PAS and AIDA as Prompt Frameworks (For Copy)

TL;DR: PAS (Problem-Agitate-Solve) and AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire-Action) are copywriting formulas you can use two ways with AI: ask a model to write copy shaped like either one, or use the framework's own stages to structure your instructions to the model. Both work as a PAS framework prompt or an AIDA prompt template — ready prompts for each, plus AIDA's genuinely disputed origin story, are below.

Two different searches land on this page. If you want AI to produce PAS- or AIDA-shaped copy for a landing page, an email, or an ad, that's the more common ask, and it's covered first with ready-to-copy prompt templates for both. If you came here wanting to use the problem/agitate/solve or attention/interest/desire/action shape to brief the model itself, rather than shape its output, that's covered further down, and it's the less obvious of the two uses. Either way, a PAS framework prompt and an AIDA prompt template get built the same way: name the stages explicitly, and give the model just enough real detail per stage that it can't default to generic filler.

What Is the PAS Framework?

PAS stands for Problem, Agitate, Solve (some versions say "Solution"). Problem names the reader's pain in specific, recognizable language. Agitate makes that pain feel more urgent and more costly to ignore, usually by describing a consequence the reader hasn't fully considered. Solve introduces your product or offer as the fix, only after the first two beats have done their work.

Compared to AIDA below, PAS is the tighter, blunter of the two: three beats instead of four, built for copy where you don't have room for a slow build. It's the shape behind most cold emails and short ad copy that opens on a problem statement instead of a hook line.

Unlike AIDA, PAS has no single well-documented inventor. It's most associated today with Dan Kennedy, who popularized it in his direct-response copywriting book The Ultimate Sales Letter, first published in the 1990s. The problem-then-pain-then-relief shape almost certainly predates that book inside the older direct-mail and sales-letter tradition, but no primary source pins down who first named it "PAS," and most pages claiming a specific origin are repeating each other rather than citing anything. Treat any confident "PAS was invented by X in Y" line you see elsewhere as unverified, and use the framework on what it does, not on its folklore.

How Do You Turn PAS Into an AI Prompt?

Take a project-management tool as a working example, deliberately generic so the pattern is visible without borrowing a real product's specifics.

Problem, stated in the reader's own words: "Your team's status updates live in four different Slack channels, and nobody trusts the roadmap doc because it's three weeks out of date." Agitate, one level more specific about the cost: "Every stand-up turns into twenty minutes of 'wait, who's doing what,' and by the time a blocker surfaces, it's already cost you the sprint." Solve, named plainly: "[Product] fixes this by making the task board and the roadmap the same object, so there's no separate status update to forget."

Here's the same shape as a prompt you can paste into any model:

Write PAS-structured copy (Problem / Agitate / Solve) for [CONTEXT — e.g. cold email, ad, landing page section].

Audience: [who specifically — role, company size, situation]
Problem: [the specific pain, in words the audience would use — not a generic complaint]
Agitate: [the specific cost of ignoring it — a consequence, not just "more of the same problem"]
Solve: [product name] + [the one mechanism that removes the problem]

One tight paragraph per beat. No invented statistic, no fabricated urgency ("only 3 left") I haven't given you.

That last line matters more than it looks — see the section on where PAS turns manipulative, further down.

What Is the AIDA Framework, and Who Actually Invented It?

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action — a four-stage structure for taking someone from a cold first glance to a completed action, whether that's a click, a reply, or a purchase. Attention interrupts whatever the reader was doing. Interest gives them a reason to keep reading that's about them, not you. Desire makes the outcome feel specific and wanted, not just plausible. Action asks for one clear next step.

