has created 30 different skills on the platform, from writing press releases, creating visual storyboards, surveying audiences, and more.
“Part of the onboarding process is finding the two or three most meaningful skills for them, setting those up for their brands, and helping them through that process,” Ross continued.
Long-term, Time Under Tension will expand the skills available on the platform, as personalisation for brands is paramount to its success.
Peak is being implemented in the operations of the consultancy’s existing clients too.
“What we’ve started doing now is identifying where in their processes Peak could be useful, ” Ross said. “We’re not trying to blend the two offerings, Peak is still running as a separate business to Time Under Tension, but we’re definitely seeing how our existing clients can utilise it.”
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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topics
ai
artificial intelligence
ChatGPT
Jason Ross
Peak
Reactive
Tim Fouhy
Tim O'Neill
Time Under Tension
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