How to Set Up Google Pomelli for Branded Social Content in Under 30 Minutes
Skip manual brand DNA entry. Screenshot the template, run it through Gemini, paste back in. Here's the full Pomelli setup workflow with the AI shortcut.
Your Brand Identity Shouldn’t Take All Day to Configure
Most people spend 45 minutes staring at a blank brand values field before giving up and typing something generic. You don’t have to. The entire Google Pomelli Business DNA setup — from empty template to a configured brand identity with logo, colors, fonts, and tone of voice — takes under 30 minutes if you use the right shortcut: screenshot the template, run it through Gemini, paste the output back in.
That workflow is the core of this tutorial. Everything else in Pomelli — campaigns, photoshoots, animations — depends on Business DNA being set up correctly. Get this part right and the rest of the tool actually works.
Pomelli is a Google Labs AI marketing tool that generates on-brand social media and ad content by learning from your brand identity. It’s not a general-purpose image generator. It’s opinionated: it wants to know your brand values, aesthetic, tone of voice, logo, colors, and fonts before it will generate anything useful. The Business DNA section is where all of that lives.
What You Get When Business DNA Is Configured
Before getting into the steps, it’s worth being concrete about the outcome.
A fully configured Business DNA means Pomelli can generate campaign images that use your actual color palette, not random ones. It means the typography on generated ads matches your brand fonts. It means the tone of voice in generated copy reflects whether your brand is playful or authoritative. It means the photoshoot templates — studio, ingredient, in-use, contextual — are pre-selected based on your product type, not guessed at.
The alternative is generating content with default settings, which produces generic output that looks like it came from a stock photo site. You’ll spend more time editing individual pieces than you would have spent setting up Business DNA properly in the first place.
There’s also a compounding effect. Every image you generate and like can be added to Business DNA with one click, which means the system gets more calibrated over time. Your second week of using Pomelli produces better output than your first, because the DNA is richer.
What You Need Before Starting
A Google account. Pomelli is a Google Labs product, so you’ll access it through your Google account. At time of writing, it’s available at labs.google — check the current Labs lineup for the Pomelli entry.
Gemini access. The shortcut in this tutorial uses Gemini to interpret the Business DNA template and generate brand values. The free tier works fine. You’re not doing anything computationally intensive — you’re pasting a screenshot and asking for structured text output.
A product image. For the campaign and photoshoot sections that come after Business DNA setup, you’ll want a clean image of your product — ideally on a plain or white background, isolated. Don’t use a lifestyle photo or a complex scene. Pomelli extracts the product from the image, and it does this much better when the product isn’t competing with background elements.
Some sense of your brand. You don’t need a complete brand guide. You need enough to answer: what does this brand feel like? What’s the general aesthetic — minimal, bold, warm, clinical? Who’s the customer? Even rough answers to these questions are enough to get started, because Gemini will help you translate them into the structured format Pomelli expects.
The Setup, Step by Step
Step 1: Open Business DNA and choose a template
When you first open Pomelli, Business DNA will be empty. Click into it and you’ll be prompted to enter your website URL. If you have one, enter it — Pomelli will attempt to extract brand signals from it. If you don’t, skip that step.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose a starting template. Pick the category closest to your actual business: food and beverage, beauty, apparel, home goods, and so on. The template you pick determines the default values that get pre-filled — brand values, aesthetic descriptors, tone of voice language, and a sample business overview.
Now you have: a pre-filled Business DNA template that you can read but shouldn’t edit directly yet.
Step 2: Screenshot the template and take it to Gemini
This is the shortcut that saves most of the time. Instead of trying to edit the template fields in place — which leads to either keeping defaults that don’t fit or staring at blank fields — screenshot the entire Business DNA template. You want to capture all four sections: brand values, brand aesthetic, brand tone of voice, and business overview.
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Open Gemini. Paste the screenshot. Then write a prompt like: “I’m starting a [describe your business]. Help me come up with values to fill in these fields for my brand.” Gemini will read the template structure from the screenshot and generate multiple concepts — typically three — each with a distinct brand personality.