Nearly every marketing textbook and blog post repeats the same origin story: advertising figure E. St. Elmo Lewis is said to have coined the phrase attract attention, maintain interest, create desire in 1898, adding a fourth stage, action, sometime later. That story traces back to a single 1925 sales-training textbook, and it turns out to be shakier than it sounds. A 2024 historical review of AIDA's origins, published in the Japan Marketing History Review, went back through Lewis's own writing from 1897 through 1910 and found no writing of his that contains the specific four-word formula, and no evidence he ever added "action" to anything — his surviving essays only ever combine two or three of the four elements, never the complete set. The paper instead credits salesmanship writer Arthur Frederick Sheldon with the first confirmed full four-stage version, dated 1910, with Frank H. Dukesmith's earlier articles supplying the intermediate steps that led there. So the "Lewis, 1898" line repeated on nearly every ranking page for this topic is a century-old citation that nobody involved seems to have actually checked against Lewis's own published work, not a verified fact. The same review traces a more specific paper trail behind Sheldon's 1910 version: salesmanship writer Frank H. Dukesmith edited a trade magazine called Salesmanship and published eleven short articles building out the four-stage idea between 1903 and 1904, years before the version usually credited to Lewis, and Sheldon's fully-formed 1910 formulation built directly on that groundwork. Use AIDA for what it does well; don't repeat its origin story as settled history.

Whatever the real inventor, the four-stage shape has survived over a century of use for a reason: it matches how a genuinely cold reader moves through a decision, and each stage has a distinct, checkable job.

How Do You Turn AIDA Into an AI Prompt?

Using the same generic project-management tool from the PAS example above: Attention, a specific claim rather than a generic hook: "Most teams lose a full day every sprint to status updates nobody actually trusts." Interest, made personal to a project lead: "If you've ever opened the roadmap doc and closed it again because you already knew it was stale, this is about that." Desire, described as an experience rather than a feature: "Picture opening the board once, seeing exactly who owns what and what's blocked, and never asking 'is this still accurate?' again." Action, one step only: "See it on your own roadmap — start free."

The same instinct applies here as with PAS: name all four stages explicitly and load each one with something specific, or a model defaults to four vague paragraphs that all sound like the same paragraph.

Write AIDA-structured copy (Attention / Interest / Desire / Action) for [CONTEXT — e.g. landing page, sales email, ad script].

Audience: [who specifically]
Attention: [the interrupt — a specific claim, question, or scene, not a generic hook]
Interest: [why this matters to THEM specifically — one concrete detail about their situation]
Desire: [the specific outcome they'll picture, described as an experience, not a feature list]
Action: [the exact next step — one, not three]

One short paragraph or line per stage. Don't invent a number, quote, or guarantee I haven't supplied.

For longer copy — a full sales page or a multi-email sequence — treat AIDA as a container rather than four short paragraphs: Attention is the headline and first line, Interest and Desire can each run several paragraphs (a PAS or templated beat fits comfortably inside Desire), and Action is the close.

Ready-to-Copy PAS and AIDA Prompts for Common Copy

Fill in the bracketed specifics — the framework does the ordering, you still supply the real details.

Cold email (PAS)

Write a PAS cold email to [role] at [company type].
Problem: one sentence naming a pain they'd recognize immediately.
Agitate: one sentence on the specific cost of leaving it unsolved.
Solve: one sentence connecting [product] to the fix, plus a low-commitment ask.
Under 90 words total. No fabricated social proof or urgency.

Landing page hero (AIDA)

Write an AIDA-structured hero section for [product]'s landing page.
Attention: headline under 10 words, built around one specific claim.
Interest + Desire: 2-sentence subhead naming the audience's situation and the outcome.
Action: one button label, no more than 4 words.

Ad copy (PAS)

Write 3 PAS variants of a [Meta/Google] ad for [product], each under 40 words.
Vary the Problem across all 3 — three different entry points into the same underlying pain.
Solve can stay consistent. Flag which variant agitates hardest vs. which stays most factual.

Sales page section (AIDA)

Write an AIDA section for a sales page, positioned right after the headline.
Attention: 1 paragraph, a specific scenario or claim.
Interest: 1 paragraph on why this reader specifically should care.
Desire: 2 paragraphs, concrete outcome, not a feature list.
Action: 1 sentence, one clear next step, linking to pricing.

