FutureBuilt Podcast: "Sceptic Turned Superuser: The IPA Director Who Went All-In on AI"
- Greg Rogers
- May 22
- 14 min read
Watch the intro video below for this next episode of the fictional FutureBuilt Podcast featured in Session 6 of the Copilot for FDI Attraction Toolkit online course.
In this video I set the scene for co-hosts Jay and Talia's interview with John and Priya from a national IPA. John is an Investment Director, an AI sceptic turned superuser and Priya, a tech savvy Chief Marketing Officer.
You can read the podcast transcript under this video. After you’ve read the transcript, take a moment to reflect on the questions that follow based on this episode.
TRANSCRIPT:
JAY:
Hello and welcome back to FutureBuilt, where we talk about building the future of FDI with a little help from AI. I’m Jay.
TALIA:
And I’m Talia. Buckle up, folks – today’s episode is going to be exhilarating. Wanna see what happens when a national IPA investment director goes all-in on AI and hits that magical 10x ROI on their investment promotion? Yes, you heard right – 10x.
JAY:
We’ve been hearing that number whispered in hush tones at FDI conferences – “ten times returns”, “tenfold efficiency”. We decided it’s time to talk to the people who actually did it. In the world of AI-powered FDI attraction, these two are basically the Beatles and Stones.
TALIA: [laughs]
Or maybe the Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner of IPA innovation? Either way, they’re a dynamic duo who took an old-school investment agency and turbocharged it. Let’s introduce our guests. Please welcome John Evans, Investment Director at a national IPA – 25 years in the trenches of government service, self-confessed former AI skeptic – and Priya Patel, the agency’s Chief Marketing Officer – a tech guru who ran a digital marketing agency before joining the IPA. Guys, thanks for being here!
JOHN:
Thanks for having us – and for that intro. No pressure at all, right?
PRIYA:
I’m thrilled to be here! We’ve been die-hard FutureBuilt fans since Episode 1. A year ago I was quoting your podcast in meetings. Now I can’t believe we’re on it.
JAY:
Love it. So, a year ago, John, you were… how shall I put this… a bit “AI allergic”? And Priya, you were the shiny new hire itching to shake things up. Does that sum it up?
JOHN:
That’s painfully accurate, Jay. [chuckles] Priya was hired to modernise our marketing. I was this career civil servant who thought “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” When she said “Copilot,” I honestly thought she meant an actual pilot. Like for planes.
TALIA:
Oh no… So Priya, you walk into an IPA where the cutting-edge tech was, what, Excel 2010? What did you do?
PRIYA:
Pretty much! Day one, I found an office still stocked with fax machines. I’m not kidding. But also day one, our CEO said, “We need results fast.” So I rolled up my sleeves and proposed a tiny experiment. I convinced John to let me try Copilot on one small project – a prospectus blog post for a biotech initiative. Low stakes. I promised, “If it fails, I owe you a pint.” That got his attention.
JOHN:
I never say no to a free pint. [laughs] So I said, “Fine, one blog. Just don’t break anything.” I fully expected some generic fluff I’d have to rewrite. Instead… she and Copilot knocked it out of the park.
JAY:
What happened?
JOHN:
So this was a blog promoting our nation’s biotech sector – a piece of content I’d usually consider nice-to-have fluff. But Priya’s team used Copilot to crunch data from R&D reports, craft a compelling story about our biotech cluster’s talent and innovation, even spliced in a quote from a local biotech CEO that press hadn’t covered yet. All in like an hour.
PRIYA:
We posted it on our site and shared it on LinkedIn. Within a week, that blog had 5,000 views – which for us was unprecedented – and an inquiry from a UK biotech investor who literally said, “I didn’t realize you had all this going on. Let’s talk.” John nearly fell off his chair.
TALIA:
I bet he did! So one AI-written blog brought in an inbound investor lead?
