How We Use AI at O’Brien Media (and Why It’s a Game-Changer for Our Team and Clients)

AI is everywhere these days—from powering the apps we use daily to transforming how businesses operate behind the scenes. At O’Brien Media, we’ve embraced AI not as a buzzword or a replacement for creativity, but as a powerful tool to support our work and enhance the services we provide to our clients.

Whether you’re working with us on a web design project, SEO, digital marketing, or ongoing support, chances are AI is quietly playing a part in helping us deliver the best possible outcomes—without compromising on the human touch we’re known for.

So, how exactly do we use AI? Let’s lift the curtain…

💬 Making Communication Easier with Email Tone & Sentiment Checking

One of the less talked-about challenges in any customer-facing role is the tone of communication—especially over email. It’s surprisingly easy to misread the tone of a message, and just as easy to unintentionally sound abrupt when you’re typing fast or dealing with complex topics.

That’s why we use built-in AI-powered sentiment analysis tools to help our team interpret incoming emails and double-check their tone before replying. This is particularly helpful for team members who might struggle with judging tone or confidence in how to phrase responses. The result? Clearer, kinder, more helpful communication, every time.

We’ve found this massively improves internal collaboration too—it just makes it easier to communicate with empathy and professionalism, whether we’re chatting with each other or responding to customers.

🔍 Smarter, Faster Research

AI is brilliant at helping us gather insights more efficiently. Instead of trawling through dozens of sources manually, we can use AI tools to pull in data, identify trends, and summarise information in a flash.

Whether we’re planning a new website, researching competitors, or preparing a marketing campaign, AI helps us focus on what matters most. It doesn’t make the decisions for us, but it gives us the groundwork we need to make smarter, more informed choices. For SEO and content planning especially, this means we can analyse search trends and keyword performance with more depth and speed than ever before.

🧾 Summarising Documents & Calls

If you’ve ever been in a long meeting or tried to catch up on one after the fact, you’ll know how time-consuming it can be to dig through notes or listen to full recordings.

That’s why we use AI to generate summaries of phone call recordings, meetings, and other important conversations. This ensures that we never miss the key points and can quickly share summaries with team members who couldn’t attend or clients who want a recap.

We also use AI to summarise large documents—think website content, competitor analysis, or technical specs. It saves us hours and helps us focus our attention on what’s most relevant. And of course, we still manually review everything before acting on it—we just get there faster.

🖥️ Smarter Placeholder Content for Development Sites

Let’s be honest—nobody enjoys placeholder text like “Lorem ipsum.” It’s a relic of the past, and it doesn’t help anyone visualise what a finished website will actually look like.

We’ve started using AI to create contextually relevant placeholder content for development sites. This means instead of generic filler text, we can populate a site-in-progress with content that’s tailored to the client’s industry or business type.

This helps clients understand layout and flow much more clearly and gives everyone a better sense of how the final product will function. It also makes internal reviews easier, since the content makes more sense from the get-go.

It’s important to note, though: we never use AI-generated content on live websites unless it’s been heavily edited, approved by a human, and passed all of our usual quality checks. AI is a great tool for ideation and placeholder copy, but it’s not a replacement for authentic, thoughtful content written with your specific audience in mind.

🧠 Supporting Team Members’ Strengths

One of the biggest benefits we’ve seen from adopting AI tools is the way they empower our team. Everyone has different strengths—some of us are naturally creative writers, others are amazing with structure and detail, and some are brilliant at speaking but find writing harder.

AI gives each team member the support they need to play to their strengths. Need help planning out a response or summarising a chunk of info? AI’s got your back. Not sure if your email sounds too blunt? Check the tone before you hit send. Struggling to get started on a project brief? Generate a starting point you can refine and expand.

We see AI as a kind of digital co-pilot—never in the driver’s seat, but always there to help steer us in the right direction.

🔧 Improving Internal Workflows

Behind the scenes, we’ve integrated AI into several internal tools and workflows. For example:

Customer enquiry routing: Using basic natural language processing (NLP), we can route support and sales enquiries to the most appropriate team member more quickly.
Project scoping assistance: AI can analyse the initial details we receive and help us draft outline project plans and questions to ask during onboarding.
Task summaries and status updates: AI helps us generate clearer task summaries and follow-up notes during project management, so nothing slips through the cracks.

These small efficiencies add up to big improvements in how we manage projects and communicate with clients.

🧩 The Human Touch Still Matters Most

While we love what AI can do, we’re also really clear about what it can’t do. AI can’t replace creativity, empathy, or lived experience. It can’t have a chat with you about your business dreams or tell a compelling brand story that resonates emotionally. That’s where our amazing team comes in.

At O’Brien Media, we believe in using the right tools for the job—and AI just happens to be one of those tools. We combine smart tech with human insight, creativity, and decades of experience to offer our clients the best of both worlds.

Curious How We Could Use AI to Help Your Business?

If you’re already working with us, AI might already be playing a quiet role in your project behind the scenes. And if you’re not working with us yet—what are you waiting for? Whether you need help with your website, marketing strategy, or digital tools, we’d love to explore how we can put our tech (and our team!) to work for you.

Drop us a message or give us a ring on 01793 239239—we’re always happy to chat.