BrandingStorytellingBrand StrategyMarketingNarrative
Create Compelling Brand Story
T. Krause
Move beyond features and slogans. This prompt crafts a brand story that customers can repeat back to you, structured around a clear protagonist, a real conflict, and the change your product makes possible.
A brand without a story is a list of features competing on price. Customers don't share feature lists with their friends — they share stories. Yet most brand stories produced in marketing meetings collapse into the same template: a founder, an industry frustration, a "we believed there had to be a better way," and a product launch. It's not wrong, but it's interchangeable. Every brand in every category has the same paragraph somewhere on its About page.
The brand stories that travel are structured. They put the customer (not the founder) at the center, name a specific tension the customer feels, and frame the brand as the guide rather than the hero. This prompt builds that story for your business — short enough to repeat in a sentence, deep enough to anchor a positioning strategy, and specific enough that no competitor could borrow it.
What It Does
- Identifies the right protagonist for your story — almost always your customer, not your founder — and the specific transformation they are seeking.
- Names the conflict or tension your customer faces in concrete terms, avoiding the generic "frustration with the industry" pattern.
- Builds a layered narrative — one-sentence version, paragraph version, and long-form version — usable across the website, sales conversations, and team communication.
The Prompt
#CONTEXT:
I need to develop or refine my brand story. My current messaging feels generic — it could apply to several competitors with minor word changes — and customers do not repeat it back when describing what we do. I want a brand story structured around my customer's transformation, specific enough that it could not be copy-pasted into another company's About page, and usable across the website, sales decks, and team onboarding.
#ROLE:
You are a brand strategist who has shaped narratives for category leaders and challenger brands. You understand that great brand stories follow the StoryBrand pattern: the customer is the hero, the brand is the guide, and the story moves the customer from a specific problem to a specific transformation. You also know the failure mode — founder-centric stories that treat the customer as an audience instead of a protagonist — and how to avoid it.
#RESPONSE GUIDELINES:
1. Begin by identifying the protagonist of the story (who the customer is, what they want, what stands in their way) — not the founder.
2. Name the specific external problem (what's actually broken), the internal problem (how it makes the customer feel), and the philosophical problem (why this should not be the way things are).
3. Position the brand as the guide that has empathy + authority — concrete proof of credibility, not generic claims of expertise.
4. Lay out a clear transformation — the before-state, the after-state, and the bridge the brand provides.
5. Deliver three versions of the story: a one-sentence positioning line, a paragraph for the About page, and a long-form 400–600 word narrative for the founder's blog or pitch deck.
#BRAND STORY CRITERIA:
1. The customer must be the hero — they take the action, they get the transformation, and the brand exists to enable that change.
2. Specificity beats abstraction. "We help busy professionals" is replaceable by any productivity company; "We help solo consultants double their billable rate without doubling their hours" is not.
3. Name a real conflict, not a marketing-friendly one. The conflict has to be uncomfortable enough that a customer would actually nod when reading it.
4. Avoid clichés: "passionate," "innovative," "disrupting," "world-class," "second to none." If a sentence still works after deleting these words, the words are noise.
5. The story must be repeatable. A customer should be able to summarize it in their own words after one read.
#INFORMATION ABOUT ME:
- My business and what I sell: [BUSINESS]
- Who my best customer is: [BEST_CUSTOMER]
- The transformation my product creates: [TRANSFORMATION]
- The specific problem I solve: [PROBLEM]
- Why I started the business (founder origin): [ORIGIN]
- What sets me apart from alternatives: [DIFFERENTIATOR]
- Real customer language about their problem: [CUSTOMER_VERBATIM — copy-paste from sales calls, reviews, support tickets]
#RESPONSE FORMAT:
Story Diagnostics:
- Protagonist: [Customer description]
- External problem: [What's broken in their situation]
- Internal problem: [How it makes them feel]
- Philosophical problem: [Why this should not be the case]
- The guide (you): [Empathy + authority]
- The plan (your offer): [Steps]
- The transformation: [Before → After]
Three Versions of the Story:
One-Sentence Positioning:
"[Sentence]"
About Page Paragraph (90–140 words):
[Paragraph]
Long-Form Founder Narrative (400–600 words):
[Narrative]
Repeatability Test:
- [The phrase a customer is most likely to repeat after reading the story]
- [Why this phrase works]
Things To Cut:
- [Cliché or generic claim 1] — [Why to remove it]
- [Cliché or generic claim 2] — [Why to remove it]
How to Use
- Paste in real customer language from sales calls, reviews, or support tickets. The "customer verbatim" input is the single biggest determinant of whether the story sounds authentic or marketing-generated.
- Be honest about the problem. The most compelling brand stories name a tension that other brands politely avoid — that's exactly what makes them memorable.
- Test the one-sentence version on three customers before committing. If they pause, ask for clarification, or repeat back something different, the sentence isn't there yet.
- Use the long-form narrative on the About page and in your pitch deck. Use the paragraph in product launches and email signatures. Use the one-liner everywhere else.
Example Input
## Information about me
- My business: A career coaching service for senior tech ICs who want to move into staff or principal engineering roles without going into management
- Best customer: Senior software engineers (5–10 years experience) at mid-size tech companies, frustrated that their career path appears to require management
- Transformation: Move from senior IC to staff/principal IC with a clear scope, visible impact, and equivalent compensation to peers in management
- Problem: Most performance frameworks at tech companies don't credit the work senior ICs do — code review, mentorship, technical strategy — so they hit a ceiling
- Origin: Founder spent 12 years as a senior IC at large tech companies, hit the staff ceiling twice, finally cracked the pattern and now helps others do the same
- Differentiator: Coaches are all current/former staff+ engineers; we don't use generic career coaches who haven't earned the role themselves
- Customer verbatim: "I keep getting feedback that I'm 'doing senior work' but I can't tell what staff work actually looks like at my company." "I don't want to manage. I want a path that doesn't require it." "My manager says I'm ready but the calibration committee disagrees and no one will tell me why."
Tips
- Lead with the customer's words, not yours. The first paragraph of any story version should sound like something the customer themselves said — not a description of them written by a marketer.
- Cut every word that could be cut without losing meaning. Brand stories are often padded with qualifiers ("really," "truly," "deeply") that signal a lack of confidence in the actual claims.
- Show, don't claim, authority. "We've helped 200 senior engineers become staff" beats "We have deep expertise in technical career growth" by an order of magnitude.
- Name the antagonist if there is one. Sometimes the conflict is a system (broken performance reviews), sometimes a competitor category (generic career coaches). Naming it explicitly sharpens the story.
- Re-run this prompt when you change customer segment. The story that worked for solo consultants will not work for agency owners — even if the product is the same.