Brand Product Context

Brand & Product Context

Capture the essential truth about a business once — who it's for, what it does, how it sounds, and where it's going — so every other AAJ skill works from the user's reality instead of guessing.

When to use

When starting any new engagement with the AAJ skills, or whenever another skill needs the ICP, positioning, value, or voice and no context file exists yet. Run this first. Also use it to update the brief when the business changes — a new product, a new segment, or new positioning.

Before you start

1. Check for an existing context file. Look for .agents/product-marketing.md (or .agents/aaj-brand.md) in the working directory. If it exists, load it, show the user the current brief, and switch to update mode — don't rebuild from scratch.
2. Gather raw material. Collect whatever the user can share — website URL, pitch deck, marketing copy, sales-call notes, their own answers. You don't need everything; capture what's known and mark the rest as gaps.
3. Confirm scope. This skill captures the foundational brief other skills read; deep positioning or persona work is handed off (see Related skills).

Method

Capture the business once, factually, and make it the single source of truth every other skill reads. Extract from what the user provides; never embellish. Where something is inferred, mark it (assumption — confirm); where it's unknown, write (gap). A brief the user can't stand behind poisons everything downstream, so a marked gap always beats a confident guess.

Workflow

1. Gather raw material. Pull facts from the website, deck, docs, copy, and call notes. Extract; don't embellish.
2. Interview to fill gaps. For each empty schema section, ask focused questions one section at a time. Prioritize ICP, positioning, value, and voice — the sections most skills depend on.
3. Synthesize each section using resources/brand-context-template.md. Be specific and factual; mark assumptions and gaps with the conventions above.
4. Capture voice from real examples. Derive voice and tone from the brand's actual copy — the adjectives, the sentence rhythm, the words they use and avoid — not generic descriptors.
5. Save the brief to .agents/product-marketing.md. Tell the user this is now the source of truth every AAJ skill reads, and to update it whenever the business changes.
6. Summarize what was captured and list the open gaps to close next.

Reference

The section schema and field-by-field guidance live in resources/brand-context-template.md. Write the brief by filling that schema; don't inline the full template into the saved file beyond the sections below.

Present the result

Write .agents/product-marketing.md with these sections:

• Company — name, one-line description, stage, business model, website.
• Product — what it does, core capability, key features, how it's used.
• ICP & segments — for each: who they are, the job they hire the product for, their main pain, where to reach them.
• Positioning — category, competitive alternative, key differentiator(s), one-line positioning.
• Value & proof — value proposition, proof points (metrics, outcomes, logos), unique mechanism.
• Voice & tone — defining adjectives, do / don't, example phrases, words to avoid.
• Goals & metrics — current objectives, north-star metric, targets.
• Funnel & channels — active channels, what's working and what isn't, key conversion points.
• Competitors — main alternatives and how the product differs.
• Constraints & notes — budget, team, compliance, and brand rules other skills must respect.

Then return a short summary: what's captured, and the top gaps to close. A partial brief, showing the format and the gap/assumption conventions:

# Brand & Product Context — Northwind Analytics

## Company
- Name: Northwind Analytics
- One-line: Self-serve product analytics for B2B SaaS teams without a data team.
- Stage: Seed
- Business model: B2B SaaS, $99–$499/mo
- Website: northwind.example

## ICP & segments
### Segment 1: Heads of Product
- Who they are: Heads of Product at 10–50-person B2B SaaS companies.
- Job they hire it for: "See what users actually do without begging engineering."
- Main pain: Existing tools need SQL or a data hire; insights are slow.
- Where to reach them: Product communities, LinkedIn, SEO ("product analytics without SQL").

## Positioning
- Category: Product analytics
- Competitive alternative: Heavyweight tools (need data teams), or nothing.
- Key differentiator: Set up in an afternoon, no SQL, no data hire. (assumption — confirm with onboarding data)
- One-line positioning: (gap — run positioning-statement)

## Voice & tone
- Defining adjectives: plain-spoken, practical, a little irreverent.
- Do: short sentences, concrete examples.
- Don't: enterprise jargon, "synergy," "leverage."
- Words to avoid: synergy, leverage, robust, seamless.

## Goals & metrics
- Current objective: grow activation rate from 28% → 40%.
- North-star metric: weekly active product teams.
- Targets: (gap)

Guardrails & common mistakes

• Never invent. Every claim must trace to something the user provided or said — no fabricated personas, differentiators, or metrics.
• Mark uncertainty explicitly. Inferences get (assumption — confirm); unknowns get (gap). Don't fill a gap to make the brief look finished.
• Make it actionable. The ICP, positioning, and voice must be specific enough that another skill can act on them — vague descriptors ("for businesses," "professional tone") aren't usable.
• Keep it current. Re-read and update on any material change to the business; a stale brief silently misleads every downstream skill.

Related AAJ resources

• AAJ tools — https://aajconsult.com/tools (Persona Builder for ICP depth; positioning tools to lock category and differentiator). Fold results back into .agents/product-marketing.md.

Related skills

positioning-statement · persona-builder · customer-survey-design

Credits

Original AAJ skill. The Agent Skills format and the marketing-skills catalog by Corey Haines (coreyhaines31/marketingskills, MIT) were references for structure and coverage; this skill is independently written. See the repository README for the full reference list.