99c Modernizes Creative Operations with Claude, Moving from Manual Review to Scalable AI
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Headquartered in Cape Town with offices in Johannesburg, London and Austin, 99c is an award‑winning full‑service advertising agency servicing major retail and consumer brands, including Shoprite Group (Africa’s biggest supermarket group), Checkers (South Africa’s strongest brand, rated AAA+, BSI 97.7), Ackermans, Spur Corporation, Lindt, and Profilm among others. The agency delivers strategic creative execution across all channels, with full‑service capabilities spanning strategy, creative, media, digital, production, and post‑production. For their retail clients, 99c relies on accurate, real‑time validation to support high‑volume creative output to ensure every output meets client and regulatory standards.
99c partnered with TrueNorth Group to modernize its creative QA processes using Claude.
The engagement focused on automating accuracy‑critical checks across retail executions and promotional assets – including price reconciliation, quantity verification, regulatory compliance, and multilingual spelling and translation validation.
The implementation introduced a set of Claude‑powered skills that integrate directly into 99c’s production workflow, reducing manual review effort and strengthening accuracy across high‑volume creative output. Examples of the 99c approach to AI-powered enhancement include:
99c partners with major retail clients with high growth demands requiring continuous campaign cycles, placing increasing pressure on day‑to‑day creative accuracy. Teams needed fast, dependable checks across large volumes of printed materials, online catalogues, and increased volumes of social and promotional assets – and limited time and resources required new review processes.
The agency had the data and rigorous workflows, but validating every detail at scale required significant effort. The result was heavy QA workload, slower turnaround times, and increased risk of inconsistencies.
Manual Price and Quantity Verification
Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
Multilingual Accuracy Demands
High-Volume QA Pressure
To address these challenges, 99c partnered with TrueNorth Group to implement a multi‑phase AI modernization program powered by Anthropic’s Claude API.
The first step was establishing Claude as the core AI engine for 99c’s creative operations. By centralizing all AI interactions through their Claude API, 99c created a flexible foundation that supports cost management, scalable usage, and consistent performance across teams.
Key components included:
This foundation enabled 99c to introduce AI safely and consistently across its creative workflows.
The second step introduced Claude Skills – modular AI capabilities designed to automate specific tasks in the creative process. Each skill represents a distinct operational function, allowing 99c to streamline repetitive work and reduce manual QA load.
Major skill categories included:
These skills were deployed within an extensible architecture allowing for new skills to be added, existing skills to be updated, and unused skills to be retired. This modular approach ensures the system evolves with 99c’s creative and regulatory needs.
The final phase focused on delivering AI capabilities directly to 99c’s creative teams. TrueNorth deployed an Azure‑based application integrated with the Azure Bot Framework, enabling multi‑channel access to Claude Skills.
Key deployment features included:
This deployment ensured that creative agents could access AI assistance wherever they work – accelerating reviews, improving accuracy, and reducing manual effort across campaigns.
99c’s AI modernization journey shifted the creative process from slower manual inputs to a rhythm of faster reviews, scalable automation, and consistent quality. What began as a push to reduce repetitive QA tasks became a durable operating system for high‑volume creative production.
Measurable results include:
After deployment, creative teams gained immediate access to AI for both simple and complex tasks – from spellchecking and translation to brand CI compliance, validation and accuracy checks across all creative assets. This accelerated production cycles, reduced manual workload, created more time for ideation and crafting, and improved consistency across campaigns.
The shift was most visible in speed. Tasks that once required hours of manual review now complete in a fraction of the time, allowing teams to focus on higher‑value creative work and respond to client needs faster.
The platform also strengthened compliance and quality assurance. Automated checks help ensure adherence to legal and regulatory requirements, reducing risk and improving confidence in final creative output.
99c now leverages Claude daily across its creative operations. The result is faster delivery, reduced manual effort, improved compliance accuracy, and a scalable foundation for future AI‑enabled skills and channels.
The platform doesn’t just support the creative process – it helps run it.