Case study summary (PAS)

Write a PAS summary (80-100 words) for a case study about [customer/situation].
Problem: their situation before [product], stated as fact, not drama.
Agitate: the real cost they were absorbing — use only the details I give you below.
Solve: what changed, using only the numbers provided. Do not estimate a figure I haven't given you.
Details: [paste the real facts here]

LinkedIn post (AIDA)

Write an AIDA-structured LinkedIn post (150-200 words) about [topic/product], first-person, founder voice.
Attention: an honest opening line, not a humblebrag disguised as a hook.
Interest + Desire: the real situation and what changed, described plainly.
Action: end with a question, not a link.

Video ad script (AIDA)

Write a 15-second video ad script in AIDA order for [product].
Attention: 3 seconds, visual direction + one line of copy.
Interest: 4 seconds, the one detail that makes [audience] lean in.
Desire: 5 seconds, the payoff, shown as an outcome, not told as a claim.
Action: 3 seconds, product name + one CTA line.

Product page bullets (PAS, compressed)

Write 5 bullet points for a product page for [product], each 1-2 sentences.
Each bullet: Problem (a specific frustration) with Solve folded into the same sentence — skip a separate Agitate beat, bullets this short don't have room for it.
Vary the Problem across all 5 bullets; don't repeat the same underlying pain in different words.

Notice the last one breaks PAS down to two beats instead of three. That's a legitimate compression, not a violation of the framework — Agitate exists to earn attention for a longer read, and a bullet point has already spent its attention just by being read this far down the page.

Can PAS or AIDA Structure the Prompt Itself, Not Just the Output?

This is the less obvious use of both frameworks, and it's a genuinely useful prompting pattern with nothing to do with selling anything: instead of asking for PAS- or AIDA-shaped output, you shape the instruction itself around the same stages.

For PAS, that means briefing a task as Problem (what's wrong with the current draft, code, or result), Agitate (why it actually matters if it's not fixed — the specific cost), and Solve (the exact fix you want, not "make it better"):

Problem: [paste the current draft, code, or output as-is, and name specifically what's wrong with it]
Agitate: [why this specifically matters — what breaks, what it costs, who it affects, if left as-is]
Solve: [the exact change you want — e.g. "cut to 200 words," "add a null-check," "remove three of the five bullet points"]

Apply the Solve step to move the input from its current state to what Solve describes. Don't change anything Solve doesn't call for.

For AIDA, the reframe is different: Attention becomes the one detail you want the model to focus on first (out of a large input it might otherwise skim), Interest is the context that makes that detail matter, Desire is the specific outcome you're steering toward, and Action is the actual instruction:

Attention: [the one specific thing in this input the model should focus on — a section, a risk, a pattern]
Interest: [why that thing matters here — the context that makes it non-generic]
Desire: [the outcome you want, described concretely]
Action: [the exact task — one instruction, not several]

Both reframes work because they force the same thing a sales version forces: naming the specific problem or focus point before the model is allowed to do anything general with it. Left with a vague brief ("fix this" or "look at this"), a model defaults to broad, surface-level changes; naming the stage explicitly narrows what counts as done.

PAS vs AIDA vs BAB: Which Framework Should You Use?

PAS and BAB share the same three-slot shape with an opposite emotional lever in the middle beat (agitate the pain vs. picture the relief); AIDA is closer to a container that a PAS or BAB beat can sit inside, usually during "Desire." If you're deciding between PAS and AIDA for one piece, ask whether you have room for a four-stage build (AIDA) or need something tight enough to open a cold email (PAS). For the full comparison including where BAB's beats map onto AIDA's stages, see the BAB prompt framework; for the wider set of prompt-structuring frameworks, including ones built for reasoning rather than persuasion, see The 7 ChatGPT Prompt Frameworks Every Power User Knows.

If you write PAS or AIDA copy regularly, the repetitive part isn't the structure, it's retyping the same skeleton with new specifics every time. A saved template in a prompt library removes that step. The prompt engineering cheat sheet keeps PAS and AIDA alongside the other structures worth having on hand, the AI prompts for email, ads, and landing pages post has more ready-made copy prompts organized by channel, and the AI prompts for ad copy post covers Meta, Google, TikTok, and LinkedIn specifically if ads are most of what you write.