Prompting with Purpose: Unlocking AI’s Potential

Artificial intelligence is changing the way professionals work, creating new opportunities to improve efficiency, spark creativity and support better decision making. At our recent event, ‘Future Connect: Unlocking AI Potential with Prompts’, attendees explored the fundamentals of prompt engineering, discovering how clear, well- crafted prompts can help unlock the full potential of AI in business and professional settings.

7 Jul 2026

Meet the speaker: Daniel Rowles

Daniel Rowles is CEO of Target Internet and Senior Lecturer at Imperial College. He has worked in AI, digital marketing and digital transformation for more than 25 years, with extensive experience working both client side and within agency environments.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), Daniel is also the voice of the ‘Digital Marketing Podcast’, one of the world’s top ten business podcasts, and an award- winning author for publisher Kogan Page. His books, including ‘Building Digital Culture’ and ‘Podcast Marketing Strategy’, have been translated into 15 languages.

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Why AI prompting matters

Generative AI has evolved from an emerging technology into a practical workplace tool, capable of supporting research, communication, analysis and creative problem solving.

Yet many organisations are only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

Research shared during the session highlighted that 83% of leaders don’t believe that they are taking full advantage of generative AI, while studies analysing more than 80,000 jobs suggest that AI has the potential to assist with almost half of workplace tasks.

Rather than replacing professionals, AI is increasingly becoming a collaborative assistant that helps people work faster, think more strategically and focus their time where it delivers the greatest value.

AI won't replace people, but people who know how to use AI effectively will have a significant advantage.
Daniel RowlesCEO, Target Internet

Refine rather than restart

One of the most valuable techniques demonstrated throughout the session was treating AI as an ongoing conversation.

Instead of rewriting prompts from scratch, users can build on previous responses by refining the output, requesting improvements or making incremental adjustments.

Examples included:

Asking AI to improve formatting
Changing colours and layout
Adjusting tone
Simplifying language
Restructuring documents
Requesting further iterations until the output meets expectations.

This conversational approach often produces stronger results while saving significant time.

Writing better prompts

Build better prompts

Effective prompts provide AI with clear direction and context, including relevant background information; a defined role for the AI; a clear objective and target audience; and the desired tone, format and any exclusions.

Refine your results

The best AI results come from refining your prompts rather than expecting perfection first time, including asking AI to rewrite or expand responses; adjusting the tone or level of detail; improving formatting and structure; and providing follow-up instructions to refine the output further.

Think beyond text

AI can support a wide range of business tasks beyond content creation, including analysing documents, images and videos; creating structured frameworks and rubrics; comparing information and identifying key themes; and presenting information in tables, reports and presentations.

AI is more than text

The session demonstrated how modern AI tools extend well beyond drafting written content.

Attendees explored practical examples including:

Image Analysis

Uploading photographs to identify objects, interpret information or generate recommendations based on visual content.

Video Analysis

Using AI to review video content and automatically generate summaries, blog articles or key discussion points.

Document Analysis

Creating structured rubrics to review reports, financial statements and other complex documents consistently.

Practical tips for better results

Daniel shared several simple techniques that can significantly improve AI outputs:

Be specific rather than vague
Break large or complex tasks into smaller stages
Avoid requesting very long responses in a single prompt
Continue refining outputs through conversation, instead of starting again
Ask AI to adopt a specific role or expertise
Specify the desired format before generating content
Save your best prompts to reuse across future projects
Use AI to create structured frameworks and evaluation rubrics for repeatable tasks

AI works best alongside human expertise

While AI can dramatically improve efficiency, Daniel emphasised that human judgement remains essential.

Users should verify important information, understand when AI may make mistakes and recognise when external web searches or specialist knowledge are needed alongside language models. Developing effective prompting skills allows professionals to remain in control while making better use of AI as a collaborative tool.

Event photos

Event Series Sponsor

Grant Thornton

Grant Thornton is one of the Channel Islands' leading independent assurance, tax and advisory firms, dedicated to serving the needs of privately held businesses, financial services and private clients.

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