If you already have brand materials — a logo, packaging photos, brand guidelines, even rough sketches — paste those into Gemini too. The more signal you give it, the more specific the output. You can say: “Here’s an image of my product packaging. Based on this, fill in the brand values, aesthetic, tone of voice, and business overview fields from the template I showed you.” Gemini will interpret the visual and generate structured text that fits the template format.
Now you have: three brand concept options in text form, each with values, aesthetic descriptors, tone of voice language, and a business overview.
Step 3: Pick a concept and paste it back into Pomelli
Read the three concepts Gemini generated. Pick the one that fits your actual brand — or the brand you’re building toward. Don’t overthink this. You can always update Business DNA later.
Go back to Pomelli. For each field — brand values, brand aesthetic, brand tone of voice, business overview — clear the template defaults and paste in the corresponding text from your chosen concept. Brand values are entered as keywords (hit enter after each one). The other fields accept longer text.
Click apply after each section.
Now you have: a Business DNA populated with brand-specific values instead of generic template defaults.
Step 4: Generate a logo
The logo field in Business DNA accepts a text prompt. You could write a prompt yourself, but the faster path is to go back to Gemini and ask: “I’ve chosen [concept name]. The brand is called [your brand name]. What should the logo look like? Give me three text prompts I can use to generate it. Don’t render any image.”
Gemini will give you three distinct logo direction prompts. Copy one and paste it into the Pomelli logo generator. Hit enter. Pomelli generates four logo concepts simultaneously.
If none of the four work, you have two options. First, try a different prompt from Gemini’s list — paste the second or third option and generate again. Second, hit the refresh button in the chat to ask Gemini to try again with the same prompt, which produces three new variations. You can cycle between generated versions using the back and forward arrows, so nothing is lost if you generate multiple rounds.
When you find a logo you like, click apply.
Now you have: a logo in Business DNA that reflects your brand concept.
Step 5: Set colors and fonts
For colors, the fastest approach is to pick directly from your logo. Pomelli has a color picker — use it to sample the main colors from the logo you just applied. Two or three colors is enough to start. You can always add more later.
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For fonts, look at your logo and try to match the style. Pomelli has a font library — browse it for something that matches the weight and character of your logo typography. If your logo has a hand-drawn quality, look for something like Permanent Marker. If it’s geometric and clean, look for a sans-serif with similar proportions. Pick a primary font and a secondary font. Click apply.
Now you have: a complete Business DNA — values, aesthetic, tone, overview, logo, colors, fonts — ready to drive content generation.
Step 6: Clear the placeholder images
The template may have pre-loaded stock images in the images section. Delete them. They’re not your brand. You’ll populate this section with real images later — either product photos you upload or AI-generated photoshoot images you create inside Pomelli.
Click “looks good” to finalize the Business DNA setup.
Now you have: a clean, configured Business DNA with no placeholder content contaminating future generations.
The Failure Modes Worth Knowing About
Generic output despite filled-in DNA. This usually means the brand values are too vague. “Quality, innovation, trust” tells Pomelli almost nothing. The more specific the values — “late-night indulgence, unapologetic richness, the pleasure of a secret” — the more distinctive the output. If your generated campaigns look generic, go back to Business DNA and make the values more specific.
Logo doesn’t match the brand feel. The logo generator is probabilistic. Four concepts from one prompt won’t always include what you want. The fix is iteration: try all three of Gemini’s suggested prompts, use the refresh function to generate new variations from the same prompt, and use the back/forward arrows to compare versions. Don’t settle on the first round if nothing fits.
Campaign images look off-brand. Check whether your product image is clean. A product photo with a busy background, multiple objects, or complex lighting will confuse the extraction step. Pomelli works best with a single product on a plain background. If you’re generating campaign images and the product placement looks wrong, use the “fix layout” button — it reorients the product automatically and often produces a noticeably better result.
