How we use Claude AI to run a video production agency

Twelve months ago I would have told you AI was useful for first drafts and not much else. I was wrong.

Claude is now embedded in nearly every part of how Sidekick operates. Not the creative work. The everything-else work. The briefs, timelines, CMS formatting, metadata, proposals, project tracking, site updates and client reporting that eat into the hours we should be spending on ideas, direction and production.

We are not using AI to be more creative. We are using it to clear the runway so our team has more time to be creative. Here is what that looks like in practice.

Estimating and scoping projects

We built a Claude skill specifically for estimating. Feed it a client brief and it pulls from our historical project data to generate a scoping document: estimated shoot days, crew requirements, post-production timeline, and a cost range based on similar projects we have delivered.

A producer still reviews every estimate and adjusts for the specifics of the brief. But the first pass, which used to take an afternoon of spreadsheet work, now takes minutes. That means we can turn around proposals faster and spend the time we saved on refining the creative thinking behind those proposals rather than wrangling numbers in a spreadsheet.

Website updates via Webflow MCP

We connected Claude directly to our Webflow site using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which means Claude can read our site structure, suggest design changes, and help us implement updates without a developer in the loop for every small tweak.

Need to update a service page, adjust copy on a landing page, or restructure a section? Claude can see the current state of the site and suggest the changes in context. It has cut our turnaround on minor site updates from days (waiting for a developer's availability) to hours. That is hours our team gets back to spend on creative work for clients.

Project management dashboards

We use Claude's Cowork feature to build internal dashboards that pull together project status, timelines and resource allocation into a single view. Before this, project status lived in a combination of Slack threads, Google Sheets and people's heads.

The dashboards are not perfect. They are a work in progress. But having a single source of truth for where every project stands has already reduced the number of "quick question" Slack messages by roughly half. Less time chasing updates means more time thinking about the work itself.

Content creation and publishing

This blog post exists because of Claude. We built a workflow where Claude drafts content to our SEO strategy, formats it for our Webflow CMS and publishes it via API.

Our post on AI ad creative tools went from idea to published in under two hours. That includes keyword research, writing, HTML formatting, image metadata and CMS upload. Before this workflow, a blog post took two to three weeks to go from brief to live because it sat in a Google Doc waiting for someone to format it and upload it to Webflow manually.

We are now publishing consistently for the first time in the agency's history. That matters more for SEO than any single piece of content. And it means the team that was spending half a day on blog admin every fortnight is now spending that time on client projects.

Production admin and coordination

A typical production involves call sheets, shooting schedules, talent release forms, location permits, risk assessments, equipment lists and about fifteen emails that all say roughly the same thing to different people.

Claude handles the first draft of all of it. Give it the shoot details and it produces a call sheet in the right format. Give it a rough shooting schedule and it flags clashes, travel time issues and overtime risks. Give it a client brief and it drafts the response email.

None of this is glamorous. All of it used to take hours that our producers now spend on the parts of production that actually require human judgement: creative problem solving, talent relationships and making sure the shoot day runs smoothly.

Client research and market analysis

When a fintech founder comes to us wanting a campaign, we need to understand their market fast. Claude can synthesise a competitive landscape, pull out the messaging patterns their competitors are using, and identify gaps, all inside a single conversation.

For our Sage Mentors campaign, we used Claude to analyse how other mentoring platforms were positioning themselves. It surfaced data that helped the creative team find an angle nobody else was taking. The research that used to take a strategist a full day now takes an hour, and that strategist spends the rest of the day on the creative response to what the research uncovered.

The bigger picture

I want to be clear about what we are doing and what we are not doing.

We are not trying to automate our jobs away. We are not using AI to cut corners on creative. We are not saving time to save money. We are building the operational infrastructure around the business to be more efficient so that our creative team can generate more ideas, explore more directions, and deliver more value to every client.

Every week, we allocate time specifically to build and break things with AI. Some experiments work. The estimating skill saves us hours. The CMS publishing workflow has transformed our content output. The project dashboards have changed how we track work. Some experiments fail. We have tried and abandoned at least a dozen ideas that sounded good in theory and fell apart in practice.

So far, we have had some success but there is a lot more to figure out. This is a work in progress and we are learning every day. Anyone who tells you they have it all figured out is selling something.

What I can say with confidence is this: the agencies that are investing time in AI operations now, even when it is messy and imperfect, will be in a fundamentally different position in twelve months compared to the ones waiting for it to be "ready." It is ready enough. Start building.

Why this matters if you are hiring an agency

If you are running a startup and considering working with a video agency, ask them how they use AI. Not because AI is a magic word, but because an agency that has streamlined its operations with AI is going to be faster on proposals, more organised on production, and able to dedicate more of its team's energy to the creative work that actually makes your campaign perform.

At Sidekick, Claude handles the operations so our people can focus on what they do best: making great work.

See how we work or book a free consultation to talk through your next campaign.