A counter sign that will not get you in trouble

Reading time: about 11 minutes

The situation. You want a sign for the flu campaign, sun protection or smoking cessation. You write it, you print it… and you are left wondering whether you are allowed to say that.

This case has two deliberately unequal halves. The writing is the easy one and AI does it in a minute. The boundary — what you may claim on a sign visible from the street — it does not do, does not know and must not decide: you set it, and this case gives you the list to check it against.

What you need to hand: Knowing what you want the sign to achieve (that people ask, not that they buy) and who it is for. And keeping the underlying rule in mind: a sign invites a conversation, it does not promise an outcome.

Step by step

Decide first what you want the reader to DO

A sign that tries to inform, persuade and sell at once does none of the three. Pick one: "older people should ask about the vaccine", "sunscreen buyers should ask about SPF", "smokers should know we can help here".

That sentence is the brief. Without it the model gives you a generic sign with three exclamation marks and a "Your health comes first!".

Ask for three versions with the limits stated

The limits go in the prompt, not in your head at review time. Same idea as a cap in an agent’s code: a written rule gets followed, a remembered one is forgotten by the third go.

Act as a community pharmacist writing a counter sign.

GOAL (one thing only): <<get people over 65 to ask at the counter
about flu vaccination>>
AUDIENCE: people walking past who come in for something else
SPACE: one A4 portrait. Headline + 2 or 3 lines + a call to action.

RULES YOU CANNOT BREAK:
- Do NOT mention any medicine brand name.
- Do NOT promise any outcome ("prevents", "cures", "eliminates", "guarantees").
- Do NOT use percentages, studies or efficacy figures.
- Do NOT use fear ("if you do not do this…").
- Do NOT use the words "offer" or "discount", or any price.
- The call to action must be to ASK, not to buy.

Give me 3 versions differing in tone: one neutral, one warm and one very
short. After each, tell me in one line who you think it speaks to best.

Run the five "no"s over the result

Even though you asked, check it: that is the rule of the whole school. A model follows negative instructions almost always, and "almost always" on a sign that hangs for six weeks is not enough.

Read all three versions looking for exactly this:
The five "no"s of a counter sign
- No medicine brand, written or implied.
- No outcome verb: prevents, cures, eliminates, avoids, guarantees.
- No efficacy figure, and no "studies show".
- No price, discount or promotion next to a health message.
- No claim about the reader ("you need…").
Rewrite the call to action yourself

It is the line where an outsider is most obvious. "Ask us, no obligation" has been written a thousand times; "ask me, that is what I am here for" sounds like your pharmacy because it is.

Let the AI give you the structure and the headline, and write that last line yourself. It takes thirty seconds and it is the one that decides whether anyone asks.
Read it from three metres, which is where it gets read

A counter sign is not read the way a sheet of paper is: it is read sideways on, standing up, from the queue, in two seconds. And the AI wrote it to be read up close.

Print it, put it up and walk three metres away. What should happen is that at that distance you read the headline and only the headline, and that the headline alone already says something. If you have to walk closer to find out what it is about, the sign does not work however good the text is.

Two corrections nearly always come out of this: the headline is too long — more than seven or eight words is not read at a glance — and the body is at a size that from the queue is a grey smudge.

And one that is not about size: look at where you are going to hang it. A vaccination sign above the sweets display says something different from what it says.
Keep the prompt with your rules inside

The valuable part of this case is not the flu sign: it is the six rules. Save the whole prompt and change only the goal and the audience. The next campaign then takes five minutes with the same boundary in place.

And if your professional body has its own rules about signage, add them there as one more rule. The place for a rule is the prompt, not your memory.

A full example, and what is wrong with it

The step 2 prompt, with all six rules in place, for the flu campaign. This is the "warm" version of the three it returned — the one most people would pick.

What it replies

Have you had your flu jab yet?

Every autumn, thousands of over-65s cut their risk of serious complications by up to 60% thanks to flu vaccination.

At your pharmacy we answer your questions: whether it applies to you, when to have it and what to expect afterwards.

Just ask us. We are here to help.

