Use this strategic review prompt to examine a business, product, campaign, offer, launch plan, or draft content. It asks two fictional analytical voices to debate the commercial idea, buyer needs, positioning, proof, messaging, channels, and execution constraints before making ranked recommendations.
The voices named Ogilvy and Mather are fictional roles for the exercise, not quotations or claims about the historical people. One focuses on brand, research, copy, and conversion; the other challenges buyer assumptions, economics, distribution, and feasibility.
How to Use It
Copy the complete prompt below into your AI assistant. Replace the final placeholder with the material you want reviewed. Include your intended audience, decision, budget, team capacity, and available evidence so the review can address real constraints.
If your assistant can browse or inspect files, provide relevant primary sources. Otherwise, expect a provisional assessment with explicit unknowns. The prompt asks the assistant to distinguish facts, assertions, estimates, and hypotheses rather than inventing traction or proof.
Prompt
# Ogilvy & Mather — Universal Strategic Review
## Role and standard
Conduct a demanding internal marketing war-room review of the material supplied below. Do not flatter, invent traction, or substitute startup clichés for commercial analysis. Think like a research-led advertising strategist, direct-response copywriter, brand builder, positioning expert, skeptical buyer, editor, and operator.
Use two distinct, fictional analytical voices (not quotations or claims about the historical people):
**Ogilvy** — brand discipline, customer promise, research, positioning, memorable ideas, headlines, offers, reasons to believe, direct response, and conversion.
**Mather** — audience reality, buyer behavior, competitors, channel fit, pricing, execution, operational constraints, distribution, timing, and commercial feasibility.
They must disagree where evidence warrants it, challenge each other's assumptions, and arrive at decisions rather than a polite compromise. Speak naturally and precisely. Avoid formulaic three-part slogans, generic AI-marketing language, and false dichotomies.
## Research and evidence rules
1. Identify the input type and the actual business decision before critiquing it.
2. Separate verified facts, user-supplied assertions, estimates, hypotheses, and unknowns. Never imply an unshipped feature, planned integration, or modeled margin is proven.
3. If browsing, files, repositories, or analytics are available, inspect relevant primary sources and cite significant claims. If not, state the limitation and proceed with a provisional assessment.
4. Challenge the strongest alternative, including doing nothing, using existing tools, and choosing a narrower market.
5. Optimize for buyers' outcomes, not the creator's technical enthusiasm.
6. Evaluate what is commercially viable for the actual team and budget; distinguish revenue, gross margin, contribution margin, and founder time.
7. Do not automatically recommend a new product, campaign, or paid channel. Recommend cuts when warranted.
8. Make decisions and rank options. Mark experiments with clear pass/fail criteria.
## Ten review lenses
### 1. Core commercial idea
What is sold, to whom, what urgent or costly problem it solves, why now, the belief it must create, and the desired next action. Rewrite the core proposition in plain English.
### 2. The big idea
Find a simple, specific, memorable, commercially useful idea that can sustain campaigns and content. If absent, create candidates and test each against proof and buyer relevance.
### 3. Positioning
Identify the existing or proposed category, alternatives, the old way being replaced, defensible differentiation, category language, and the idea worth owning in the buyer's mind. Decide whether to enter, reframe, or create a category.
### 4. Audience and buyer psychology
Segment actual users, economic buyers, and influencers. Examine pains, desired outcomes, skepticism, status concerns, buying triggers, awareness, existing beliefs, objections, vocabulary, and prerequisites for adoption. Choose a first wedge.
### 5. Promise, proof, and offer
Assess specificity, credibility, differentiation, evidence gaps, demos, benchmarks, testimonials, examples, screenshots, case studies, comparisons, and the clarity/value of the next step.
### 6. Message clarity
Cut jargon, abstraction, unsupported claims, excessive explanations, and feature-first copy. Move tangible customer benefits and evidence earlier. Rewrite key lines.
### 7. Content and campaign quality
For actual material, critique hook, headline, opening, structure, argument, pacing, evidence, CTA, audience fit, missing sections, and what to cut/move/expand. Supply a revised outline when appropriate.
### 8. Channel and distribution fit
Evaluate website, landing pages, docs, GitHub, search, email, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, communities, partnerships, integrations, direct sales, and paid media as appropriate. Choose channels based on buyer behavior and measurable distribution, not fashion.
### 9. Competitive and category pressure
Identify substitutes, adjacent vendors, incumbent advantages, likely reasons to ignore/switch, overused category language, and credible differentiation. Distinguish what competitors claim from what is demonstrated.
### 10. Triple-win and durable usefulness
Assess value for the business, the customer, and partners/ecosystem. Identify losers, lock-in, modularity, extensibility, repeatability, and whether value survives beyond a single campaign or proprietary stack.
## Required output
# Ogilvy & Mather Strategic Review
### 1. What You Gave Me
Identify the material type, summarize it plainly, and state the decision at stake.
### 2. Initial Diagnosis
What is strong, weak, unclear, missing, and most promising. Give a candid overall verdict.
### 3. The Back-and-Forth
Write a substantial, authentic conversation with alternating **Ogilvy:** and **Mather:** turns. Address the core idea, buyer, positioning, promise, proof, offer, copy, market, channels, economics, biggest risk, and biggest opportunity. Include meaningful disagreement and a resolution; do not merely echo each other.
### 4. The Big Idea
Choose the strongest big idea plus **five alternatives**. For each: the idea, why it works, where it fits, and its audience. Rank them.
### 5. Positioning Rewrite
Give **three** complete options: (1) clear/direct, (2) premium/strategic, (3) bold/category-defining. Each includes a positioning statement, one-line tagline, supporting message, and best-fit audience. Choose a winner.
### 6. Messaging Improvements
Provide a headline, subheadline, three supporting points, CTA, short elevator pitch, longer explanation, and short “Why now?”, “Why this?”, and “Why trust this?” passages. Do not present unverified claims as fact.
### 7. Objection Handling
Rank the principal objections. For each explain why buyers believe it, the response, proof required, and suggested copy.
### 8. Content or Campaign Recommendations
Recommend landing page, blog, email, social, demos, case studies, comparisons, and lead magnet/white paper ideas only where useful. Rank the best few assets by leverage.
### 9. Distribution Strategy
For each priority channel explain why it fits, what to publish, what not to do, and how to measure success. Distinguish awareness, activation, adoption, and revenue.
### 10. Brutal Cuts
Say precisely what to remove, simplify, postpone, or stop claiming.
### 11. Final Strategic Recommendation
State the strongest direction, biggest weakness, highest-leverage next step, first asset, clearest message, and a realistic **seven-day plan** with owners/effort assumptions and measurable outcomes.
### 12. Decision Register
End with: **Decide now / Test next / Defer / Evidence missing**. Include the three highest-risk assumptions and the fastest test for each. Do not quietly convert hypotheses into decisions.
## Material to review
[PASTE YOUR BUSINESS, PRODUCT, CAMPAIGN, CONTENT, OFFER, LAUNCH PLAN, OR RAW NOTES HERE]What the Review Produces
The requested output includes a diagnosis, a debate between the two roles, ranked big ideas, three positioning options, messaging rewrites, objection handling, content and distribution priorities, and specific cuts. It closes with a seven-day plan and a decision register separating what to decide, test, defer, and research.
For a more concentrated assessment of a company or product, try the brutally honest company and product diagnostic. For search-focused research, use the keyword and competitor content analysis prompt. Browse more marketing prompts and business prompts.