Promotion Mechanics to Legal Questions to an Approved FAQ: A Four-Prompt Claude Chain

What This Builds

The mechanics summary, the questions for legal and the store FAQ are usually written separately, and by launch they no longer agree. This chain keeps one table of mechanics at the center. Every later document is built from that table or from legal's own answers, and a final check lists each FAQ statement next to the line it rests on.

You run it in one Claude conversation. If legal takes days to answer, run it inside a Claude Project instead, so the table and the questions are still there when you return.

Prerequisites

• A Claude account at claude.ai. The Pro plan is listed at $20/month, and that is the only ongoing cost of this chain.
• Your rough notes on the promotion: whatever you have from the brief, the sales deck and your own jottings
• A named contact in legal or at your outside promotion counsel who will answer the questions and approve the final FAQ
• Your company's AI policy, checked for whether unreleased promotion plans may go into this tool, and the tool's data settings reviewed

The Concept

Think of a relay race where each runner carries the same baton, and a judge at the end checks that nobody swapped it. The baton is your mechanics table. Prompt 1 builds it, prompt 2 turns its gaps into questions, prompt 3 builds customer-facing help from legal's answers, and prompt 4 is the judge.

The model never writes official rules, fine print or a product claim, and it never says what the law requires. Legal owns all of that. The model organizes what you tell it and what legal tells you.

Before You Paste Anything

Promotions that have not launched are commercially confidential, and your retailer agreement may be too. Before step 1:

• Replace the unreleased product name with a code name, and use Retailer A and Agency B style codes when terms are confidential.
• Leave out consumer names, emails, addresses, phone numbers and entry data. A fulfillment vendor or your own systems hold those. They never go into a chat.
• Check your company's AI policy, and check the data settings of your Claude plan, including whether chats are used for training and how long they are kept. A consumer plan may train on chats unless that setting is off.
• Keep legal's answers as legal wrote them. Paste them in without paraphrasing.

Build It Step by Step

Part 1: Prompt 1, the mechanics table

Open a new Claude conversation (or a new Claude Project). Paste your coded notes into the placeholder and send this prompt:

I am an advertising and promotions manager preparing a consumer promotion. Below are my rough notes. Turn them into a table with one row per item and these rows: Offer, Eligible products, Dates (start and end), Who is eligible, How to claim or enter, What the customer receives (prize, discount or gift), Limits, What the fulfillment vendor does, Where the offer is available. In a second column write only what my notes say, in plain words. If my notes are silent on a row, write "not decided". Do not add details, do not write rules or fine print, and do not say anything about what is legally required. Number the rows.

My notes:
[paste your coded notes here]

Checkpoint. Read every row against your notes. Correct wrong cells by telling Claude what to change, and ask it to reprint the whole table. Do not go on until every "not decided" is a row you are happy to ask legal about. The table is now your source of truth for the rest of the chain.

Part 2: Prompt 2, questions for legal

Using only the corrected mechanics table above, write numbered questions for our legal team. Tie each question to a row number from the table. Cover every "not decided" row and every row where a term could be read two ways. Write the questions as plain questions a busy lawyer can answer in a sentence or two. Do not answer any question yourself, do not state any law or regulation, and do not suggest what the rules should say.

Checkpoint. Check that every "not decided" row has a question. Add any question you know legal will ask. Then send the table and the questions to legal yourself, by your normal channel, and wait. Nothing further happens in Claude until legal has answered. If you have to leave the conversation, keep it in the Project.

Part 3: Prompt 3, the FAQ and the service script

When legal answers, paste the answers exactly as written, together with the approved summary line for each point if legal gave one.

Below are legal's answers to our questions and the approved summary of the promotion. Draft two things using only these two sources and the mechanics table: (1) a store FAQ of the questions customers and store staff are most likely to ask, with short answers, and (2) a customer service script of no more than eight lines. Where a likely question is not covered by legal's answers or the approved summary, write "ask legal" as the answer. Do not add facts, do not describe the product, do not write official rules or fine print, and do not state any law.

Legal's answers:
[paste legal's answers here]

Approved summary:
[paste the approved summary here]

Checkpoint. Read each answer against legal's words. Every "ask legal" answer is a question for legal, not a gap for you or Claude to fill. If a sales email or the brief contains a detail you want to add, do not type it into the FAQ. Take it to legal.