JOHN:
Exactly. And here’s me, the guy who had grumbled that our website was a “tick-box exercise.” I ate my words. That blog felt like reading a page from a McKinsey report – sharp, credible, engaging. And it took what, maybe 1/10th the time to produce?
PRIYA:
Closer to 1/20th. We had Copilot draft it in under an hour, and another hour of human tweaking and fact-checking. Normally, a polished piece like that would be a week long saga between my team and John’s. Just so busy.
JAY:
So that was the spark. One blog, big bang. What next? Did you start spinning up AI content like there’s no tomorrow?
PRIYA:
Kinda, yeah! We launched what we called our “Open Copilot Lab” internally. No big budget, just permission for small teams to experiment with Copilot in their workflows. We set a ground rule: measure everything. If you try a Copilot-driven task, log how much time it took and any outcome. Within a month, we had experiments across Financial Services, Cleantech, Biotech – our three target sectors – all yielding crazy good results.
JOHN:
Let me brag on Priya’s behalf: In Cleantech, her team used Copilot to create a series of short-form video scripts showcasing our green energy infrastructure. We’re talking 60-second LinkedIn videos – something we’d never done. They wrote, filmed, and posted three videos in a week. One of them, about our new solar farm, got featured in a sustainability newsletter and sparked outreach from a Scandinavian battery manufacturer.
TALIA:
This is wild. Podcast blogs, LinkedIn videos – John, be honest, a year ago could you even imagine your agency pumping out this kind of multimedia content?
JOHN:
Ha! Not at all. I used to think a podcast was what my kids listened to about video games. Next thing I know, Priya’s saying, “We need our own podcast.” And I’m like, “Our own what? Who’s going to host that?” And she gives me this look and says, “You, John. You are.”
JAY:
No way – you became a podcaster? A reluctant one, I take it?
JOHN:
Very reluctant. But we compromised: we produced a pilot episode as a trial. It was a podcast highlighting success stories in our financial services sector – you know, fintech startups thriving in our region. Copilot helped outline the episode and even suggested interview questions after ingesting some industry reports. We recorded me interviewing a local fintech CEO (virtually). Honestly, I expected crickets. Instead, that one podcast episode got shared by the UK FinTech Board on social media. We suddenly looked cool – I suddenly looked cool – by association. [laughs]
PRIYA:
And internally, that was a turning point. Seeing John – the ultimate traditionalist – not just tolerate but star in an AI-assisted podcast? The whole organisation took note. Sceptics started coming to me saying, “Alright, Priya, how can I try this Copilot thing for my work?” We went from resistance to viral adoption inside the IPA within weeks.
TALIA:
I love this. It’s like a buddy comedy where the sceptic and the techie join forces and conquer the world. And apparently achieve 10x ROI on the way. Let’s talk about that number. 10x. It sounds almost mythical. What exactly did you 10x? Leads? Productivity? Sales? All of the above?
JOHN:
Great question. For us, the ROI is multi-dimensional. But I’ll give you one standout stat: In the past 18 months, our qualified investor leads have increased by about 1000% – that’s the 10x jump – while our marketing spend went up only modestly. We’re doing way more with roughly the same budget.
PRIYA:
To break it down: We used to average maybe 5 solid inbound inquiries a quarter. Now it’s like 50. Our conversion rate of outreach to meeting has also skyrocketed because we’re hyper-personalising outreach using Copilot. So it’s not just quantity, it’s quality. And on the efficiency side, my content team’s output has tripled. One person with Copilot can do the work of 2 or 3 now, whether it’s drafting proposals, social media posts, or research briefs.
JAY:
And what about any hard-dollar investments in the tech or training? To get that 1000% lead increase, did you have to invest 1000% more in software?
JOHN:
Not at all. We activated Microsoft 365 Copilot across the team. So it was largely included in platforms we already budgeted for. We did invest in some training workshops – actually, we had our own internal “Copilot 101” upskilling sessions. Cost peanuts compared to, say, one big trade show. And the payoff? Enormous. Honestly, the toughest investment was cultural – getting people like me to invest our trust in the AI.
