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BrandOS — 10 prompts to build a real brand with AI

The exact process I used to build Adcrate's brand identity, brand guidelines and website with AI — in Claude Code, run through Conductor. Strategy → voice → visual → ship. In that order, no skipping.

Live site → adcrate.com Guidelines → /brandguidelines Built for Day 8 · Build With AI

The rules before you start

What's inside


1 — Strategy & Positioning

Do these first. Don't touch a colour or a font until this section is done.

Prompt 1 · Positioning statement
Help me write a positioning statement for my brand using this template: "For [ICP], who struggle with [problem], my brand is the [category] that [unique value]. Unlike [competitor], we [differentiator]." Here's my context: [paste]. Give me 5 versions, ranging from safe to contrarian.
Prompt 2 · ICP deep-dive
Build a full psychographic profile of my ideal customer. Include their fears, desires, the language they actually use (not marketing language), where they hang out online, who they follow, what they've already tried and failed at. Here's my business: [paste]. Make it brutally specific — not generic personas.
Prompt 3 · Brand archetype
Based on this business + audience [paste], which of the 12 classic brand archetypes (Sage, Hero, Outlaw, Magician, Regular Guy, Lover, Jester, Caregiver, Creator, Ruler, Innocent, Explorer) fits best? Pick one. Defend it. Then tell me how that archetype shows up in voice, visual, and customer experience.
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  • The 2 voice prompts that make AI sound like you
  • The colour + hero + FAQ prompts
  • The Claude Code build brief (the part nobody teaches)
  • My exact Friday-night-to-Sunday build flow
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2 — Voice & Tone

Lock the voice before you touch the visual. Voice is harder to fake than design.

Prompt 4 · Brand voice generator
Here are 5 things I've written or said in my own voice: [paste]. Extract the rules of how I write. Tell me what I do that's distinctive, what words I use, what cadence I have, what I avoid. Write it as a voice guide someone could follow.
Prompt 5 · Do / don't list
Build a do/don't list for this brand's writing. Words to always use. Words to never use (the cliché AI-marketing-speak ones — empower, unlock, revolutionize, etc.). Phrases to avoid. Sentence structures we lean into.

3 — Visual Identity

Use Nano Banana Pro 2. Always attach reference images — see the bonus section.

Prompt 6 · Colour palette from a mood
Build me a brand colour palette based on this mood: [paste — e.g. "premium but warm, like a Japanese teahouse meets a Berlin studio"]. Give me 5 colours with hex codes — 1 primary, 1 secondary, 2 neutrals, 1 accent. Explain why each one.

4 — Website Copy

Prompt 7 · Hero section
Write a hero section for [brand]: headline, subhead, primary CTA. The user lands here from [traffic source]. They're trying to [goal]. Give me 3 versions: bold, warm, contrarian.
Prompt 8 · FAQ generator
Generate 12 FAQs for [brand]. Cover the real objections (price, trust, time, comparison to alternatives, what happens if it doesn't work). Answer each in 2–3 sentences. No corporate-speak.

5 — Design System & Build

This is the section nobody else is teaching. Prompt 9 is what turns this from a prompt pack into a shipped site.

Prompt 9 · Claude Code build brief
Take everything above (positioning, voice, colours, copy) and turn it into a structured brief I can hand to Claude Code to build a working static site. Include: tech stack (Next.js + Tailwind), component breakdown, content per page, design tokens (colours as CSS variables, typography scale). The output should be copy-paste-ready into a Claude Code session.
Prompt 10 · Brand audit
Audit my live site: [paste URL]. Tell me what's wrong with it — positioning, voice, visual, copy, structure. Give me 10 specific fixes ranked by impact. No diplomacy.

Bonus — how I actually use this

The prompts are 20% of the result. This part is 80%.

The process — in order, no skipping

A real flow — what a weekend looks like

References — this is where the quality comes from

The prompts only matter if you give them taste. The way you give an AI taste is references. I mainly use Pinterest — search the archetype + "branding" / "website" / "design system." Save 30–50 pins into one board before you prompt anything visual. Drop the 5–10 strongest into the prompt as attachments. One reference source, done well, beats five sources used lazily.

Always ask for 5 versions

For logos, hero copy, colour palettes, layouts — never accept the first option. Ask for 5. Then ask for 5 more, "more contrarian." The 6th to 10th attempts are where the actual brand starts showing up. For visuals, get Claude Code to spin up a quick preview page — one HTML file with all 5 options side by side. Looking at them next to each other beats reading descriptions every time.

When an output looks generic

What I don't do


Built this for Day 8 of Build With AI. If it was useful, the rest of the series is at @alixqureshi.

© 2026 Ali Qureshi · home · the vault
ali@adcrate.com