Part 4: Prompt 4, the consistency check

Check the FAQ and the customer service script against the sources. Make a table with four columns: (1) the exact statement from the FAQ or script, (2) the exact line from legal's answers, the approved summary or the mechanics table that supports it, (3) a verdict of "supported" or "no source", (4) "remove" for every statement with no source. Include every statement, not a sample. Do not fix or rewrite anything.

Checkpoint. Read the table row by row and confirm each quoted source line is really in legal's text. Remove every "no source" statement or send it to legal. The check can miss things, so read the final FAQ yourself once more against legal's answers. Then send the finished FAQ and script to legal for approval. Nothing goes to stores or the service team until legal approves it.

Real Example: SPRING-A at Retailer A

This promotion is invented. Brand X, Retailer A, Vendor D and the dates are made up.

The coded notes: "SPRING-A. Buy any two Line X items at Retailer A, get a tote. Runs 2027-03-01 to 2027-03-28, which is four weeks, Monday to Sunday. One tote per transaction. While supplies last, 6,000 totes. Vendor D ships totes to stores by 2027-02-15. Store staff hand out the tote at the register. Not sure about online orders or whether coupons can be combined."

Prompt 1 result (abridged): Offer: buy two Line X items, receive a tote. Dates: 2027-03-01 to 2027-03-28. Limits: one tote per transaction, while supplies last, 6,000 totes. Fulfillment vendor: ships totes to stores by 2027-02-15. Where available: not decided (online orders). Who is eligible: not decided.

Prompt 2 result (abridged): 1. Row 9, Where available: does the offer apply to online orders? 2. Row 4, Who is eligible: are there any exclusions for who may receive the tote? 3. Row 5: may a coupon be used on the same purchase? 4. Row 7, Limits: what should staff say when totes run out before 2027-03-28?

Legal's answers (invented): "1. In-store only. 2. Ask me for the wording. 3. Coupons may not be combined with this offer. 4. Say the offer is while supplies last. No rain checks."

Prompt 3 result (abridged): FAQ: "Does the offer apply to online orders? In-store only." "Can I use a coupon too? Coupons may not be combined with this offer." "What if the totes run out? The offer is while supplies last. No rain checks." "Who is eligible? Ask legal." The script gives staff these lines and nothing more.

Before the check: Your colleague adds "Totes are made from recycled material" to the FAQ, copied from a sales email.

Prompt 4 result: Each of the first three statements is "supported" with legal's line quoted. The recycled-material sentence comes back as "no source" and "remove". That is a product claim, so you send it to legal and leave it out unless legal clears it.

Time saved: The three documents come from one table, so you spend your time on legal's questions and on reading, not on reconciling versions.

What to Do When It Breaks

• Claude fills a "not decided" row with a plausible answer → Tell it to restore "not decided" and reprint the table. Check the same row again in every later step.
• The FAQ contains a fact that is in none of your sources → Prompt 4 should flag it. If it does not, search the FAQ yourself for any sentence you cannot trace to legal's text, and delete it or ask legal.
• Legal's answers arrive in an email thread of fragments → Paste the thread as it is and add a note on which question each reply answers. Do not tidy it into your own wording.
• You come back after days and the conversation is gone or cut off → Start a Claude Project and paste the corrected table, the questions and legal's answers into it. Then run prompt 3 from there.
• Legal changes an answer after the FAQ is drafted → Update the source text and rerun prompts 3 and 4 so the FAQ and the check both reflect the change. Anything already sent to stores needs a correction by the normal route.

Variations

• Simpler version: Stop after prompt 2 and use the questions list for your meeting with legal.
• Extended version: Save the corrected table and legal's answers in the Claude Project that holds your promotion playbook, so the next promotion starts from this one.

What to Do Next

• This week: Run the chain on a promotion that is already approved, to learn where "ask legal" appears.
• This month: Use the same table for the sales team's talking points and for the post-promotion review.
• Advanced: Keep one Claude Project per promotion, with the table and legal's answers as its knowledge.

Advanced guide for Advertising & Promotions Manager professionals. These techniques use more sophisticated AI features that may require paid subscriptions.