TALIA:
Okay, so you were cranking out content: blogs, short videos, podcasts, targeted emails… All powered by Copilot. Did you run into any whoa moments where the AI went off-script? Like issues with data accuracy or bias? Priya, as CMO and Innovator/Optimizer, how did you keep things on the rails?
PRIYA:
Oh, absolutely. We had a couple of close calls early on. For example, one of our first AI-generated social posts claimed our region was “#1 in Europe for cleantech investment.” That sounded amazing – except it wasn’t precisely true. We’re top 3, but not number 1. Our fact-check caught it. After wiping the sweat off my brow, I instituted a “two pairs of eyes” rule: Copilot drafts, humans revise and verify. Every piece of external content still gets a human approval stamp.
JOHN:
We also developed AI usage guidelines. I’ll be honest: that was driven by my inner Guardian. [chuckles] Things like, always cite data sources, avoid cultural references the AI might not get right. Priya joked I went from AI sceptic to AI compliance officer. But it gave us confidence – and our leadership and legal team too. We’ve had zero incidents of controversial or off-brand AI content since.
JAY:
That’s reassuring. So you tamped down the risk by design. And how about bias? Did Copilot ever produce content that felt off-tone or biased?
PRIYA:
Nothing egregious. We did notice at first the tone was a bit too upbeat – almost salesy – in some drafts. Understandable, it tries to please. Our financial services team said one AI-generated pitch deck was “so cheerful it’s suspicious.” [laughs] But that’s tone, not bias. To mitigate any potential bias in data, we stick to feeding Copilot verified data sets. And if we ask for market research, we double-check its sources. In fact, we ask Copilot to provide sources or footnotes for any factual claims it gives us to assist manual checks. If it can’t, we don’t use those bits. It’s like having a very fast intern – you trust but can verify.
TALIA:
Love the intern analogy. So now, painting the picture: Today your IPA is humming along with AI-enhanced operations. How has this changed your team itself? Culturally, structurally – what’s different now compared to a year ago?
JOHN:
I’ll take that. Culturally, it’s night and day. A year ago, folks would guard their contacts and excel sheets like personal treasure. Now, we’ve got this open innovation vibe. We started a weekly forum called “Copilot Wins & Whoops” – where team members share their successes and their hilarious failures with AI. It turned learning into a team sport, and it really broke down silos between, say, our ICT sector team and our Cleantech team. Everyone’s swapping tips, prompt ideas, you name it.
PRIYA:
Structurally, one interesting change: We actually established a new role – an AI Content Curator. It’s not a full department, just one of my marketing folks who spends half their time fine-tuning prompts, maintaining a library of approved AI outputs (like an archive of good copy we reuse), and training new joiners on our Copilot best practices. Think of it as our internal AI librarian. That was John’s idea, by the way – Mr. Traditionalist over here insisted we formalize the knowledge sharing. And he was right. It’s helped sustain the momentum as we’ve onboarded new staff.
JOHN:
Flattery will get you everywhere, Priya. [laughs] One more thing: Our strategy has become more ambitious because we’re not as constrained by time or headcount. Our board used to say, “We don’t have resources to target X industry or try Y outreach.” Now, with AI, we kinda do. We’ve started exploratory campaigns for niches like Green FinTech (crossover of FS and Cleantech) by repurposing content with Copilot. A year ago, we wouldn’t dream of chasing a niche within a niche. Today, we’ll spin up a quick blog series or mini-webinar and just test it. The risk of trying is so much lower.
JAY:
That’s a huge shift – from resource scarcity to experimentation abundance. You’re basically describing an IPA that operates like a startup – agile, data-driven, not afraid to pivot or pilot something new.
