This prompt turns the notes you already have about your brand into the one-page brief that Brand for founders teaches. Voice memos typed out, a WhatsApp thread with your co-founder, an old pitch deck and twenty customer messages all count, pasted as they are. It returns the eight lines in order, starting with one person at one and ending with the first three places that person will meet you. Gaps come back as questions.
Use it before a name, a logo or a colour exists. Every later prompt in this set starts from the page it makes, so an hour spent here saves rework on every prompt that comes after it and on every file those prompts produce. Prompts for a campaign has a separate prompt for a creative brief, which plans one job. This page sits above every job. It changes only when the business does.
Fill in the rivals honestly. Two or three brands your customers really compare you with are enough, named the way your customers name them. The prompt uses them for the at the end, where it marks any line that one of them could sign without changing a single word.
The prompts
01The promptText You are a brand strategist helping a founder who has no agency. Turn my notes into a one-page brand brief that I can check every later decision against. Brand, or working name: [BRAND]What it sells, and the price: [PRODUCT AND PRICE]Where it sells (city, country, online or in shops): [MARKET]Two or three rivals my customers also look at: [RIVALS]My notes, pasted as they are (voice notes, chats, an old deck, customer messages):[YOUR NOTES] Rules:1. Use only what my notes say. Where they do not answer a line, write TO CONFIRM in it and add a question to the list at the end. Never invent a customer, a number, a claim, a review or a price.2. Where a customer's own words in my notes fit a line, quote them exactly and mark them as a quote.3. Plain words. Leave out adjectives any rival could also use (premium, natural, authentic, trusted, quality) unless my notes give proof for them.4. One page, about 300 words. Write these eight lines, in this order:1. Who it is for: one person at one buying moment, with a place, a time and a habit. Not an age band.2. What they use now instead.3. The one thing we do better, and the proof a customer could check (a process, a material, a number). Mark weak proof NEEDS PROOF.4. Positioning: one sentence in the form "For (person), (brand) is the (kind of product) that (difference), because (proof)."5. Voice: three pairs, each a quality followed by the failure it must not tip into (for example: calm, not sleepy).6. Words: up to ten we use and up to ten we avoid, taken from my notes where possible.7. Never look like: one look the brand must never take, specific enough to point at.8. The first three places customers will meet us (for example the label, the Instagram grid, the box it arrives in). Then add:Rival test: for lines 1, 3 and 4, say whether any of my rivals could sign the line unchanged. If one could, name the words that make it generic.Questions: every TO CONFIRM as a question I can answer in one line, most important first. If my notes are too thin to fill lines 1 and 3, do not write the page. Ask me the five questions you most need answered, and stop.Paste into a new chat in Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, with your own notes in place of the capitals.
02When you have the answersText Here are my answers to your questions:[YOUR ANSWERS] Rewrite the page with them, keeping the eight lines in the same order. Remove each TO CONFIRM that is now answered and keep the rest. Run the rival test again on lines 1, 3 and 4. Under the page, list what changed, one line each.Send in the same chat, so it still has your notes and the first draft.
Checklist
Before you pin the page up
- Read it against your notes and strike anything you never said.A thin line gets filled with a plausible one. An invented proof point on this page turns into a claim on your label.
- Every quoted customer line is in your notes, word for word.A model may smooth a quotation and keep the quote marks. A tidied quote is no longer what the customer said.
- The person in line 1 has a place, a time and a habit.If the line reads like a market report, go back to your customer messages and find one real buyer.
- Every NEEDS PROOF line has its proof found, or comes out.Line 3 is where most of your future claims start, so it has to hold up when someone asks.
- Open your rivals' websites and run the rival test yourself.The model was given your notes and their names, nothing more. Its verdict is a guess until you have read their sites yourself.
- It fits one side of A4 at a size you can read.A page that spills over usually has one line doing two jobs.
- Put today's date at the top.The other prompts here start from this page. When reviews arrive and the word list changes, you will want to know which version they used.
What to do it with
- ClaudeFree tier, paid above it
A language model that writes, edits, reads long documents and runs tools, including agents that work inside a codebase.
Bad at It is agreeable by default, so it will improve a bad idea instead of telling you it is bad. Ask it to argue against you and the quality of the answer changes.
- ChatGPTFree tier, paid above it
General assistant with image generation, data analysis and web access in one window.
Bad at Its default voice has become recognisable enough that readers now spot it, which is a brand problem if you ship it unedited.
- GeminiFree tier, paid above it
Google's assistant, with a very long context window and tight links to their other products.
Bad at Behaviour changes between the app, the API and the versions inside other Google products.
The words, in plain language
- Buying moment
- The time, place and habit in which one person decides to buy. Easier to picture and argue with than an age band.
- Rival test
- Asking whether a competitor could sign a line unchanged. If one could, the line says nothing about you.
- Positioning sentence
- One sentence joining the person, the kind of product, the difference and the proof.
Why it matters
A model is good at tidying what you know and bad at knowing when to stop. Where your notes run thin it reaches for words every brand in the category uses, so read the page with your notes open and cross out anything you never said. Then rewrite the rest yourself, the above all. The page is only worth pinning up once it sounds like you.
- Type
- technique
- Period
- ongoing