I just got off a 7Pm call with an EdTech founder in Riyadh.
He’s brilliant, venture-backed, and building an incredible platform to teach tech skills to children. But he was frustrated.
"Ahlem," he said, "I’m paying for ChatGPT Pro, I’ve tried Gemini, and the marketing plans they produce are just... rubbish."
He was 100% right. The outputs he showed me were rubbish. They were generic, shallow, and completely unusable for a leader in the competitive MENA market.
And I knew exactly why.
His frustration is a story I’m hearing constantly from founders, marketers, and even enterprise leaders. We’re in an AI gold rush. PwC estimates AI will add a staggering $320 billion to the Middle East’s economy by 2030, with $96 billion of that in the UAE alone.
Yet, behind the closed doors of boardrooms and Zoom calls, leaders are frustrated. They’re investing in the tools, but they’re not getting the results.
They think the tool is broken.
The truth is, they’re missing a simple, teachable skill.
Today, I’m sharing the "secret" I gave that founder. It’s the key to turning generative AI from a frustrating toy into a high-performance member of your team. It’s a 4-part framework I call the RTCO method.
The Great AI Disconnect
When I first started seriously integrating generative AI into my growth advisory work, I hit the same wall.
I’d ask for a "blog post" and get a generic, soulless article. I’d ask for "marketing ideas" and get a list I could have found on the first page of Google in 2010. It was "rubbish in, rubbish out."
My "Aha!" moment, and the one I shared with that founder, was realizing it wasn't the AI's fault. It was mine.
The AI is a phenomenally powerful engine. But it’s not a mind reader. It needs a skilled driver.
This is the great disconnect I see everywhere in our region. We have massive investment and high adoption. A recent Deloitte report shows 58% of people in the UAE and KSA are already using generative AI, far outpacing many European markets.
But we also have a massive skills gap.
A BCG report on GCC AI readiness pinpointed that talent remains a critical constraint. The UAE has approximately 7,000 AI specialists, and Saudi Arabia has around 5,000.
When people hear "AI skills gap," they think of PhDs in machine learning. They're wrong. The real, immediate gap is the user skill. It’s a thinking gap.
We have the most powerful tools in history, and we’re using them like a slightly better search engine.
When people hear "AI skills gap," they think of PhDs in machine learning. They're wrong. The real, immediate gap is the user skill. It’s a thinking gap.
From "Rubbish" to "Results": A Founder's Story
Let’s go back to that EdTech founder. Here was his prompt. He had typed this into ChatGPT:
"Write a marketing plan for my new AI edtech that teaches tech skills to children."
This prompt is the definition of "rubbish in."
It’s lazy. It’s vague. It has zero context.
What tech skills?
What children? (An 8-year-old in Dubai is not a 16-year-old in Cairo).
What’s the business model?
Who are the competitors?
What should the output even look like?
The AI has no choice but to give a generic, high-school-level essay in return.
I told him he needed to stop asking for a plan and start directing the AI to build one with him. To do that, he needed the RTCO framework.
It stands for Role, Task, Context, Output.
This framework turns a vague request into a professional brief. It’s the difference between hiring an intern and briefing a world-class consultant.
Here’s the breakdown.
1. R = Role
Never start with your task. Always start by giving the AI a job title and expertise. This is the most important step for setting the quality of the response.
Instead of:
“Write a blog post...”Try:
“Act as a senior growth marketer for a B2B SaaS company in the MENA region, with expertise in bottom-of-funnel conversion.”
2. T = Task
Be specific. What is the exact action you want it to perform? Don’t ask it to "write a plan." Ask it to "develop a strategy," "draft an email," "analyze this data," or "generate 10 variations."
Instead of:
“I need some marketing ideas...”Try:
“Your task is to generate 15 high-intent, long-tail keywords for a new university in the UAE targeting international students for its new AI degree.”
3. C = Context
This is the "magic" 99% of users leave out. This is where you provide all the background, constraints, audience details, brand voice, and goals. The more context you give, the less "rubbish" you get.
Audience:
“The target audience is tech-savvy parents in Dubai and Riyadh who want to future-proof their children's skills.”Brand Voice:
“The tone must be authoritative, inspiring, and trustworthy.”Goal:
“The primary business goal is to acquire the first 1,000 paying subscribers within 6 months.”
4. O = Output
Tell the AI exactly how you want the answer delivered. This saves you hours of reformatting. Do you want a table? A list? JSON? A blog post in markdown?
Try:
“Deliver the output as a clean, markdown-formatted table with three columns: 'Channel,' 'Campaign Idea,' and 'KPI.'”
The "Expert" Prompt (The "After")
So, we workshopped his prompt. We took his one-sentence "rubbish" request and turned it into this "expert" prompt using the RTCO method.
[ROLE] Act as a world-class Growth Advisor and go-to-market (GTM) strategist, specializing in the MENA EdTech sector. You have deep expertise in launching B2C subscription platforms and marketing to parents in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
[TASK] Your task is to develop a comprehensive, 6-month GTM marketing plan for a new AI-powered EdTech platform that teaches foundational tech skills (coding, AI literacy) to children aged 8-12.
[CONTEXT] The platform is a web and mobile app. The primary target audience is tech-savvy, affluent parents in Dubai and Riyadh. The secondary audience is the children, engaged via a gamified interface. The primary business goal is to acquire the first 1,000 paying subscribers within 6 months. Key competitors are traditional coding centers. The brand voice must be authoritative, inspiring, and trustworthy.
[OUTPUT] Please deliver the plan in a structured markdown format. The plan must include: 1. Target Audience Personas (The 'Dubai Parent' and the 'Riyadh Parent'). 2. Core Value Proposition & Key Messaging Pillars. 3. A Phased 6-Month GTM Strategy (Month 1-2: Pre-launch; Month 3-4: Public Launch; Month 5-6: Optimization). 4. Top 3 Recommended Marketing Channels with specific campaign ideas. 5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each phase.
The difference was night and day.
We went from a 300-word generic list to a 1,500-word, actionable GTM strategy that included specific personas, channel ideas for partnerships with schools in Dubai, and even suggested KPIs.
It wasn't perfect, but it was 70% of the way there. It was a high-quality draft we could instantly refine, not a "rubbish" one we had to delete.
It’s Not a Tool, It’s a Skill
"Prompt engineering" isn’t some dark art for techies. It's the most critical productivity skill for every member of your team for the next decade.
The teams who master this structured conversation will be 30-40% more productive than those who don't. That’s not a small gap; that’s a "winner-take-all" gap.
The quality of your AI's output is a direct reflection of the quality of your input.
Stop putting rubbish in.
P.S. Are your marketing or strategy teams still getting "rubbish" results from their AI tools?
I'm opening up 2 spots next week for a private, 1-on-1 "AI Systems Audit" for EdTech founders and education leaders in the MENA region. No fluff, just a direct look at your workflows to find and fix the "rubbish in" problem.
If you'd like to claim one of the spots, connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a DM with the words "AI AUDIT".
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