We’ve all seen them. The LinkedIn posts that start with “In today’s fast-paced digital landscape…” The emails that are awkwardly personalized while somehow still being completely impersonal. The blog intros that take 200 words to say absolutely nothing. These are the unmistakable signs of generic AI copy, and YOUR AUDIENCE AND I HAVE BOTH HAD ENOUGH!!!
When your messaging starts sounding robotic, you don’t just lose reader interest, you lose brand trust. But the problem isn’t with the AI tool you’re using, it’s with the instructions you’re giving it. A model’s output is only as good as the prompt that you’re feeding in, and just asking ChatGPT to “write in a professional but friendly tone” is like telling a chef to make something “tasty.” It leaves entirely too much room for interpretation, and they don’t want to make something you won’t like, so they’re going to play it safe and whip up some chicken parm.
Now don’t get me wrong. In a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with a little chicken parm. I love it, you love it, Peyton Manning loves it. But if I’m at a high-end steakhouse, or a trendy gastro pub, or that new Japanese fusion place everybody’s been talking about, I’m not looking for chicken parm! The point is, if you’re not the kind of restaurant people go to for chicken parm, maybe you should stop serving it. All day. Every day. To every customer. And writing their name on top of it in marinara sauce doesn’t make it not chicken parm anymore.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there, but I think you get the point. If you want to cook up something your audience would actually order, you need the right recipe for the right dish. In this article we’ll give you our proven framework for generating AI copy that properly aligns with your brand identity, maintains your unique voice, and doesn’t just appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The Anatomy of an AI Style Guide Prompt
To get AI to write copy that actually sounds like your brand, you need to stop giving it one-line instructions and start giving it a style guide. And not the one your marketing team has been using for the past nineteen years, but a new one specifically designed for a large language model.
Why exactly? Because a traditional brand guide is meant for human eyes. It relies heavily on intuition and visual mood boards, and that is the exact opposite of what we want here. An AI brand guide needs to be hyper-literal, with strict rules, solid guardrails, and explicit structural instructions (try saying that seven times fast). Here’s what you’ll want to include…
The Voice Snapshot (Personality & Tone)
Don’t just list a coupe of adjectives, explain what those adjectives look like in practice. For example, don’t tell the model to “be witty but professional.” To get the best results, you’ll need to breakdown what you mean by that.
Good instructions might look something like, “We are witty but never sarcastic. We are professional, which means we get straight to the point and respect the reader’s time. But we speak like an approachable peer, not a C-Level executive or computer science professor.”
Cadence and Rhythm (Structure)
AI naturally defaults to a repetitive, medium-length sentence structure. You have to explicitly tell it how to pace its writing.
Give it instructions on formatting such as, “Use short, punchy sentences. Break up long paragraphs. Use bullet points where appropriate but don’t overdo it.” Tell it how you want it to transition by saying something like, “Start strong with a bold statement, no vague introductions or rhetorical questions; then quickly move into the value proposition.”).
The Do’s and Don’ts Vocabulary List
This is where you kill the corporate jargon and AI clichés. Build a strict blocklist of words, phrases, and symbols the AI is never allowed to use (poor em dash will never see the light of day again). And conversely, provide a whitelist of patterns that feel natural to your brand.
- Never use: Synergize, leverage, unlock, delve, bustling, or “in today’s digital age.”
- Do use: Clear, everyday language (e.g. use ‘fix’ instead of ‘innovative solution’).
Before-and-After Examples
AI models learn best through examples, so the most powerful thing you can include in your style guide is a comparison. Give the AI an example of generic copy, followed immediately by how your brand would rewrite it.
The Prompt Template
Now that you know the framework, it’s time for you build an AI style guide of your own. But luckily for you, I’m so tired of eating chicken parm everyday that I’ve made a template so you won’t have to start from scratch!
Copy the instructions below, fill in your specific details, and either include them in your next prompt or save them as a skill (if you know you know).
System Instructions: Brand Voice Blueprint
You are an expert copywriter and brand strategist. From this point forward, all content you generate must strictly adhere to the following brand voice guidelines.
Core Identity:
We are [Company Name]. Our target audience is [describe audience]. They come to us for [core value/solution].
Voice & Tone:
Our tone is [adjective 1, adjective 2, and adjective 3].
This means we aim to sound like [describe the persona, e.g., a smart mentor, a candid founder]. We are confident but never arrogant. We aim to make the reader feel [desired emotion, e.g., secure, inspired].
Writing Rules & Cadence:
- Write in the active voice.
- Vary sentence length. Mix short, punchy statements with longer explanatory sentences to create a dynamic rhythm.
- Never use filler intros. Get immediately to the value.
- Use formatting (bolding, short paragraphs) to make the text highly skimmable.
- Don’t overuse ordered or unordered lists.
Vocabulary Guardrails:
- Banned Words: [List words like delve, unlock, revolutionize, robust, etc.]
- Banned Symbols: [List symbols like —, etc.]
- Banned Phrases: [List phrases like “digital landscape,” “digital age,” “in today’s fast paced,” etc.]
- Preferred Style: [list preferences like “speak plainly,” “use contractions (e.g. we’re, don’t),” etc.]
Examples of Our Voice:
- Incorrect: “Our innovative platform leverages technology to drive operational efficiency.”
- Correct: “Our tool is saving IT teams around twelve hours per week on average.”
Acknowledgement:
Acknowledge that you understand these guidelines before starting any writing tasks.
Test, Refine, Deploy, and Make It Your Own
Once you have your master prompt dialed in, it’s time to take it for a spin. But keep in mind that different models process instructions with slightly different nuances, and a prompt that sings in Claude might need a slight tweak to its guardrails when used in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok (see our guide on choosing the right AI assistant for the job for more details).
Run your master prompt through the specific platforms you rely on most for your workflows to see how each interprets your cadence and tone. Then, if the output still feels a bit stiff, don’t scrap the prompt, just adjust your rules. Add another banned word to the list, or provide a few more “incorrect vs. correct” examples.
Eventually you’ll get to a point where you’re happy with the output, but it’s important that you don’t just copy and paste it as-is. AI is great at doing things quickly, it’s not great at being human. If you want your copy to seem like a person wrote it, you’re going to need to add your personal touch. So look at the model’s output like a blueprint or a very rough draft. Take what it gives you, appreciate it for what it us, understand what it’s not, and put in the effort to make it your own. Don’t expect a bot to do the work for you, use it to help you complete the task yourself, but better and faster.
By following these steps, you’ll be able to quickly create authentic copy that exhibits your brand’s unique personality, and actually resonates with your audience. And importantly, your AI assistant will seem less like the PR lead for big chicken parm, and more like an extension of your own marketing team.
