Most brand guidelines tell an AI what to do. Few tell it why. That gap is where agents go wrong, because the awkward cases were never in the rulebook.
My argument is simple: write down the reasons behind your brand rules, and your AI will handle the cases you did not think of. We build an AI marketer, so we have a stake in this.
Rules only cover the cases you predicted
A rule says: no exclamation marks. It cannot say what to do when your team wins an award and the post is bursting to celebrate. A person asks why the rule exists and adapts.
An AI agent has only the rule. So it obeys it stiffly, or it ignores it. Neither is judgement, and both are easy to miss in review.
What the MarTech panel said
MarTech ran a session on building marketing workflows around AI agents at its November 2026 conference. In the write-up, published on 13 November, founder Lisa Shaw said “the why is just as important as the what”.
The write-up’s advice is to document the reasoning behind past marketing decisions, including brand nuances and customer history, so agents stay aligned. One caveat: the write-up was produced by MarTech’s own AI chatbot, with human editors reviewing it. Read it as a summary of the session, not a transcript.
What a reason looks like
Take the rule “never say cheap”. On its own it is a taste. With the reason attached, it becomes guidance: “We compete on reliability, and cheap suggests corners were cut.”
Now an agent can write “good value” and steer clear of “bargain”, even though only one word was ever banned. The reason did the extra work.
Here is another pair. “Short sentences, because our readers skim on their phones between meetings.”
The agent now knows to cut a long paragraph, not just a long sentence. It also knows when a long sentence is fine, such as a legal line that must stay whole.
Where the reasons live in a tool
Mavic’s help centre describes brand positioning as three things. They are the audience you serve, what you offer that others do not, and what your brand stands against.
That is a reason, not a rule. Mavic applies it to post angles, headlines, press releases and About page descriptions. The help centre suggests revisiting it every few months.
Writing styles carry the how. A brand can hold several, for example one for social captions and one for long articles, with the maximum set by the plan. The ban list is a good-faith nudge, not a hard block.
The help centre says listed terms can still slip through, especially in longer documents. If one does, you ask for a rewrite in the same chat.
That last point is why we think the reasons matter. A list can never name every bad word, but a stated reason lets the writer, human or AI, recognise a new one.
Keep the reasoning with the work
Saved prompts can use placeholders for your saved customer profiles, products and writing styles, so they pick up your current details. Existing chats keep the version of the prompt they started with.
Every generated asset also keeps a version history, and a feedback history logs each change requested. That trail is a record people can read. If a reviewer rejected a headline, the note explains why to the next person.
This matters more as work is split up. In Tandem, the engine behind Mavic, one brief is split across specialist agents. Each works from the same saved Brand DNA.
If the reasons sit in that shared reference, every agent gets them. If they sit in one person’s head, none do.
Reasons also make review faster
A reviewer who only has rules can say “this feels off” and little else. A reviewer who has the reasons can say which one the draft broke.
That makes feedback specific, and specific feedback is easier to act on, whether the next draft comes from a person or an AI. It also stops the same argument being held every month by a different person.
It keeps the human decision where it belongs. The reasons record what your team decided and why, and a person can still overrule them when the situation changes.
Write a one page “because” sheet this week
You do not need Mavic for this. Take your five most important brand rules and add a line to each that starts with “because”. Then answer these five questions in a sentence or two each:
- Who do we write for, and why them rather than everyone?
- Which words do we avoid, and what do they signal?
- How does our tone change by channel, and why?
- What did we try and drop, and what did it teach us?
- Who can overrule a rule, and when?
Test the page with a case your rules do not cover, such as a crisis, a joke or a competitor’s launch. Read what comes back. If the result surprises you, the reasons are still too vague.
Keep the sheet to one page and review it every few months. Hand it to every tool, freelancer and new hire the same way.
Sources
- Meet your new teammate: Building marketing workflows around AI agents, MarTech, 13 November 2026
- Brand Positioning, Mavic help centre
- Writing Style, Mavic help centre
- Ban List, Mavic help centre
- Saving Prompts, Mavic help centre
- Editing Assets, Mavic help centre
