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Write your brand guidelines

Your brand guidelines are the brief you would hand a new video editor on their first day: who the brand is, what it sells, who it is for, and how it talks. Solid's AI reads this every time it writes a script or builds an ad, so the more you put here, the closer its first attempt lands to what you had in mind.

Together with your video guidelines, this is the full brand identity your AI works from. This half is who the brand is. The other half, how your ads should look, cut and move, lives in your video guidelines. Between the two, the AI has what it needs to get close to your brand, and close to what you imagined.

What to include

Four areas are worth covering, the same ones you would explain to a video editor who had never worked with you before. None of this is required, and skipping one won't make your ads worse, it just means the AI is working with less to go on:

  • Brand and core truth. What the product does, who it is for, the category it competes in, and the few things the brand always stands for.
  • Products and offering. Every product, spelled the way you spell it, with a line on what each one is. Group them into ranges if that is how you think about them.
  • Audience and positioning. The specific people you are talking to, what language reaches them, and what you are positioned against. The more concrete this is, the less the AI falls back on a generic version of your market.
  • Voice and messaging. How the brand sounds, the words it uses and avoids, and the claims it is allowed to make. A "we say this, not that" example or two gives the AI a tone to copy rather than guess at.

Add what you have, skip what you do not, and come back to extend it whenever the brand changes.

Open your brand guidelines

In the left sidebar, click Brand to open the Brand Hub. Under Guidelines, open Brand, then write or paste your document in and save.

You can write it from scratch, or use the prompt below to draft one quickly with an AI assistant and paste the result in.

Draft one with an AI assistant

To get a usable first version, you need your brand name and your website URL. Everything else is optional and only helps: existing ad scripts or landing pages, product names and descriptions, notes on positioning, past ads that performed well, even a competitor or two if it helps explain what you are not. The more of this you can give it, the more specific and on-brand the result.

Give your AI assistant whatever you have, replace the two placeholders, and paste in the prompt:

You are a senior brand strategist writing a brand guideline for [BRAND NAME], whose website is [BRAND WEBSITE URL]. This document will live in Solid's Brand Hub and be read by an AI video agent every time it generates a paid social ad. The agent has a separate video guidelines document covering how ads look, cut and sound, so your job is only the brand layer. Do not describe editing, pacing, shot types, transitions, captions, music or video structure. If something would change between a billboard and a Reel, it does not belong here.
I will give you inputs about the brand: the website, owned content, product descriptions, founder notes, competitor references. Read all of them, then write the brand guideline as a single document the agent can retrieve from.
Process. First, read every input. If videos or assets are included, analyse them for identity signals, how the brand talks, what it claims, who it serves, not for editing patterns. Second, before writing, briefly flag anything ambiguous or missing: contradictions between the website and owned content, an unclear audience, missing category context. Third, where stated brand language and observed content conflict, say so and take a position rather than averaging them.
Write the document in these four sections, in order.
1. Brand and core truth. Open with one paragraph on what the product actually does, who it is for, and what category it competes in, in plain language, so a new hire understands the business after reading it. Then give the core value proposition: the one sentence that captures why someone buys this brand and not a competitor. Then state three non-negotiables the brand stands for, each a sentence followed by a paragraph of explanation. These are the filters every piece of creative is checked against, whatever the format.
2. Products and offering. The complete list of products with their correct spelling. Group them into families or categories only if the brand actually uses them. For each product, describe its main characteristics, ingredients, effects or traits, in one sentence. Do not invent anything.
3. Audience and positioning. Open with two to four real audience segments the brand talks to. For each: who they are, what they are trying to do, what language reaches them, and who they are explicitly not, so the agent does not drift into generic lookalike targeting. Then state the positioning: what the brand is against, what competitors get wrong, and the one sentence for why this brand exists and not another. Include the category entry point the brand wants to own.
4. Voice and messaging. How the brand sounds: three to five tone attributes, each with a "we say this, not this" example. The words the brand uses and the words it refuses. First person or third, warm or sharp, earnest or deadpan. Be specific enough that two different writers would produce recognisably similar copy. Then list three to five things the brand is allowed to claim, each with its proof: a certification, a stat, a feature or a testimonial pattern. Add explicit "never say" claims: medical, financial, comparative superlatives, unverified stats. Any claim outside these needs founder or legal sign-off before the agent uses it.
Rules. Prose and paragraphs, few bullets, no tables. Be opinionated, since the agent needs a point of view to make decisions, not a menu. Specific over abstract: name actual words, actual competitors, actual proof points. No editing, pacing, shot, cut, transition, music, caption or structural guidance, that belongs in video guidelines. No channel-specific guidance, "on TikTok we..." does not belong here, the document is channel-agnostic. End with one line stating that this is a living document and what should trigger an update: a new product line, a repositioning, a new audience.
Output the finished guideline as plain formatted text in the chat, so I can copy it straight into Solid.

Read what comes back before you use it, and fix anything it got wrong about the products or the audience. Those are the details the AI leans on most when it builds an ad.

With the brand layer down, write your video guidelines next, so the AI also knows how your ads should look and move.

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