Takes an existing persona or avatar (the demographic + psychographic profile you built from customer research) and amplifies the emotional intensity. Finds the layers beneath the surface pain. The 2am thought they don't say out loud. The hidden shame. The identity wound. The specific sensory texture of what living with this problem actually feels like.
This is the prompt you reach for when your concepts are clean but they're not cooking — when the avatar is technically correct but emotionally flat, when the copy is hitting the right beats but nobody's stomach is dropping when they read the hook.
Fair warning from Brandon: this prompt can be aggressive. Pushed correctly, it will surface emotional material darker than you'd default to writing yourself. That's the point. Real conversion happens at the layer most copywriters won't touch — the shame, the betrayal guilt, the identity admission the prospect would never say to a friend but would whisper to themselves at 2am. This prompt is built to find that layer for you.
How to use it
Open the GDrive link. Copy the prompt. Plug it into Claude (or whatever model you're using) after you've already built a basic persona/avatar from customer research. The prompt is not a substitute for research — it's an amplifier on top of research. Garbage persona in = garbage emotional valence out.
Inputs you'll need:
- Your existing persona or avatar (demographic + basic psychographic profile)
- The product / category context
- The angle you're working
- Raw market research where possible (Reddit threads, Amazon reviews, comments under competitor ads, support tickets, sales call transcripts) — the more unfiltered the better
What you'll get back:
- The full emotional architecture: surface pain → daily pain → hidden pain → the 2am pain (in their voice, not yours)
- The guilt layer stack: regret → harm → identity → betrayal
- Emotional valence direction (narrowing vs broadening) and what that means for the copy register
- The unspoken desires and hidden shames the prospect would never name themselves
- Specific sensory and physical details of what the emotional state feels like in their body — the chest tightness, the held breath, the specific moment in their day when the feeling peaks
- The aggressive material: the darker emotional vectors most copywriters won't touch because they make the writer uncomfortable
The output feeds directly into the Native Ad Concept Generator V2, the Winner to New Concept prompt, the Catalyst Concept Ideation prompt, or any advertorial drafting workflow that needs a higher emotional register.
When to use it
Use this prompt when:
- Your concepts are technically correct but emotionally flat — the copy reads like a strategist wrote it, not like a real person typed it at 11pm
- You're working a Jaded or Exhausted sophistication audience where the surface pain framing has been used to death and you need to go a layer deeper to break through
- A winning ad is fatiguing and you need to find the next emotional vector before the angle dies entirely
- You're handing avatar work off to a copywriter and need the emotional layer documented in enough depth that they can write into it without inventing
- The concept involves guilt, shame, or identity wounds (parenting, health failures, financial mistakes, weight, addiction, relationship failures) where the surface persona work isn't enough — you need the layer most copy never reaches
Especially useful for:
- Postpartum / hormone / women's health (the hidden shame layer is where conversion lives)
- ADHD / autism / behavioral health for kids (the parent identity guilt layer)
- Weight loss / body image (the 2am mirror moment, the dressing room moment, the photo-tagged moment)
- Skin / hair / aging (the witness moment, the partner noticing, the photo confrontation)
- Financial struggle (the shame of admitting the situation to a spouse, the avoiding-the-bank-account behavior)
- Mental health / sleep / anxiety (the masking layer — what they show vs what they actually feel)
Not for:
- B2B or rational-purchase categories where emotional intensity hurts conversion (the prompt will go too dark for the context)
- Most-Aware audiences where the buying decision is already made and they just need a deal — emotional amplification at that stage feels off-tone
- Brand-safe / corporate environments where the aggressive emotional register would create compliance or reputation risk
- First-pass research stages where you haven't built a base persona yet — this is an amplifier, not a substitute
The prompt
Open in GDrive → docs.google.com
Copy → paste into your model → attach or paste your existing persona + raw research → run.
Cross-references
- Module 5 → Customer Research — the upstream where you build the base persona this prompt amplifies. Skip the research and this prompt produces generic emotional theater. Pair it with real Reddit/review/comment data and it surfaces material that actually converts
- Module 3 → Using Claude to Automate Your Entire Stack (Catalyst / Native / Advertorials sub-pages) — where the heightened emotional layer gets deployed downstream into actual creative
- Module 7 → Native Ads Breakdown — native ads are the format where this emotional depth pays off the hardest. Catalyst ads use it for the validation/blame-shift architecture. Advertorials use it for the story arc
- Plug & Play → Dialed Native Ad Prompts — the Native Ad Concept Generator V2 has a built-in persona construction phase. Run this Emotional Valence prompt first to deepen the persona, then feed it into the Concept Generator for higher-intensity angle generation
- Plug & Play → Dialed Image Ad Prompts — the Winner to New Concept prompt has the guilt architecture (Regret → Harm → Identity → Betrayal). This Emotional Valence prompt is the dedicated upstream layer that builds the raw material those guilt layers operate on
Want the full emotional architecture prompt library + Loom walkthroughs + live updates? All inside the RunItUp Masterclass → Join here
Join now to lock in your rate, prices are increasing quickly.