As of 13 August 2026, AI can create the visual direction for a marketing campaign.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current campaign brief and brand guidelines, then gather the objective, audience, offer, channels, mandatory constraints, existing assets and approved visual references.
   2. Paste those materials into the prompt, replacing every bracketed slot and removing any information that is confidential or unnecessary.
   3. Ask the chatbot to produce the visual direction, then ask it to turn the chosen concept into three channel-specific execution examples.
   4. Compare the proposed colours, type, imagery and layouts against the current brand guidelines and remove anything that conflicts with them.
   5. Ask a designer or marketing colleague to assess the direction for distinctiveness, accessibility, production feasibility and fit with the audience before commissioning assets.
   6. Use a visual design tool such as Simplified to develop draft layouts or image treatments from the approved direction, then compare each draft with the brief before sending it for approval.

   Prompt

   Create a visual direction for this marketing campaign using the information below.
   
   Campaign objective: [what the campaign must achieve]
   Offer or message: [what is being promoted]
   Audience: [who the campaign is for, including relevant UK context]
   Channels and formats: [for example, paid social, email, website, outdoor, print]
   Brand guidelines: [paste the relevant rules for logo use, colour, typography, imagery and tone]
   Existing assets: [describe or attach assets that must be used]
   Mandatory requirements: [legal, accessibility, product, format or approval constraints]
   Competitors or category context: [relevant examples]
   Visual references: [links or descriptions, with what should and should not be copied]
   
   Return a concise but detailed creative direction with these sections:
   1. One-sentence creative idea
   2. Strategic rationale linked directly to the objective and audience
   3. Visual principles, including composition, scale, contrast, movement and use of space
   4. Colour palette with roles for each colour, using the supplied brand rules where available
   5. Typography direction, including hierarchy and practical fallback options
   6. Photography, illustration or image-generation direction, including subjects, lighting, framing, diversity and exclusions
   7. Layout rules for each listed channel
   8. Motion or video principles if relevant
   9. Three example executions described clearly enough for a designer to make them
   10. A short list of risks, unknowns and decisions that require human approval
   
   Do not invent brand facts, research findings, performance claims, customer insights or legal permissions. Mark missing information as an open question. Keep the direction specific enough to brief a designer, but do not claim that the concept is proven to work.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.