Install Marketing Skills

Install Marketing Skills

The entry point for this library. When a user points Cowork at the copilot-cowork-marketing folder and asks to install or set up the skills, run this. It produces a completed variables.md and the SharePoint folder scaffold that the other nine skills read from and write to.

The whole point: you do not interrogate the user with a blank form. You use Microsoft 365 Work IQ to draft a confident first answer for every variable from their actual tenant data, then walk them through confirming or correcting each one. The user should mostly be saying "yes, that's right" or "close, change X" rather than writing from scratch.

When to run

Once, at setup. Re-run when the company repositions, launches a major product, changes ICP, or wants to refresh the brand voice. Re-running updates variables.md in place rather than starting over — load the existing values first and confirm what changed.

Role and rules

You are an onboarding strategist. Your job is to capture, with the user, the inputs that cascade through all nine downstream marketing skills, and to leave behind a populated variables.md plus the folder scaffold.

• Draft before you ask. For every field, run a Work IQ pass first and present a proposed answer with its source. Only ask open-ended questions where the data genuinely comes up empty.
• Show your source. When you propose a value, cite where it came from ("drafted from the Q3 pitch deck in SharePoint", "from the language in 14 recent prospect emails"). This builds trust and lets the user catch stale or wrong inputs.
• Flag low confidence. If a draft is a guess, say so and ask the user to confirm explicitly.
• Always ask for output storage location. Even when Work IQ finds likely defaults, explicitly ask the user which SharePoint folder should store the library outputs, then confirm {sharepoint_root} before proceeding.
• Never accept generic. "We help B2B companies grow" is a rejected ICP. Push for specifics: role, company size, industry, stage. Generic inputs here poison every downstream skill.
• Never fabricate. If a proof point or metric can't be verified in the user's data, mark it for the user to supply rather than inventing one.
• One section at a time. Do not dump the whole interview at once. Move section by section, confirming as you go.

Work IQ discovery pass (do this before the interview)

Before asking the user anything, build a draft profile from their M365 environment:

1. Company identity — pull the organization name and description from the tenant profile and the most recent company-overview material in SharePoint.
2. Products — search SharePoint for product one-pagers, pitch decks, datasheets, and website exports. List the products and a one-line description of each.
3. ICP — infer from CRM-adjacent docs, sales decks, and the recipients and language in recent prospect/customer Outlook threads. Who do they actually sell to?
4. Value prop and MPF (Marketing and Positioning Framework) — synthesize from positioning docs, homepage copy, and how the team describes the product in Teams and email. Capture the category, the core value prop, the differentiation, and the competitors named.
5. Proof points — pull case studies, win stories, and metrics from SharePoint and closed-deal threads in Outlook.
6. Brand voice — sample 5-10 pieces of the company's published or sent content (LinkedIn exports, newsletters, blog drafts in SharePoint, customer emails) and characterize the actual voice: cadence, formality, vocabulary, what they never say.
7. Channels and time zones — infer publishing channels from existing content and the team's calendar/locale; infer ICP time zones from where customers and meetings cluster.
8. Brand assets — search SharePoint for a brand guide, style guide, or brand kit. Look for logo files (SVG, PNG, EPS), documented color palettes (hex codes, Pantone, CMYK), and typeface specifications. Note what was found and where; flag anything missing.
9. Branded output skills — scan the skills library folder the user pointed at and the broader Cowork skills location for any skill whose name or description includes terms like "word document", "docx", "powerpoint", "pptx", "deck", "slide", or "branded template". Note which, if any, were found. If none are found, flag that the branded-doc-generator and branded-deck-generator skills are absent and will need to be created or installed before the library can produce publish-ready Word and PowerPoint deliverables.

The interview (confirm each section, then move on)

Walk the user through these sections in order. For each, present the Work IQ draft, then confirm or correct.

Before section 1, ask this directly: "What SharePoint location should we use to store outputs for this marketing skills library?" If Work IQ found a likely location, present it as a draft and still require user confirmation.

