Write one brief covering the offer, its exact terms, the audience, one proof point, the action you want and the claims you won't make. Paste it into your AI assistant once for each format (Facebook ad, flyer, radio script, window poster), adding that format's length limit, then check every draft against the brief.
Most owners prompt each format from scratch, and that is where errors creep in: the Facebook ad says the offer ends on the 30th, the flyer says the 1st, and the radio script quotes last month's price. A single brief gives the offer one home, and every draft is measured against it. The worked example is a dental practice's new-patient offer, with a Google Business Profile offer post as the fifth format.
The brief: nine lines every format borrows from
The brief fits on one page. It exists so the AI never has to guess a fact, and so you never have to remember which version of the offer went where. Fill it in, in your own words, before you open any AI tool. The figures in this dental example are illustrative.
| Line | What goes in it | Filled in for the example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Business | One sentence on who you are, with no claims in it | A family dental practice with three treatment rooms, open six days a week. |
| 2. Offer | What the customer gets, with the price | New-patient check-up and hygiene visit for $79. |
| 3. Terms | Dates, limits, exclusions, one-per-person rules | New patients only. Book by 30 November, visit by 20 December. 40 places. Weekday mornings. X-rays and treatment the dentist recommends are charged separately. |
| 4. Audience | Who should feel this is for them | Adults who have put off a check-up; people who need a new dentist after changing jobs or moving house. |
| 5. Reason to believe | One proof you can show, not an adjective | Price quoted before booking; Saturday appointments for other visits; the same hygienist each visit. |
| 6. Action | One thing to do, and where | Book on the practice's booking page, or phone [number]. |
| 7. Tone | Three words and one thing to avoid | Calm, plain, friendly. No scare tactics, no jokes about pain. |
| 8. Never say | Claims you cannot back up | Painless, pain-free, best, guaranteed, cheapest, free, anything about results or health outcomes, competitor names. |
| 9. Assets | What you actually have | A real photo of reception, the logo, two brand colours, any legal line your professional body requires on advertising. |
Two lines do most of the protecting. Line 3 stops the AI rounding the offer up into something you can't honour, and line 8 is a ban list written for the AI's favourite habits: superlatives, guarantees and the word "free". Health advertising often carries extra rules from the professional body, so a dental practice should read those before finishing line 8, and anyone in a regulated trade should do the same.
The same nine lines fit other businesses with small changes. An estate agency would put "market valuation visit, no obligation" on line 2 and ban "sold in days" on line 8 unless it holds the sale records. A recruitment agency running a hiring evening would swap line 4 for the candidate profile, put the registration deadline in the terms, and ban "guaranteed interview". A marketing agency receiving a client's twelve-line email has one extra job: get the client to sign off lines 2, 3 and 8 before any creative work starts.
What each format can hold: a short card to paste under the brief
The brief never changes between formats. What changes is a short card pasted beneath it, saying where the ad is seen, what it must contain and what limit to write to. These are the five cards for the example. Platforms revise their specifications, so check the placement you actually use before relying on a number.
| Format | Seen where, and for how long | Must contain | Limit to give the AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook and Instagram feed ad | Scrolled past; about a second to earn attention | Offer, one proof, who it is for, a button | Meta's ad guide for feed image ads recommends 50 to 150 characters of primary text and about 27 for the headline, on a 4:5 image |
| Flyer | In the hand, at a doorstep or a counter | Headline, offer box, how to claim, terms line, contact | Offer on the front, detail on the back, terms copied word for word from the brief |
| Radio script, 30 seconds | Heard once, often in a car | Business name twice, offer, one proof, phone number twice | About 70 to 80 spoken words for one voice, 65 to 70 for two |
| Window poster | A few seconds, from across the road | Headline, offer, one action | Around a dozen words in large type, terms in small type at the foot |
| Google Business Profile offer post | Read by someone who has already searched for you | Title, dates and time (required); description, photo, coupon code, link and terms (optional) | Fill the title and dates from the brief; Google adds a "View offer" button |
The cards constrain the AI; they never add facts. Every fact comes from the brief, which is why the master prompt below tells the assistant to write a [MISSING] marker rather than invent a detail.
The master prompt, and what a first Facebook draft looks like
Keep one chat per campaign with the brief at the top, and ask for one format per message. This is the opening message. Later messages repeat only the FORMAT block with a different card.
You are helping a small business write advertising.