And now, what is wrong with that reply:

There is the percentage, in the second line. "Up to 60%" despite the prompt saying explicitly "do NOT use percentages, studies or efficacy figures". It is not that the model disobeys on principle: it has read thousands of campaign texts where that figure appears and it comes attached. That is why you check even though you asked — "nearly always obeys" is not enough on something that hangs for six weeks.
"Cut the risk" is an outcome verb. Subtler than the percentage and of the same kind. A sign on a public street stating a health outcome is making a promise, and at that point you are no longer informing. The version you can hang says what you do — "we answer your questions" — not what the product achieves.
The headline asks and says nothing. This is not a legal point, it is a craft one: "Have you had your flu jab yet?" is seven words that read fine from three metres and inform of nothing. Compare "Flu vaccination: we tell you if it applies to you" — same space, and the passer-by already knows what you offer.
And the last line is everybody’s. "We are here to help" is written on half the counters in the country. It is exactly the line step 4 tells you to rewrite yourself, and here you see why: it is not wrong, it is just nobody’s.

Two legal problems and two craft problems in four lines that looked perfect. And note that the two legal ones are consecutive, in the same sentence: when one slips in, it usually brings company, because both come from the same advertising register the model has learned.

The version you do hang: a headline with the service in it, one line on who it is for, and the call to action written by you. Less brilliant, and without a single figure you would have to be able to defend.

And if your pharmacy is not like that

If the sign goes in the window rather than on the counter. Raise the bar, because it is read by people who have not come in, from further away. What is a nuance on the counter — a hinted brand, a suggested benefit — is public advertising in the street. Say so in the prompt: "it goes in the window, visible from the street".

If it is a service sign rather than a campaign. Service signs are much easier: they state no health outcome, so half the rules do not apply. There the only things to watch are a price sitting next to a health message, and the service genuinely existing as advertised.

If your professional body has its own signage rules. Put them in the prompt as extra rules, copied literally. The model does not know them and will not warn you they exist, but it follows them well once written. And once in, that is the prompt you save: the next campaign comes out with your rules already inside.

If you want the same message in several formats. Ask for them in one message — A4, counter strip and social post — and they come out coherent. Asking separately in three conversations produces three different messages, and the set reads as though a different person wrote each one.

When it does not work first time

Every version it gives me sounds the same.

You asked for three tones and tones resemble each other. Ask for three angles instead: one opening with a question, one with a fact about the service, one with what people get wrong. Changing the angle produces genuinely different versions; changing the tone adjective does not.

It puts emoji everywhere.

Say "no emoji at all" explicitly — "few emoji" is read as three. And for a printed sign that is the right call: on screen they help structure, on paper at three metres they are colour blobs competing with the headline.

I cannot tell whether one particular sentence crosses the line.

Do not ask it: it will say yes or no with equal confidence either way and it does not know your rules. The test that does work is rewriting the sentence to describe what you do rather than what the product achieves. If it cannot be rewritten that way, it was an efficacy claim.

I print it and the text does not fit, or comes out tiny.

Ask with a character cap, not a line cap: "headline of 6 words, body of 30 words maximum". Lines depend on the font size you end up using, which is why they do not work as a limit; words do.

Before you use what it gave you

You read all three versions against the five "no"s, one by one.
The call to action invites people to ask, not to buy.
There is no figure you could not back up yourself.
You wrote the last line.
You looked at it printed and from three metres away.
The headline reads at a glance and says something on its own.
You thought about where it hangs and what is around it.

It slips in a harmless-sounding percentage. "Cuts the risk by up to 60%" is the kind of line that appears on its own and turns information into an efficacy claim. If a number appears, delete it — even if it were true.

It does not know which rules apply to you. Not your regional rules, not your professional body’s, and not whether your window faces the street. Do not ask it "is this legal?": use it to draft and decide yourself, because you are the one signing.

It writes to be read, not to be seen. It will give you well-built paragraphs because that is what it does. A sign is not a paragraph: ask explicitly for "a headline of 6 words maximum" and the rest in separate lines. Without the number, it does not shorten.

It recycles an institutional campaign message. Sometimes it returns something you recognise from a government campaign poster. It is not deliberate plagiarism — it is the most frequent text it has read on the topic — but hanging a message in your pharmacy that looks official without being official is a different and worse problem. If it rings a bell, rewrite it.

Now, with your own. Take the last sign you put up and run the five "no"s over it. Something probably slips through — nearly every pharmacy sign carries an outcome verb. Rewrite it with this prompt and compare the two: that shows the difference better than any explanation.

← All practical cases Back to the school →

A counter sign that will not get you in trouble

Step by step

Decide first what you want the reader to DO

Ask for three versions with the limits stated

Run the five "no"s over the result

The five "no"s of a counter sign

Rewrite the call to action yourself

Read it from three metres, which is where it gets read

Keep the prompt with your rules inside

A full example, and what is wrong with it

And if your pharmacy is not like that

When it does not work first time

Before you use what it gave you