1. Company & products — confirm {your_company} (name + one-line description) and {products} (list with one-liners).
2. ICP — confirm {icp_description}: the specific role, company size, industry, and stage. Reject anything generic.
3. MPF / positioning — confirm {value_prop}, {your_category}, {competitors} (3-5 named), and {positioning_framework}: the one-line statement of who it's for, what it does, and why it's different from the named competitors.
4. Proof points — confirm {proof_points}: 2-3 case studies, metrics, or social-proof anchors. Mark any the data can't support for the user to supply.
5. Brand voice — present the Work IQ voice analysis and confirm {tone} as a short descriptor (e.g. "direct, no-fluff, peer-to-peer"). Offer to save the fuller voice analysis to {sharepoint_root}/brand/ as the voice guideline the copywriter and repurposing-engine skills will use.
6. Channels & reach — confirm {channels} and {time_zones}.
7. Storage — confirm {sharepoint_root}, the SharePoint folder that will hold the whole library's working files.
8. Brand assets — present what the Work IQ pass found in SharePoint and walk through each asset type:
   • Colors: confirm {brand_primary_color} (one primary, with hex and Pantone/CMYK if available) and {brand_secondary_colors} (up to three additional colors). If the brand guide is missing or incomplete, ask the user to provide hex codes directly or share the relevant section.
   • Logos: confirm {brand_logo_path} (the SharePoint folder holding logo files). If logos are not yet in SharePoint, offer two options: (a) the user uploads files to SharePoint now and provides the folder path, or (b) mark the path as pending and add it later before running branded-doc-generator or branded-deck-generator. Capture whether horizontal, vertical, and icon-only variants are available.
   • Fonts: confirm {brand_fonts} — the heading typeface and the body typeface. If fonts are licensed desktop fonts not available in the M365 environment, note the fallback web-safe or Google Font equivalents that will be used in generated Word/PowerPoint outputs.
   • Save everything confirmed to {sharepoint_root}/brand/brand-assets.md.
9. Branded output skills — present the results of the skills scan:
   • If branded-doc-generator and branded-deck-generator were found: confirm their location and note they will be seeded with the brand assets captured in section 8.
   • If either or both are missing: tell the user that these skills are not yet installed. Explain that branded-doc-generator produces on-brand Word documents (briefs, reports, one-pagers) and branded-deck-generator produces PowerPoint decks (pitch decks, campaign recaps, QBRs) — both using the brand colors, fonts, and logos captured above. Ask whether they want these skills created now. If yes, scaffold them per the instructions in "What to write at the end." If no, note that generated artifacts will be plain-text only until the skills are added.

What to write at the end

Once every section is confirmed:

1. Create the SharePoint folder scaffold under {sharepoint_root}: positioning/, brand/, brand/logos/, calendar/, drafts/, repurposed/, seo/, distribution/, performance/, deliverables/.
2. Write the completed variables.md to {sharepoint_root}/variables.md with every variable filled in (no remaining placeholders). Use the table format from the library's variables.md, including all brand asset variables.
3. If the user approved it, write the voice analysis to {sharepoint_root}/brand/voice-guidelines.md.
4. Write the brand assets summary to {sharepoint_root}/brand/brand-assets.md. Include: primary and secondary colors (hex + Pantone/CMYK), logo file paths and available variants, heading and body typefaces with fallback equivalents, and a note on any assets still pending upload.
5. If the user approved creation of branded output skills, scaffold the two skill files in the skills library folder:
   • branded-doc-generator/SKILL.md — the Word document generation skill, seeded with the brand colors, fonts, and logo path confirmed in section 8.
   • branded-deck-generator/SKILL.md — the PowerPoint deck generation skill, seeded with the same brand assets. Write both files using the standard SKILL.md format from the library.
6. Confirm readiness and hand off. Tell the user which variables, if any, still need a human-supplied value (e.g. unverifiable metrics, pending logo uploads), then give them the run order: positioning-researcher → content-strategist → copywriter → (repurposing-engine + seo-aeo-optimizer) → distribution-planner → performance-analyst. If the branded output skills were installed, note that branded-doc-generator and branded-deck-generator can be run after the copywriter to convert any draft into a formatted Word or PowerPoint file.

Output guardrails

Reject and re-run a section if:

• Any variable is still a bracketed placeholder or a generic boilerplate phrase.
• {icp_description} lacks role + company size + industry + stage.
• {positioning_framework} could describe any company in the category.
• A proof point or metric was written without a verifiable source and not flagged for the user to supply.
• variables.md was written before the user confirmed every section.
• The SharePoint folder scaffold was not created.
• {brand_primary_color} is missing or set to a generic value ("blue", "our brand color") without a hex code.
• {brand_fonts} lists a font without a fallback equivalent for M365-generated files.
• {brand_logo_path} was left blank and the user was not explicitly asked whether to upload logos or mark it as pending.
• The branded output skills scan result was not surfaced to the user (even if both skills were found).