How to Train ChatGPT and Claude on Your Brand Voice
AI writes like everyone else until you give it something to work from. Here is how to set up ChatGPT and Claude so first drafts actually sound like you.
You’ve just signed a new agency. The kickoff call is booked, and you already know how it goes: two hours of questions you’ve answered a dozen times before. Who are your customers? What makes you different? What tone do you want? Then a few weeks later, the first drafts arrive, and something is off. It’s close, but it doesn’t sound like you.
That isn’t the agency’s fault. The most important information about your brand still lives in one place: your head. Every partner hears a slightly different version of it, and over time, the brand drifts. Here’s how to brief a marketing agency so that doesn’t happen, and so you only have to do it once.
Why most agency briefs fall short
A typical brief covers the project: deliverables, deadlines, budget, a few brand guidelines and some examples you like. That’s useful, but it answers the wrong question. It tells the agency what to make, not who they’re making it for or why it matters.
The gap gets filled with guesswork. The agency interviews you, takes notes, interprets them through their own lens, and builds from there. Hire a second agency, a freelancer or a new marketing manager, and they’ll do the same thing, arriving at a slightly different interpretation. Multiply that across a year and you end up with a website, a LinkedIn presence and a sales deck that each describe you a little differently.
What a strong brief actually contains
A brief that holds up across every partner covers the foundation first and the project second. At minimum, it should answer:
- Your story. Where the business came from and why it exists, in a few honest paragraphs.
- Your values. Not a list of nice words, but what you’d turn down and why.
- Who you serve. Detailed portraits of your best clients: their situation, what keeps them up at night, and what they want instead.
- The transformation. Where your clients start when they find you, and where they end up after working with you.
- Your positioning. What makes you different, and who you’re realistically compared to.
- Your voice. How you sound, with real examples, plus words you use and words you’d never use.
With that in hand, the project section becomes simple, because every creative decision has something true to point back to.
Write it in your words, not marketing words
The fastest way to make a brief useless is to polish it into corporate language. “We deliver innovative, client-centric solutions” tells an agency nothing. “We’re the people you call when the handover has been ‘a few years away’ for a decade” tells them everything.
Your own phrasing is the most valuable signal in the whole document. If you say something on a call that makes a client lean in, it belongs in the brief, word for word. Agencies are good at turning raw material into polished work. Give them raw material that is unmistakably yours.
Make it one document everyone can use
The brief shouldn’t be an email thread, a slide deck from two years ago and a few notes in someone’s inbox. It should be one source of truth, easy to skim in a minute and detailed enough to answer real questions.
Think of it like a good website: a short “you in 60 seconds” summary at the top, then deeper sections for anyone who needs the detail. Share the same link with your team, your agency, your PR firm and your freelancers. When something changes, you update it once.
It also helps to keep a version formatted for AI tools. More and more agencies draft with ChatGPT or Claude, and a brief they can load directly means first drafts start on-brand instead of generic.
How to run the kickoff once you have it
With a proper foundation document, the kickoff call changes completely. Instead of two hours of discovery questions, you spend twenty minutes walking the agency through the brief and the rest of the time on the work itself.
- Send the brief at least three days before the kickoff and ask them to come with questions, not a blank page.
- Use the call to clarify what’s specific to this project: goals, constraints and what success looks like.
- Ask them to play back what they understood about your audience and voice. Gaps show up fast.
- Agree that every deliverable gets checked against the brief before it reaches you.
Brief your brand once, properly
The best brief isn’t longer. It’s deeper, it’s in your own words, and it lives in one place everyone can reach. Write it once and every partner you hire starts from the same page.
If you’d rather not write it alone, that’s exactly what the Satori Method Foundation does. Through deep conversation, I draw out your story, values, audience and voice, then hand it back as a private Brand Foundation Hub your team, agencies and AI tools can all work from.
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