The brief below is your only source of facts. Do not add prices, dates,
places, guarantees, statistics, awards, testimonials or claims about
results or health that are not in it. If a format needs a fact the brief
does not contain, write [MISSING: what is needed] instead of inventing
one. Never use anything on the "Never say" line.
BRIEF
1 Business: A family dental practice with three treatment rooms, open six days a week.
2 Offer: New-patient check-up and hygiene visit for $79.
3 Terms: New patients only. Book by 30 November, visit by 20 December.
40 places. Weekday mornings. X-rays and treatment the dentist
recommends are charged separately.
4 Audience: Adults who have put off a check-up; people who need a new
dentist after changing jobs or moving house.
5 Reason to believe: Price quoted before booking; Saturday appointments
for other visits; the same hygienist each visit.
6 Action: Book on the practice's booking page, or phone [number].
7 Tone: Calm, plain, friendly. No scare tactics, no jokes about pain.
8 Never say: painless, pain-free, best, guaranteed, cheapest, free,
results or health outcomes, competitor names.
9 Assets: Real photo of reception, logo, two brand colours.
FORMAT: Facebook feed image ad.
Write three versions, each with a different hook: price, convenience,
reassurance. For each give primary text of 50 to 150 characters, a
headline of up to 27 characters and a button label. Then list every
number, date and claim you used, one per line.A typical reply, trimmed to the parts that matter (illustrative):
Version A, price. Primary text: "New to the practice? A check-up and hygiene visit for $79, price quoted before you book." Headline: "New-patient visit, $79". Button: Book now.
Version B, convenience. Primary text: "Weekday mornings and Saturdays, booked online in two minutes. Your new-patient check-up and hygiene visit is $79." Headline: "Book online in two minutes". Button: Book now.
Version C, reassurance. Primary text: "Put off the dentist? Come in for a calm check-up and hygiene visit. $79 for new patients." Headline: "A calm first visit, $79". Button: Learn more.
Reading that against the brief takes two minutes and finds two faults. Version B promises Saturdays, but the offer runs on weekday mornings; Saturdays belong to the proof line, not to the offer. And none of the versions mention the end date, which decides whether a reader can still claim the deal. The ad can't carry every term, yet it mustn't hide the ones that decide eligibility, so the corrected primary text becomes "New patients: check-up and hygiene visit, $79, price quoted before you book. Book by 30 Nov." (92 characters), with the full terms on the booking page it links to. The Facebook and Instagram ad copy tutorial goes further on hooks and testing; the brief's job is to keep every hook honest.
Facebook and Instagram: three hooks, one honest offer
Run the three versions as a small test rather than choosing by taste. Give each the same audience and the same real photo of reception, and judge them by booked appointments, not by clicks. Keep the image honest as well: a photograph of your own front desk beats an AI-generated "friendly receptionist" who doesn't exist, and it avoids the labelling questions covered further down.
Two habits of AI-written ads need watching. The first is invented urgency. "Only a few places left" reads well, but the brief says 40 places, so the ad may say "40 places" and nothing more until you are actually down to the last few. The second is borrowed authority: "trusted by thousands of local families" will appear unprompted, and nothing in the brief supports it. The instruction to write [MISSING] instead of inventing is there to catch exactly that, and the "list every number, date and claim" line at the end of the prompt shows you what slipped through.
The flyer: the only format with room for the small print
A flyer has space the other formats lack, so this is where the terms live in full. Ask the AI for labelled blocks (HEADLINE, OFFER BOX, THREE STEPS, TERMS, CONTACT) because labelled blocks paste straight into a layout tool and make it obvious when one is missing. Tell it to copy the terms line from the brief without shortening it. Left alone, assistants compress terms into "Terms apply", which protects nobody.
Before and after, for the terms block (illustrative):
AI's first draft: "Limited-time offer. Terms apply."
Corrected from the brief: "New patients only. Book by 30 November and visit by 20 December. 40 places, weekday mornings. One offer per person. X-rays and any treatment the dentist recommends are charged separately."
Proofread the flyer at 100 per cent on paper, never on screen, and give it to someone who has not seen the brief. Ask them to say, in their own words, what the offer is and when it ends. If their answer differs from line 3, the flyer is unclear, whatever the AI's draft looked like. A reprint of 1,000 half-page flyers might cost something like $90 (a rough, illustrative figure); a wrong date caught at the proof stage costs five minutes. The flyer design tutorial covers layout and print preparation.
