Tokens & Tactics #3: How One Agency Leader Is Scaling AI from the Inside
Jeff MacDonald’s Gemini-driven workflows and prompt tools that make AI usable across his agency.
Welcome back to Tokens & Tactics, our Tuesday series about how people are actually using AI at work.
Each week, we feature one person and their real-world workflow—what tools they use, what they’re building, and what’s working right now. No hype. No vague predictions. Just practical details from the front lines. This week: Jeff MacDonald, Director of AI Innovation & Education at Mekanism.
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Tell us about yourself.
I’m Jeff MacDonald, Director of AI Innovation & Education at Mekanism. I’ve been at the company for almost 10 years, and I’ve spent the majority of that time working to keep our clients at the forefront of technology. That’s taken the form of interactive sites, augmented reality filters, the metaverse, and now AI. In my current role, I’m working mostly internally to enable our agency to get the largest benefit possible out of AI.
ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude?
Mekanism has adopted Gemini as an organization. We’re a Google Workspace company so it just makes sense to use a model that integrates so well into our existing knowledge. Google has made huge improvements since the Bard days, and in many places that matter to us (VEO 3 and NotebookLM), they are leading. Personally, I use Perplexity and switch dynamically between the big models to try out different outputs.
What was your last SFW AI conversation?
“Create for me a scene similar to a 1950s government education video of a business man sitting at a desk and he says "Welcome! Thank you for your interest in Artificial Intelligence, I'm excited to tell you more."
This prompt was for Gemini to generate a first scene in a video for our training series on AI. I fed it into a Gem created by Theoretical Media that responds back with the prompt you feed into VEO 3 for the best output. The output comes back as a verbose text prompt and in a JSON format that sometimes gives you better results.
First "aha!" moment with AI?
Very early on, I was on paternity leave during the public beta release of ChatGPT 3. In between bottle feedings and naps, I would jump into ChatGPT and write little poems, which eventually turned into brainstorm sessions and creative briefs. I immediately knew this was going to fundamentally change our business. When I got back from leave, I held an all-agency learning session talking about AI and theories about how it was going to change our work.
Your AI subscriptions and rough monthly spend?
ChatGPT Pro — $20/mo
Cursor Pro — $20/mo
Bolt.new — $20/mo
Perplexity Pro — $20/mo
Midjourney — $48/mo (when paid yearly)
Google AI Pro — $20/mo
Runway Unlimited — $76/mo
So roughly $314 per month, but most of these are annual expenses as part of a larger corporate plan, but I wanted to share what the stack would cost for an individual to stand up.
Who do you read/listen to to stay current on AI?
I get most of my daily updates from Techmeme because it’s aggregating the top sources and normally bubbles up the top AI stories among other tech stories.
I also really love Every, their newsletter normally always has a great take on new models the day they are released.
Video and Image Generation - https://www.youtube.com/@TheoreticallyMedia
Overall AI Updates - https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow
I stopped using X, but I had a nice list going: https://x.com/i/lists/1621274849271287809
Your most-used GPT/Project/Gem?
My most used GPT is my “JeffGPT”, it’s a simple prompt that just lays out who I am and some of my POV’s and history. Then, the training documents are the majority of what makes it special. It’s a collection of all of my interviews, articles, blog posts, etc. I use it to help me do a first pass on POVs when I’m asked to write them up, or if I need to go back myself and think about a topic I’ve spoken on before.
The AI task that would've seemed like magic two years ago but now feels routine?
Code generation. Two years ago, just the idea that AI could write code that worked seemed insane to me. Now it’s no big deal that AI can just take a sketch and create a working SaaS application in under 5 minutes.
Magic wand feature request?
Deck generation. It’s the first thing everyone at my agency asks me about. They love all of the AI examples I show them, but their first question is always, “So Gemini can make my slides for me?” Yes and no. Gemini in Google Workplace can create the content on the slide and a simple design, but it still doesn’t conform to the design. Once it can do that, it’s all over. No one will ever go back to building slides, at least I don’t think most will want to.
If you could only invest in one company to ride the AI wave, who would it be?
That’s a hard question; probably the right answer is Nvidia. The Picks and Shovels analogy works great here. But emotionally, probably Perplexity. I think they have a really strong product and could potentially be a big player as a tool that is agnostic to models.
Have you tried full self-driving yet?
Not yet, but excited to try it out when I’m in a city with Waymo.
Latest AI rabbit hole?
VEO 3 prompting. It’s been so interesting to see how people are getting the best results from the video model, and what isn’t working for them.
One piece of advice for folks wanting to get deeper into AI?
Just start doing it. There’s no perfect way to use AI, but not using it is not the answer either. Get familiar with the tools and find the use case that is right for you. In most cases, that’s the hardest part I’ve found in my training of staff. They get it, AI can do everything. But when it can do everything, it does nothing. Make it useful to you first.
Who do you want to read a Tokens & Tactics interview from?
Great question, maybe Ian Kovalik at Mekanism, he’s doing some crazy things in AI video generation with some tools I’ve not used.
If you have any questions, please be in touch. If you are interested in sponsoring BRXND NYC, reach out, and we’ll send you the details.
Thanks for reading,
Noah
hear hear on deck generation. a tool that can truly work within agency design templates, and nobody's quite nailed that yet.