Your Brand Story Is Dead - Try This AI Prompt Instead
Best AI Prompts for Creating Customer-Centric Marketing Copy
This AI prompt taps into your reader’s self-insertion bias, and their dopamine hits like a truck. #AIprompts #Marketing #AiPromptHackers✨
Step Aside, Brand Stories - It's Their Story Now 🎬
Most marketers are still stuck in the Jurassic era of branding, roaring about our mission, our product, our innovation. Cute. But if you're talking about yourself, your audience has already tuned out. Here's the brutal truth: no one wants to watch your brand's movie unless they're the star.
Enter the "You're the Hero" Effect, a deceptively simple but psychotically effective marketing technique that weaponises your customer's own brain against them (ethically, of course... unless you're evil. Then carry on).
It's not about telling a story. It's about inserting your buyer into one. And not just as some sidekick or NPC. They are the main character, baby. The protagonist. The chosen one. Cue the dopamine.
The Brain's Favourite Subject: Itself 🧠💕
Let's start with a fun fact: your brain has a raging crush on you.
Functional MRI scans show that when people think about themselves, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) lights up like Times Square. This area is part of the brain's default mode network, basically the background noise of your internal narrative. It's what activates when you daydream, replay memories, or mentally rehearse future glory.
Now here's where it gets juicy: when a person sees themselves reflected in a story, even abstractly, the mPFC treats that information as more relevant, trustworthy, and emotionally charged.
If your customer can see themselves in the marketing narrative, their brain will literally care more.
Self-Insertion Bias: Narcissism Meets Neuromarketing 🎯
The technical term here is self-insertion bias, the tendency for people to subconsciously place themselves in hypothetical scenarios, especially stories.
And marketers can exploit this bias with surgical precision by building narratives with open-ended roles, vague descriptors, and second-person framing ("you" language). This little linguistic trick allows the brain to slip itself into the story like it was tailor-made.
It's why DTC skincare brands show "you waking up to clearer skin" instead of "our formula removes blemishes."
It's why Nike doesn't show a shoe - they show you crushing your run at sunrise.
And it's why every UX copywriter worth their hourly rate starts landing pages with lines like:
"You've tried everything. Nothing worked. Until now."
Boom. You're in. You're the protagonist in a comeback story, and the product is your Excalibur.
🧪 The Neuromechanics
Let's go full lab coat for a second.
When someone imagines themselves as the character in a scenario, the brain recruits the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex, both key players in self-referential processing and value-based decision-making. This neuroalignment causes a few delightful things to happen:
Increased emotional salience: They care more because it feels personal.
Faster cognitive fluency: The message is processed more easily, making it feel "truer."
Stronger memory encoding: They're more likely to remember the ad later.
Higher purchase intent: Because now the product isn't something they might buy, it's part of their personal story arc.
And this isn't just theory. Studies in neuroeconomics show that when people evaluate products through a narrative frame that includes them as a participant, their valuation spikes significantly, sometimes irrationally so.
Build the Narrative, Hand Them the Sword 🗡️
So, how do you bake this brain-bending bias into your funnel? Here's your evil checklist:
Speak in second person ("you") - Obvious? Maybe. Ignored? Constantly. Avoid "customers do X" and say "you want X." It shifts the whole narrative.
Leave strategic blanks - Don't over-specify the character. Let them fill in the details. "After a long day" is better than "after your 9-to-5." Vagueness fuels personalisation.
Create stakes and transformation - What challenge are they overcoming? What future are they stepping into? Your product should be the magical bridge.
Show, don't tell - Use storytelling visuals and testimonials where the customer is the story. Video case studies? Chef's kiss.
Time-travel them - Push them into future-paced scenarios: "Picture this. It's three months from now. You've finally nailed X…" This activates episodic future thinking, a mental simulation system linked to stronger motivation and decision-making.
SME Quick Wins (Because You're Busy)
Here's how to pull this off without a million-dollar agency:
Rewrite your home page headline in second person with a clear "before and after" arc.
Use a short customer story (3–5 sentences) where the buyer's struggle and outcome are front and centre.
Update your product copy to speak like a narrator in their story, not your brochure.
Run an email campaign where every subject line starts with "Imagine this…"
Low cost. High brain impact. Evil giggles optional.
Final Thought
Your product isn't the hero. They are. You're just the wise old wizard handing them the damn wand. The faster you accept that, the faster your conversions climb.
So go ahead. Rewrite your copy. Reshape your funnel. Recast your customer as the star of the show.
The brain demands it.
Want to Weaponise This? 🧠💸
Here's a final hit list for marketers who want to build brain-first campaigns:
Frame in second person ("you")
Use narrative arcs with vague but relatable characters
Introduce transformation points and emotional stakes
Help them visualise the future (use temporal framing)
Build social proof using lookalike heroes
Layer multisensory language to activate visual and emotional memory
Keep stories short, sticky, and self-centred (them, not you)
Now go rewire some neurons, evil genius.
AI-Powered "You're the Hero" Marketing
Now that you understand the neuroscience behind self-insertion bias, let's make this actionable. Below are three powerful AI prompts designed to transform your marketing from brand-centric to customer-centric.
Paste these into your favourite AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini), and you'll instantly create copy that triggers those neural pathways we've been talking about. Each prompt is engineered to target a specific aspect of self-insertion psychology - from transformational narratives to future pacing to mirror neuron activation.
🔥 Prompt 1: Self-Insertion Copy Rewrite
Use this to transform bland product descriptions into "you"-centred hero journeys.