My family has a Tuesday night problem.
5 kids. Afterschool chaos. And a standing rule that dinner cannot be a negotiation.
For years I collected a list of (now) 115 recipes in my notes app. Links, mostly. Every Sunday I'd scroll through them trying to figure out what to feed everyone that week.
It worked. Barely.
(This is, I swear, a brand + marketing newsletter. We're getting there.)
Recently, I built a meal planner on Perplexity Computer. (We call her Mary.) I literally "copied/pasted" the list of 115 recipes. Mary read them, found patterns in what we actually like, and now plans the week using what she already knows about us - pulling from the list or suggesting 1-2 new things that fit.
Every day is laid out with the full recipe. No clicking through links. The weekly grocery list is split by store. There's even a prep list!
And on Tuesdays when we have to be out the door by 5pm, Mary knows - she can see our Google calendar - so she plans something fast.
This workflow works because... CONTEXT.
Not just a list of links. Real context: what our family eats, how we shop, what our budget is, what Tuesday actually looks like, etc.
Which sounds like a story about dinner.
It's not... It's a story about the only reason any of this AI stuff actually works.
After I finish a brand project with a client, I build what I've started calling "seats" on the org chart. One of the first "hires" is almost always a Copywriter - an AI agent trained on the firm's specific positioning, messaging, tone of voice, point of views, and buyer personas.
So, when the marketing plan calls for a landing page (let's say...) my client isn't starting from scratch. They brief the Copywriter the same way they'd brief a new hire: here's the campaign, here's the offer, here's the persona/niche, etc. The AI employee knows the rest.
The output still needs a human editor. But it's a real starting point - one that sounds like the firm, not like a slightly formal robot with a subscription to Hubspot.
Here's the honest version of what I've learned building these...
Building the AI employee is almost never the hard part. The hiring packet is. The positioning, the tone, the POV, the things you refuse to sound like, the guardrails, etc.
That's the work. The AI just executes against it.
What goes in the hiring packet:
→ Positioning (who you serve, what you do differently, why it matters)
→ Tone of voice (not "professional and approachable"... the actual rules)
→ Points of view (the things you believe that your competitors won't say)
→ Buyer personas (with buying triggers, not demographics)
→ The "never sound like this" list (the phrases, the clichés, the competitor tics)
None of this is about AI. It's just... brand strategy. Written down. In a form something else can read.
Skipping this step is hiring a Copywriter with no job description, no brand brief, and no onboarding... then blaming AI when the output sounds like everyone else's.
If you're wondering whether your firm has a hiring packet good enough to onboard an AI Copywriter (for example), here's the gut check:
Could you hand it to a smart new employee on their first day and have them produce something recognizably yours by end of week? If not, the AI isn't going to do any better.
That's all for today,
Dani
P.S. Our meal planner, a few weeks in, has developed opinions. She suggested a "Mississippi Pot Roast" with a note that read, "this is a good option for a calm evening." Mary, we have not had a calm evening since 2019... but appreciate the optimism. Ha!