Radio: write for the ear, then time it with a stopwatch
AI assistants write for the eye. Their sentences run long, they put web addresses in the middle of sentences and they write "$79" as digits, none of which works when a voice reads it aloud. Give the radio card these rules: short sentences, prices and dates written out as the voice will say them, the business name at the start and again at the end, and the phone number said twice. Count each digit as a word of airtime, because a ten-digit number said twice is twenty words on its own.
That is why a 30-second script of about 70 to 80 spoken words has far fewer written words than you'd expect. An illustrative script for the example:
[One warm, unhurried voice] Been putting off the dentist? [Business name] has a new-patient check-up and hygiene visit for seventy-nine dollars. That's the price, quoted before you book. Weekday mornings, book by the thirtieth of November, forty places. Book online at [business name] dot com, or call [phone number]. That's [phone number] again. [Business name]. A calm place to start.
That is about 46 written words, plus the business name three times and the phone number twice (twenty digits). Spoken, it comes to roughly 75 words, the middle of the 70 to 80 range. Read it aloud against a stopwatch; if you stumble anywhere, the listener will miss it too, so rewrite that line. Two things belong with the script: the station's rules on what it will broadcast (ask whether it has its own requirements for health or finance claims), and the licence terms of any AI voice or AI-made music you propose to use. Never clone a real person's voice without their written consent. The AI jingle cost tutorial covers the music side.
The window poster: a three-second read
The poster is the shortest format and the one AI most often overwrites. Ask for five headlines of six words or fewer, one supporting line and one action line, then pick the plainest headline, not the cleverest pun. Put the terms in small type at the foot, with the end date as large as you can afford.
The test is physical. Print the poster at actual size, tape it inside the window, walk to the far side of the road and read the headline. If you have to squint at the price, the type is too small. A realistic failure: a draft can arrive headed "Free check-up", because "free" is common in ad copy and the assistant overlooked line 8. Nothing in the brief said free, which is the point of the rule: a word that isn't in the brief doesn't go on the poster. Estate agencies, whose windows are a main sales channel, will want to spend longest on this format.
The Google offer post: the fifth format, and the easiest to forget
People who search for your business name see your Google Business Profile before they see anything else you've paid for. Google's help page lists three post types: updates, offers and events. An offer needs a title, dates and a time; the description, photo, video, coupon code, link and terms are optional, and the post gets a "View offer" button automatically. Fill the title and dates directly from the brief, paste the terms into the terms field, and let the AI draft only the description.
Three practical details come from the same help page. Posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set, so an offer without dates quietly disappears. Google asks for posts that avoid auto-generated or distracting content, so edit the AI's description until it sounds like your front desk. And a phone number in the description might get rejected if Google can't verify it as the business's own, so keep the number in the profile and use the post's link for booking.
One cross-check that catches the wrong number before printing
When all five drafts are approved individually, run one more prompt. Paste the brief and the five drafts into the same chat and ask:
List every number, date, price, place count and claim in each of the five
drafts. Then compare them with the brief and show only the differences,
as a table: item, what the brief says, what the draft says, which draft.
Also list any claim that is not in the brief at all.An illustrative result for this campaign:
| Item | Brief says | Draft says | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| End of offer | Book by 30 November, visit by 20 December | "Book by the thirtieth of November" (no visit-by date) | Radio script |
| Price wording | $79 for new patients | "Free check-up" | Window poster |
| Days | Weekday mornings | "Weekday mornings and Saturdays" | Facebook version B |
| Claim not in brief | None | "Over 20 years' experience" | Flyer |
| Claim on the ban list | "Painless" is banned | "A painless first visit" | Google post description |
You still decide each line, but now you are deciding from a list of five differences, not rereading five documents. Some differences are fine: a 30-second spot can't carry every term, so the radio line may stay as it is, provided the booking page and the phone script give the visit-by date. The claims go into a short register, one row per claim, so that someone accountable approves them:
| Claim | Evidence needed | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| The same hygienist each visit | Can the rota promise it, including sickness and holidays? | Change to "where possible" or drop |
| Saturday appointments | Opening hours on the website | Keep, but never beside the $79 offer |
| Over 20 years' experience | Registration dates of the dentists | Keep only if every dentist's dates support it |
| Painless | None can be given | Remove everywhere |
The person who signs is the owner or the clinical lead, never the AI. The tutorial on backing up AI-written claims shows how to collect the evidence, and the pre-post checklist for local businesses is a good final gate.