JOHN:
Exactly. And as a 50-something civil servant, I find myself saying things like “Let’s A/B test this value proposition” – words I’d never imagined coming out of my mouth. [amused] I’ve become a bit of an AI convert, I’ll admit. When you see the wins, it’s hard not to convert.
TALIA:
So what’s a concrete example of something surprising or out-of-the-box you tried with AI that you think every IPA should consider? Some practical nugget for our listeners.
PRIYA:
I have one: personalised short-form video outreach. We took our top 10 high-priority investor targets in biotech – companies we desperately wanted to engage – and we made each a 2-minute video. Not a generic one; each was tailored. Copilot helped script each video with specifics: mentioning the company’s name, aligning our location’s assets to their known R&D focus. We even used it to generate a few on-brand graphics and charts via PowerPoint. We filmed our biotech team lead delivering the scripts – nothing fancy, just here at our innovation lab – and sent those videos off by email and LinkedIn. Response rate? 7 out of 10 agreed to a meeting. Seven out of ten! Before, we’d be lucky if 0.25 out of ten even replied to an email.
JAY:
That’s insanely practical and effective. Personalized video is labour-intensive – but you scaled it with AI.
PRIYA:
Precisely. Copilot did 80% of the heavy lifting for each script. It turns out, if you remove the grunt work, our team can focus on the human touch – like adding a genuinely warm invite at the end of a video. Investors responded to that authenticity plus relevance. The takeaway: don’t hesitate to use AI to personalize at scale. It’s a huge competitive edge.
JOHN:
My practical tip builds on that: document everything that works – create your own playbook. We treated our experiments like mini case studies. For example, when Sophie on our team cracked the code on a great Cleantech incentives summary, she saved the prompts and final output. Now anyone can reuse that as a template. This sounds basic, but you’d be surprised – in the rush of success, it's easy to move on and forget how it happened. We created an internal “Copilot Cookbook,” if you will. That’s helped new team members ramp up quickly and avoid pitfalls we’ve already seen.
TALIA:
Love a good cookbook analogy. “Season to taste with human insight” and all that. [laughs] Before we wrap, I want each of you to drop a memorable quote or mantra that sums up your journey. Something our listeners can stick on their office wall.
JOHN:
Oh, I’ve got one. I actually said this to a fellow director at another agency who was dragging his feet on AI. I told him: “It’s not about replacing the human touch; it’s about extending your human reach.” I truly believe that. I’m still doing the relationship-building and decision-making I did before, but now my influence and efficiency are amplified by the AI.
PRIYA:
That’s a good one. Mine might be: “Don’t wait for perfect – experiment and iterate.” In digital marketing we say done is better than perfect, and with AI that holds true. Our first podcast wasn’t perfect, our first videos weren’t Hollywood quality – but they were authentic and timely, and that beat perfect polish. A year on, those experiments turned into polished programs. So just start. Try that blog, that video, that AI-generated analysis – you learn by doing.
JAY:
Fantastic. Write those down, listeners. Extending human reach and experiment and iterate. That’s pretty much the spirit of this show. Now, before we sign off, we have a little tradition here on FutureBuilt. We ask our guests for rapid-fire takeaways – three quick pieces of advice for other IPA professionals on this AI journey. John and Priya, feel free to tag-team. What are your three takeaways?
PRIYA:
Alright: (1) Start small, but start. Don’t overthink a massive strategy document. Pick one initiative and get going – you’ll build momentum from there. (2) Empower your champions – you might have a “techie” hidden in your organisation already. Give them the space to prove what AI can do, like our Open Copilot Lab concept. (3) Keep the human in the loop. AI is amazing, but human oversight, creativity, and relationship-building are still the secret sauce in investment promotion. Marry the two, and you get magic.
JOHN:
I’ll add a bonus tip: Don’t be afraid to upend tradition. I clung to some old ways that frankly weren’t bad – but they became better when we infused AI. We still do investor dinners and trade missions, but now we target them smarter and follow up faster, because AI gave us the bandwidth to do so. So challenge the “we’ve always done it this way” mantra – that’s where you find the 10x opportunities.
