Everyone’s using AI and it makes us all fucking lazy. Open LinkedIn and you can smell it. Tidy paragraphs that have no soul, a neat three-point takeaway, and underneath it all, nothing anyone actually thinks. A whole feed of people who typed “write me a post about leadership” and posted what came back, then wondered why it landed like a wet napkin.
The tool isn’t the problem. Your laziness to build context is. You’re handing the best writing tool you’ve ever had one vague sentence and expecting it to read your mind. It can’t, or at least not yet, so it gives you the average of everything ever written on the topic.
The fix is not that hard, and it’s not some €47 magic prompt you buy off a guy in your DMs. It’s five things you tell the AI before you ask it for anything.
The five things a good brief has
Think of it like briefing a freelancer on day one. You wouldn’t say “write something good” and walk off. You’d tell them who to be and what you actually need. Same here, and basically it comes down to five things.
Persona. Who it should be. Tell the AI what role to play. “You’re a copywriter with 20 years in B2B.” “You’re a skeptical CFO.” The role shapes everything that follows, and “helpful assistant” is not a role.
Task. What it should do. One clear job. “Summarize the newest trends in digital marketing.” Not “help me with marketing.” The vaguer the ask, the more generic the answer.
Tone. How it should sound. “Professional but informal with a 7/10 humour twist.” Leave it out and you get the default AI voice, the one everyone’s learned to scroll past.
Context. What it’s working with. The one people skip, and the one that matters most. Give it the real material: the post you’re replying to, the client’s situation, an example of how you actually write. this is the most essential part. The more context you build the better it is
Format. What it should look like. “Give it to me as a table, sorted by topic.” “Three short paragraphs, no bullet points.” Tell it the shape or it’ll guess, and it guesses wrong!
Stack those five and the output reads like something you’d put your own name on, instead of something a robot skimmed off a marketing blog.
The trick most people miss
You don’t have to write the perfect brief yourself. Make the AI do it. Paste your rough prompt in and tell it:
You’re an expert at writing prompts. Improve the one below. Sharpen the focus so the question is specific, structure it so the answer is richer and more detailed, and if I gave you an example, swap in a better one. Here’s my prompt: [paste].
It’ll hand you back a version three times better than what you started with. You’re using the tool to write its own brief.
What the prompt bros leave out
You can master all five and still produce forgettable garbage. Because a brilliant brief with nothing behind it just gets you to generic faster.
The thing AI genuinely cannot do is have your point of view. It’ll copy any style you want and nail any format. What it can’t do is have an opinion. It’s never sat across from the client who walked out, and it doesn’t have your years of experience. That part’s yours, and the best “prompt” is really just you feeding the machine your own take and letting it do the typing.
So implement the five, it will save you hours. But a perfect brief with nothing behind it just gets you to generic faster, and the AI will happily help you sound like everyone else at record speed.
The brief is the easy part. What goes into it is the whole game.