Your mission is a claim
For a purpose-driven brand, every sentence about the mission is a promise someone can check. That should change how AI is allowed to write.
- Based on
- Building a word-for-word approved claims list for a client’s product and health content.
- Not claimed
- Legal advice. I’m not a lawyer, and the rules differ by country.
Most businesses can afford a little looseness in their marketing. Purpose-driven brands can’t. When your reason for existing is fair trade, honest ingredients or less plastic, every sentence about it is a claim, and customers, journalists and regulators can all check it.
That was manageable when the founder wrote everything. It gets harder as the brand grows: more people writing, more channels, more replies sent in a hurry. Add AI and the volume goes up again, and so does the risk. A model that has read thousands of sustainability pages knows exactly how brands like yours tend to sound. That’s the problem. It will happily write “carbon neutral”, “ethically sourced” or “plastic-free” because those words sound right, not because you can stand behind them.
The answer isn’t to stop using AI. It’s to treat your mission the way you’d treat any other claim: written down, worded exactly, and checked.
In practice that means an approved claims list. For each thing you say about your products and your impact, we write the exact wording you can stand behind, and note what supports it. “Plastic-free packaging”, not “plastic-free shipping”. The assistant may use those words, word for word, and nothing else. If a customer asks about something that isn’t on the list, the draft says so and leaves the answer to you.
It sounds restrictive. In practice it’s freeing. The founder stops being the only person who knows what can safely be said, because it’s written down where everyone, people and AI alike, can see it. New team members learn the boundaries on their first day. And when a retailer or a sharp-eyed customer asks where a claim comes from, the answer is already on file.
Writing the list also forces a harder conversation: which claims can you really defend? It can be uncomfortable. It’s far better to have it with yourself than to have a customer start it for you.
Your mission is the most valuable thing you say. It deserves the most careful writing, especially when the writer is an AI.