Labelling AI images on every format
The simplest policy is to use real photographs wherever the picture could be mistaken for your business, your team or a result. Use AI imagery only for things that cannot mislead: a stylised illustration, a background texture, an icon. Never generate people to stand in for patients, customers or staff, and never use generated "before and after" pictures.
Where AI imagery does appear, say so. On print, a small credit line near the image ("Illustration created with AI") is enough. On Meta's platforms the label is partly automatic: Meta says it adds an "AI info" label to ads created or significantly edited with its own tools, and where its tools generate a photorealistic human the label sits beside the "Sponsored" tag instead of behind the three-dot menu. It has also said it will detect ads made with third-party AI tools through industry-standard signals and label them under "About this ad". Keep image metadata intact and keep the original file and prompt in the campaign folder. If you have customers in the EU, ask an adviser whether realistic AI imagery in your advertising falls under the AI Act's transparency duties, which have applied since 2 August 2026. The tutorial on labelling AI-generated images has wording for each platform.
The first campaign: about two hours, then a reusable brief
Expect the first campaign to take about two hours (my rough estimate; time your own): half an hour on the brief, half an hour prompting five formats, forty-five minutes on the cross-check and claims register, fifteen minutes on the layout handover. The second campaign is quicker because the brief template exists and only the offer lines change. The text work can run on a free assistant plan, or on ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro at $20 a month each if you hit usage limits. Print, airtime and ad spend are separate and unaffected by AI.
Plan the counting before the campaign starts, because it can't be added afterwards. Give each format its own way in: a separate booking link for the Facebook ad, a short code printed on the flyer (FLYER79) and another on the poster (WINDOW79), the coupon-code field on the Google offer post, and a "where did you hear about us?" question on the booking form and on the phone, which is the only way to count the radio spot. In the example, 40 places shared across five formats makes a simple tally sheet: if the flyer brings 14 bookings and the poster 3, next quarter's brief goes to the flyer first and the poster gets a plainer headline. File the tally with the brief, so every campaign ends with the same five numbers and the next brief starts from them.
Questions about reusing one ad brief
Should I use one AI chat or a new chat for each format?
Keep one chat per campaign, with the brief as the first message. The assistant then sees the same offer terms every time, and you can ask it to compare drafts later. If the chat grows long and replies start to drift, open a new one, paste the brief and the approved drafts at the top, and carry on from there.
Do I have to label AI images in a Facebook ad?
Meta says it applies an AI info label to ads made or significantly edited with its own AI tools, and where its tools generate a photorealistic human the label sits beside the Sponsored tag. It has also said it will detect ads made with other AI tools through industry-standard signals. Use real photos of your premises and team, keep image metadata intact, and ask an adviser about any duties in your market.
How long should a 30-second radio script be?
Script-timing guides put a 30-second spot at roughly 70 to 80 spoken words, and nearer 65 to 70 when two voices share it. A phone number takes airtime, so count each digit as a word. Read the script aloud against a stopwatch, because pauses and music shrink the room for words, and trim until it ends with a second to spare.
What if the offer changes halfway through a campaign?
Change the brief first, then run the cross-check prompt over every draft, because the old date or price will still be sitting in at least one of them. Withdraw or cover printed copies that carry the old terms, update the dates on the Google offer post, and tell the radio station in writing which script replaces the old one.
Further reads
- AI Poster Maker for a Supermarket: Weekly Offers in Canva — Poster layout in Canva, with a price-accuracy check on weekly offers.
- Brand Guidelines for AI Images: Colours, Style and Limits — Keep AI-made images consistent with your colours and style.
- Free AI Tool to Create an Advertisement: Five Options for Local Shops — Canva, Adobe Express, ChatGPT, Gemini and Ideogram weighed against the three checks a shop needs: licence, print pixels and watermarks.
- How to Make AI Ads for a Local Shop: One Ad Set From Start to Finish — One image ad and one short video ad for a local shop, built with AI from a real photo, checked against platform rules and tested on $84.
- Travel Agency Advertisement Examples: Write and Test Variants — Four ad angles for one holiday offer, AI-written variants under strict claim rules, and a two-week split test that tells signal from noise on a small budget.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Meta ads guide for feed image ads; Meta newsroom, Expanding GenAI Transparency for Meta's Ads Products (updated 1 June 2026); Google Business Profile Help, adding posts; radio script timing guides from Killerspots and Voices.com. The dental practice figures are illustrative.