Colors drifting across generated pieces. This happens when you have too many colors in Business DNA or when the colors are too similar. Pare back to two or three high-contrast colors that are clearly distinct from each other. Brand consistency in generated content depends on Pomelli having clear color anchors to work from.
Photoshoot templates selecting the wrong categories. Pomelli auto-selects photoshoot templates based on product type — studio, ingredient, in-use, contextual. For consumable products like food, it will typically skip beauty templates and select the ones that make sense for something you eat. If the auto-selection is wrong, you can manually toggle templates on and off before generating. The auto-selection is a starting point, not a constraint.
One thing to understand about the photoshoot output: every image is AI-generated, which means occasional errors in how the product looks — distorted packaging, wrong colors, extra fingers if there’s a hand in the shot. The edit function lets you change backgrounds and other elements, but it won’t fix structural generation errors. For a physical product where accuracy matters, treat the photoshoot output as a direction-setter and use the best images as references for a real shoot. For digital products or simple consumables, the output is often usable directly.
Where to Take This After Setup
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Once Business DNA is configured, the campaign section is the natural next stop. Drop in a product image or a product URL, write a target audience prompt — “target individuals on a night out,” “target late-night gamers” — and Pomelli generates three campaign concepts. Each concept produces multiple ad images with your product placed in contextually relevant scenes.
The edit tools let you adjust individual images: toggle the header on or off, update the description text, change font, color, and size, and generate a call-to-action. The version history arrows let you cycle between edit states, so you can compare before and after without losing earlier versions.
For social platforms, the resize and duplicate function lets you adapt a feed image to story format (9:16) or vice versa. This matters for the animation feature — Pomelli only shows the animate button when you’re in 9:16 story format. If you want animated content, resize to story format first, then animate. And animate without text: the animated text generation is currently unreliable, and a clean product animation without text overlays looks better anyway.
The photoshoot section generates four image types — studio, ingredient, in-use, contextual — from a single product image. When you find photoshoot images you want to keep, use the “add all to Business DNA” button. This populates the images section of your Business DNA with generated content, which makes future generations more consistent with your established visual style.
If you’re thinking about how brand identity data like this connects to broader marketing automation — chaining brand signals into content pipelines, connecting to scheduling tools, or running audience-specific variations at scale — MindStudio handles that kind of orchestration: 200+ models, 1,000+ integrations, and a visual builder for connecting the pieces without writing the glue code yourself.
The brand values work you do in Pomelli is also useful outside of Pomelli. The structured output from Gemini — values, aesthetic descriptors, tone of voice — is exactly the kind of input that makes other AI tools generate better on-brand content. If you’re using Google Stitch to build a design system, the same brand values you put into Pomelli can inform the design.md file that Stitch uses to maintain visual consistency across generated UI. The two tools are complementary in a way that Google probably intended. For teams already using Stitch, it’s also worth reading how to use Google Stitch’s design.md file with Claude Code — the same brand signal discipline applies across both workflows.
For teams thinking about how brand DNA connects to code — say, you want to build a branded content tool that uses these values as a system prompt — the abstraction layer is worth considering. Remy takes a different approach to building production apps: you write a spec in annotated markdown, and it compiles a complete TypeScript backend, database, auth, and frontend from that spec. The brand values you’ve articulated in Pomelli are exactly the kind of structured intent that belongs in a Remy spec, especially if you’re building an internal tool that needs to enforce brand consistency programmatically.
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The broader pattern here — use AI to interpret a template, generate structured output, paste back into the tool — applies well beyond Pomelli. It’s how you avoid the blank-page problem in any tool that asks you to configure identity before it will do anything useful. AI agents for marketing teams increasingly depend on this kind of upfront configuration: the quality of the identity signal you provide determines the quality of everything the agent generates downstream. The same principle applies when you’re building a skill-based content machine with Claude Code — brand values defined once become reusable inputs across every content workflow you build.
Thirty minutes of setup work in Business DNA is worth it. The alternative is generating content that could have come from any brand, then spending hours editing it toward yours.
