Weekly Prompt Engineering Challenge #1: Refine and Templatize a Brand Story Prompt

May 11 (edited) in Challenges

Prompt Engineers & AI Enthusiasts

Let's do some prompt engineering this weekend. In the first instalment of our Weekly Prompt Engineering Challenges!

This week, we're kicking things off with the following task: refine and templatize a prompt inspired by Kieran Flanagan's approach to writing a brand story in the style of Seth Godin.

Challenge Details: We have a prompt that aims to encapsulate Seth Godin's unique style in crafting compelling brand stories. While the original prompt captures the essence well, it could benefit from clarity and a more structured template to enhance usability for both humans and AI systems.

Your Task: Refine the original prompt to make it more clear, structured, and templatized.

The goal is to create a template that can be easily tweaked for different brands or products, maintaining effectiveness and simplicity.

Clarity: Ensure the prompt is straightforward and easy to understand.
Structure: Organize the prompt into a clear, logical format that guides the AI and the user.
Templatization: Develop a format that allows easy modifications, such as changing the brand name, target audience, or key message, without reworking the entire prompt.
Output: Define the desired outcome of the prompt, specifying the format, tone, and style of the resulting brand story to ensure it aligns with Seth Godin’s narrative approach.

Submission Guidelines:

Submit your refined prompt in this thread.
Include a brief explanation of how your version improves on the original in terms of clarity, structure, templatization, and output.
We'll close off and review submissions next Thursday!

Excited to see how you transform this prompt into a versatile tool for storytelling.

Let's start

Here is the Original Prompt:

The following is inspired by Seth Godin’s timeless approach to storytelling. It will take a product name and create a timeless story for it.

<Task>Create a brand story for a product the user submits following Seth Godin’s approach to brand storytelling with four clear sections - ‘setting the scene’, ‘introducing the challenge', ‘overcoming obstacles’, and finally ‘the transformation’.

<Inputs>{Product_Name}</Inputs><Instructions>

<step>Do each of the below steps in sequence, only provide output when you reach the final step and have been requested to create the table</step>

<step>Setting the Scene: Create a narrative for ‘Setting the Scene’. This section should introduce the product's customer and brand and the problem space the product operates within. It should be easy to understand and jargon free. It should entice the reader to consume the entire story and learn about how the product could make their life better.

Add this narrative to the variable $scene to be used later in this prompt</step>

<step>Introducing the Challenge: Next you need to clearly introduce the core challenge the customer of the product has, the challenge this product will solve. Introducing the challenge the hero customer faces is crucial because it creates tension that demands resolution. This tension captures the audience's attention and keeps them engaged, as they’ll want to see how the challenge is overcome. It's also an opportunity to highlight the specific problems the product solves.

Add this narrative to the variable $challenge to be used later in this prompt</step>

<step> Overcoming Obstacles:Next you’ll move to the part where the story delivers on its promise, showcasing how the hero confronts and overcomes the challenge. It's a demonstration of the product in action, providing concrete examples of how obstacles are surmounted. This part of the story builds credibility and illustrates the effectiveness of the product to solving the customer's problem. It's also where empathy and inspiration come into play, as the audience sees the journey of overcoming obstacles as both relatable and aspirational.

Add this narrative to the variable $obstacles to be used later in this prompt</step>

<step>The Transformation: This is the culmination of the story, the transformation is the payoff for the audience. It’s the evidence that change is possible, and it directly ties the journey to a positive outcome. This is where you highlight the benefits and value of the product, showing not just a change in circumstances, but a change in the hero's life or state of being. The transformation is what turns the story from a narrative into a testimonial of success, illustrating not just what your product does, but why it matters.

Add this narrative to the variable $transformation to be used later in this prompt</step>

<step>The brand story must be formatted as table that should be structured as follows (you must output a table, it’s critical that you do this or the user request will not be met):

First Row: [Setting the Scene][Introducing the Challenge][Overcoming Obstacles][The Transformation]

Second Row:[$scene][$challenge][$obstacles][$transformation]

Also provide a visual storyboard to illustrate this brand story to a CEO in an easy to understand jargon free way. It’s imperative you supply a visual storyboard, it’s critical that you do this or the user request will not be met.</step>

BEGIN BRAND STORYTELLING

Product Name: {$PRODUCT_NAME}

</Instructions>

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