Defining Brand Guidelines from Web Presence

A brand's web presence communicates its identity — in the language it chooses, the tensions it navigates, and the things it conspicuously never says.

This intent extracts that into an internal guideline your communications and marketing team can act on: identity, behavioral directives, tone, and voice — argued, not asserted.

It is a sharp diagnostic tool: It lets you see how outsiders actually perceive the brand and reveals the gap between self-image and external perception.

The simple (and naive) prompt

"Analyze this website and create brand guidelines based on what you see"

What could possibly go wrong? — Ways you'll recognize.

You run the same prompt twice and get two different brand personalities — because nothing in the prompt constrains which signals the model picks up or ignores.
The output sounds plausible but you can't tell what's actually grounded in the website of whether the model invented something. There's no way to trace a claim back to a source.
No validation ever runs. Directives like "be authentic" ship without anyone checking whether they connect to an actual identity claim — or mean anything at all.

Sharp Definition

High value, reliable results come from being precise and explicit about what you need. The sharp definition below is ready to use — customize any value, then copy the definition, it hardly needs any prompt engineering.

Context

Directive	Declaration
audience:	People defining brand and identity
purpose:	Understand intention and see good directions from existing high quality brands through an example brand guideline
purpose:	An example brand guideline for internal use by the company's communications and marketing team. It show them how to act, not describe the brand from the outside
background:	Inspire creative output by showcasing high quality exemplary work

Task

Directive	Declaration
action:	Create defining brand guidelines based on existing content
step:	Analyse landingpage content and top level links from source and use it for analysis
constraint:	Limit to 15 scraped pages in total
guidance:	When analysing, prioritize: - how the brand frames its competitive position - how it handles internal tensions (e.g. heritage vs. innovation, exclusivity vs. growth) - what customer language it uses vs. avoids - what it conspicuously never says about itself.

Input

Directive	Declaration
source:	[website]

Output

Directive	Declaration
deliverable:	Brand Guidelines
tone:	Warm where it matters—particularly in identity and audience sections—but never soft where precision is required. The document must feel like it was written by someone who thinks carefully about words for a living. The author knows what it is talking about and does not need to prove it through volume or jargon. It should feel confident without being arrogant. There is craft in the language, and word choices are deliberate. The tone is serious but not corporate. It respects the reader's intelligence—a brand manager or CMO who will push back if something is vague or unearned.
voice:	Write as a practitioner, not a consultant. It has a point of view and states it without hedging. It has done the thinking before the document arrives, so the document doesn't think out loud — it declares. Sentences are short. Claims are specific. Nothing is included because it sounds good.
format:	Text
headline:	Identity
section:	Who we are and what we stand for
section:	What we believe and what we reject
example:	"We believe technology serves the mountaineer. Materials, construction, protection, and equipment systems — all of it answers a single question: does it make the experience of the mountains with XXX more capable, more focused, more alive? If it doesn't, it doesn't belong."
section:	Our brand personality — the character traits that make us distinctly us
example:	"Precise. We do not approximate. Technical claims are accurate, design language is deliberate, and words are chosen. Vagueness is a quality problem, not a style choice."
section:	How we see our audience and the different ways they relate to us
section:	What role we play in their life
constraint:	Max 500 characters
guidance:	Don't state conclusions — argue them. Each point should include the claim, the reasoning behind it, and its implication or consequence. Make the logic chain visible. Connect ideas to each other rather than listing them independently.
headline:	Behavioral Directives
section:	Tone and voice principles (with the belief that grounds each one)
section:	What we always do / never do in communication
section:	Language conventions — terminology we own, naming logic, what we never call ourselves or our products
section:	Content priorities and editorial standards
section:	How we handle tension between competing values (e.g. aspiration vs. accessibility)
validation:	Check internally without printing to output: every directive is based on an identity claim by expressing it as: 'Because we believe [X], we always/never [Y].'
constraint:	Write as if the analysed content was not the source
rule:	Never refer to analysed content
bad example:	"The site ...."
constraint:	Text must not reference external content

Edit any value to fit your intentions, then copy the complete prompt.

Stay tuned for the full SharpIntent experience — coming soon.

Failure Modes

Mode	Effect	Cause
Outsider narration	Guidelines describe the brand from the outside ("the website uses…") instead of declaring from the inside	Missing output constraint to write as if the source was not the source
Hallucinated values	Brand values presented as fact without grounding in published content	No guidance to distinguish observed signals from model inference
Slogan stacking	Directives without reasoning chain ("be authentic" with no argument)	Missing identity guidance to argue claims rather than state conclusions
Floating directives	Behavioral directives disconnected from identity claims	No validation rule linking behavior to belief ("Because we believe X, we always/never Y")
Theme-as-brand	CMS framework defaults documented as deliberate brand decisions	No distinction between intentional choices and template artifacts
Template output	Generic guideline with company name swapped in	No section structure, tone, or voice requirements in output spec
Homepage tunnel vision	Only homepage analysed, sub-brand and product pages ignored	No step to follow top-level links beyond the landing page

Customization Guide

What to change	Why	Where
Narrow the input	The default scrapes broadly. If you know where your brand voice lives, pointing the analysis there avoids noise from template pages, job postings, or legacy content that doesn’t reflect the current brand.	Change the 15-page cap and add specific URL paths to Input → source (e.g. “https://example.com — focus on /about, /team, /products, skip /blog and /careers”)
Add a third headline	The default structure covers identity and behavior. Brands with strong design systems need a section that connects language decisions to visual ones — otherwise the guidelines live in a silo the design team ignores.	Add a new headline entry under Output, after Behavioral Directives — e.g. “Visual-Verbal Bridge” (how verbal identity connects to layout, typography, and imagery choices)
Replace a section	The default assumes one consistent role. Multi-channel brands need the guidelines to acknowledge that tone shifts by surface — and define the boundaries of that shift.	Swap “What role we play in their life” for “How we show up differently across channels” if your brand varies significantly between contexts (retail vs. digital, social vs. editorial)
Remove the examples	The Arc’teryx-style examples set the quality bar, but they also bias the output. Removing them (or replacing with one from your own sector) lets the model find a voice that fits your brand, not mimic the sample.	Delete the two example rows under Identity if your industry is far from outdoor/technical — they anchor the model toward that register
Change the audience	The audience controls the level of abstraction. Internal strategists need reasoning chains. An agency team needs concrete do/don’t lists. A product team needs terminology rules and tone-per-surface guidance. Same brand, different document.	Edit Context → audience from “People defining brand and identity” to your actual readers — e.g. “Agency creative team onboarding to the account” or “Product and engineering leads integrating brand into UI copy”
Shift to visual design focus	The default focuses on verbal identity. If your team’s primary gap is visual consistency — how pages are built, what CMS components mean, how imagery reinforces tone — redirect the behavioral section toward design decisions grounded in the same identity claims.	Replace Behavioral Directives sections with design-oriented ones: “Layout principles and spatial hierarchy,” “Typography and type pairing rules,” “CMS component usage,” “Image selection criteria and photography direction”

Role: Brand Consultant · Marketing Manager · Creative DirectorArtifact: Brand Guidelines