TALIA:
This has been beyond insightful – and fun! John, Priya, you two have a great dynamic. The sceptic-turned-champion and the tech evangelist actually driving change side by side.
JAY:
Truly. I think our listeners are going to walk away buzzing with ideas. In fact, Talia and I have jotted down a few reflection questions for all you IPA pros out there listening – because after an episode like this, you should be itching to reflect and take action. We’ll share those in just a moment.
TALIA:
But first, huge thank you to John and Priya. You’ve shown that no matter where you start – whether you’re wary or wildly excited – the combination of human expertise and AI can redefine what’s possible for investment promotion.
JOHN:
It’s been a pleasure. And if our story inspires even one IPA to take the leap, we’ll be thrilled.
PRIYA:
Absolutely. Thank you for having us – and for being part of our journey, actually. This podcast planted some early seeds for us.
JAY:
Music to our ears. Alright, listeners, stay tuned for those reflection questions and a handy action checklist. Until next time – remember, in the FDI world you’re not just courting investors – with AI, you’re coding a new way to connect with them.
JAY & TALIA (together):
And that’s the FutureBuilt promise!
[Outro music fades out]
QUESTIONS:
Session 6 of the Copilot for FDI Attraction Toolkit online course includes ten questions for you to reflect on based on this FutureBuilt Podcast episode. Here are the first few questions:
Jay: Where Do You Stand on AI Adoption? – Are you the sceptic or the enthusiast in your team when it comes to GenAI for FDI attraction?
Follow-up: What’s one piece of evidence or experience (like a small pilot success) that might change your perspective or validate it further?
Talia: Content & Channels – Which new content channel (podcast, blog series, short-form video) could best showcase your location’s strengths if you had AI helping you create it?
Follow-up: What story or data would you feature first on that channel to grab your target investors’ attention?
Jay: Measuring the Impact – What key metric in your investment promotion efforts would you most like to 10x (e.g., inbound inquiries, social engagement, meeting conversions)?
Follow-up: What initial experiment could you run with AI in the loop to test a boost in that metric on a smaller scale?
Talia: Balancing Quality and Speed – In what part of your current process do things bog down (research, content drafting, follow-ups) and how might AI help speed it up without sacrificing quality?
Follow-up: What checks or safeguards would you put in place to ensure AI-accelerated work remains accurate and on-brand?
Jay: Team Dynamics and Culture – How is your team’s attitude toward AI tools – excited, fearful, indifferent?
Follow-up: What’s one step you could take to foster a culture of experimentation (like John and Priya’s “Copilot Lab” or sharing session) so people can learn and adapt together?
10-POINT ACTION CHECKLIST: ACTIVATING THE 10x IPA PLAYBOOK:
In Session 6 of the course, Jay and Talia provide you with a ten point checklist to help activate the 10x IPA playbook. Here are the first few actions:
Identify a Pilot Project: Choose one initiative (e.g., a blog post, investor email campaign, or mini-report) and use Copilot to drive its creation. Start small to build confidence and proof.
Set Clear Success Metrics: Define what 10x improvement you seek (leads, content output, response rate) and track progress diligently. What gets measured gets improved.
Empower an AI Champion: Appoint a forward-thinking team member to lead the AI charge – they’ll experiment, gather learnings, and mentor others.
Document “Copilot Wins”: Create a shared file or playbook to record effective prompts, workflows, and outcomes. Capture lightning in a bottle for teammates to reuse.
Establish QA Safeguards: Implement a human review step for all AI-generated outputs. Double-check facts, tone, and context. Trust the AI, but verify everything critical.
COURSE REGISTRATION:
Enrol today on the Copilot for FDI Attraction Toolkit online course to supercharge your investment attraction.