One hour to set up, then five checks on each piece
Three things to do on Monday, five checks before anything leaves, and one block for each agency role with a prompt you can copy.
On Monday
- Book one hour to build your voice profile.
- Put three questions at the top of your next brief: who is it for, why now, and what is the one thing they leave with.
- Run the five checks below on one piece, and note the time it takes.
The first hour: teach it your voice
This is Anthony Booth's one recommendation. Nobody has tested a voice profile on results, so judge it on your own output. Two findings are close to it: a model tuned on a company's past test results beat a bare prompt on subject lines, and a plain prompt did as well as a model trained on past emails in a second study (What works).
- Collect six months of your own emails, messages and documents. Take out anything a client would not want in a tool.
- Ask the assistant to describe how you write. Use the prompt below.
- Correct the description. You know where it is wrong.
- Save it as a skill, a project instruction or custom instructions. ChatGPT's paid plans take 5,000 characters (What is new).
- Keep a copy in a plain file, so you can move it when the tools change.
Read the attached emails and documents. Describe how I write: sentence length, the words I use often, the words I never use, how I open and how I close. Give two examples from my text for each point. Then list five rules that would make a draft sound like me.
Write the profile for a machine to read. MetaDesign gives this advice for brand guidelines, and it applies to your own voice: "Tone of voice with examples and counterexamples instead of a single adjective" (MetaDesign, 14 September 2026). Under each rule, put two sentences you would write and two you would never write.
Do the same for each client. Wolff Olins asks how a brand with no guide to its own voice can "produce prompts for AI tools" (Wolff Olins, no date on the page).
Five checks before anything leaves
| Check | How to do it |
|---|---|
| 1. Facts | Open each source. Check each number, name, date and quote yourself. |
| 2. Patterns | Search for the constructions on your negative list: "not X, but Y", lists of three, a short verdict that ends a paragraph, a sentence that tells the reader how to take the next one. |
| 3. Length | Cut each sentence over 25 words. Cut each repeat. Count the facts in each paragraph. |
| 4. The reader's read | Use the prompt below. |
| 5. Your edit | Read it aloud. Change what you would not say. Add the fact only you hold. |
Read this as [name the reader and their job]. Score it from 1 to 10 for impact, clarity and humanness, and give the reason for each score. Quote the three weakest sentences. Then give me a version that fixes the lowest score, and list each change you made.
Then decide on disclosure with the client, using the risk tiers on Levels of quality.
If you are a copywriter
What keeps you employed is on the evidence pages, in three findings. Experts gain least from AI drafts. An expert who lets the model write the first draft does worse work. One chief marketing officer who says AI can replace most agencies still pays for "creative ideas, genuine strategy and on-the-ground execution" (What people say).
- Write the first draft yourself where you know the subject.
- Use the model for options and for attack.
- Own the fact-check and the read aloud. Nobody else will do them.
Here is my draft and the brief. List the five weakest points in the draft, with the sentence for each and the reason. Do not rewrite it.
If you are an account lead
- Let the model turn meeting notes into a contact report and draft routine client email.
- Write anything that states a price, a promise or a date yourself.
- Know the AI clause in each contract, and what the client has been told.
- Use the script on Why AI when the client asks for the saving.
Here are my notes from the client call. Write a contact report with decisions, actions, owners and dates. Mark with [CHECK] anything in my notes that is unclear or that you had to assume.
If you are a planner or strategist
- Give the model the long research and ask for a summary with page references. Then open the pages.
- Ask for five ways to frame the problem. The choice of the one insight is yours.
Here is my argument in one paragraph and the research behind it. Give me the three strongest objections a sceptical client would raise, and the evidence in the research that answers each one. Say where the research does not answer it.
If you are a social manager
- Write the opinion in the post yourself. Use the model for platform variants once the line is right.
- Reply to real people yourself.
- Read the feed as a reader before you post. LinkedIn is adding a report option named "Seems like AI slop" (What is new).
Here is my post and our brand voice rules. Mark each phrase that breaks a rule and each phrase that sounds like a machine wrote it. Do not rewrite the post.