Manual Focus

James and Hannah go inside the messaging house for WattPlan, the cycling training app Manual Focus builds. It has six levels, from the two-word tagline Train. Adapt. down to the features, each naming the code behind it, and writing it that way caught five stale claims before they reached a store listing. They walk each level with its definition, the four readings of the tagline, the message path and routing table, the understood and consistent test, the three banned lists, the foundation, the App Store and Google Play limits, and three jobs to hand to AI if you are building a house for your own product. Read the article and get the prompts: The WattPlan messaging house, how we built it and what it does

James and Hannah go through Reddit's third-quarter letter to shareholders, published on 29 October 2026. Reddit plans a logged-in-only site and will start testing it this quarter in markets outside the US, after its search referrals fell by more than 1 million a week in October. They explain why Google is better placed than other AI engines to keep showing Reddit content. Brand teams lose a free route into search while paid teams may gain sharper targeting. The episode ends on what Reddit hasn't said, after three jobs to hand to AI. Read the article and get the prompts: Reddit plans a logged-in-only site, what it means for marketers

The second long-form Manual Focus Basics episode, and the second half of the story that began with What is marketing. James and Hannah take a finished plan to real buyers, following a hypothetical UK software start-up that sells project-profitability software to architecture practices. They separate growth strategy from growth tactics, then work through eight steps, the ideal customer profile, a wide list from Apollo, AI research and scoring with Claude, the shortlist, messages from the communication hierarchy, landing pages built with Claude Code in GitHub, sequences, and measurement, before pulling it together in SOSTAC. They cover the UK rules on B2B email, Google's sender guidelines, GitHub's terms for hosting and the mistakes that most often break the method. The start-up is an illustration, not a real company. Read the article and get the prompts: Go-to-market automation, a basics guide with Claude and Apollo

James and Hannah talk through Google's 28 October 2026 announcement that ads in AI Mode are scaling to ten countries now, with the UK, Brazil and Mexico due in the fourth quarter, and that multiturn ads have launched in the US. Google's help page says existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are eligible automatically, there's no separate opt-out, and results are reported only in aggregate. They cover why the UK launch lands in peak trading, what it means for Shopping and search teams, and three jobs to hand to AI before December. Read the article and get the prompts: What ads in Google's AI Mode mean for UK paid search teams

A long-form Manual Focus Basics episode that pulls the series together into one answer to "what is marketing?". James and Hannah start from the Chartered Institute of Marketing's definition, then follow a hypothetical new cycling helmet from the first question, is there a market, through market research, the product requirements brief, the communication hierarchy and the benefits ladder, then into the channels, the launch campaign, the creative and the PR, and finally a SOSTAC plan to run and measure it. They finish on where AI fits at each step and the mistakes that most often break the chain. The helmet and its findings are an illustration, not a real launch. Read the article and get the prompts: What is marketing, a basics guide from market fit to SOSTAC

James and Hannah talk through Google's new help page on AI review summaries in Search ads, first reported on 24 October 2026. Google's AI now writes positive-only summaries of online reviews into Search ads in the US, UK, Australia and India, advertisers can't edit them, and the page describes no opt-out. They cover how the feature grew out of a year of tests, why rule 3.46 of the UK CAP Code raises a question for positive-only summaries, what it does to brand and paid teams, and three jobs to hand to AI this week. Read the article and get the prompts: What Google's AI review summaries in ads mean for UK brands

James and Hannah update last week's episode on Meta's website-crawling terms. Meta told Reuters on 23 October 2026 that the new Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms will take effect on 20 November instead of 30 October, though the UK English preview still showed 30 October on 25 October. Meta has removed the word train, so the UK and US editions now match, but the licence to crawl and use test credentials on sites linked to your ads is unchanged and the terms still don't mention robots.txt. They cover why the robots.txt plan stands, who gains most from the extra weeks, and three jobs to hand to AI. Read the article and get the prompts: Meta's crawling terms delay, what UK advertisers should do now

James and Hannah go through the SISTRIX study published on 22 October 2026, which compared 96,418 pages to see which GEO tactics go with citations in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews. Tables of contents, Article schema, real tables and author boxes went with more citations, llms.txt showed no measurable effect, and product pages did poorly. They cover how to read the title-year finding, what it means for online shops, why small GEO studies mislead, and three jobs to hand to AI. Read the article and get the prompts: What SISTRIX's 96,418-URL citation study means for GEO work

James and Hannah talk through Claude Duet, the proactive agent Anthropic opened to a US waitlist on 21 October 2026. It runs on its own cloud computer. It messages you when it decides something needs you. It asks before it sends a message or makes a payment, but its approval list says nothing about publishing a post or editing a live page. The early users will be on personal plans that no company admin controls. So the hosts argue for writing agent rules before the invitations arrive. They finish with three jobs to hand to AI and one for you. Read the article and get the prompts: What Anthropic's Claude Duet agent means for marketing teams

James and Hannah talk through OpenAI's decision to switch on creative enhancements in ChatGPT Ads by default from 29 October 2026, which lets the system rewrite headlines and descriptions, translate copy, resize images and change landing pages, with no approval step for each version. They cover how the setting changed since its opt-in launch on 16 September, why the help centre and OpenAI's email give different dates, why the CAP Code leaves UK brands responsible for what runs, and why a duplicate campaign isn't a fair test. Then three jobs to hand to AI before the switch. Read the article and get the prompts: What ChatGPT Ads' automatic rewrites mean for UK advertisers

James and Hannah introduce Manual Focus Light Meter, the tool behind the Manual Focus AI Shortlist research, and explain why measuring AI visibility needs three things a rank tracker doesn't do. Repeated runs, because in the UK indoor cycling study an engine named the same brands across three runs of a question only 20% of the time. Separate engines, because Van Rysel appeared in 43% of Claude's trainer answers and 5% of Google AI Mode's. And 95% ranges, because Rouvy and MyWhoosh look like second and third but overlap. They finish with three jobs to hand to AI, what Light Meter can't tell you, and the next edition, trail running kit in January 2027. Read the article and get the prompts: Manual Focus Light Meter, measuring which brands AI recommends

James and Hannah walk through the first Manual Focus AI Shortlist study: six AI engines, 309 UK questions on smart trainers, training apps and smart bikes, each asked three times, for 5,562 answers. Wahoo leads trainers at 83% and Zwift leads apps at 88%, with Wahoo and Wattbike close on smart bikes. But the leader changes with the buying moment, the engines disagree on challenger brands, the same question gives the same brands only 20% of the time, and cycling media supplies over half the citations. They finish with three jobs to hand to AI and what the study can't tell you. The interactive report and a free one-page AI Shortlist card for brands in the study are on manual-focus.co.uk. Read the article and get the prompts: Which indoor cycling brands does AI recommend in the UK?

A Manual Focus Basics episode. James and Hannah explain above the line (mass-media advertising that builds memory), below the line (direct, targeted activity that prompts action) and through the line (both, under one idea). They cover where the terms come from and the origin story they couldn't verify, why digital sits on both sides of the line, what Binet and Field's IPA work says about short-term metrics, how the split looks in B2B, and who should own the balance between memory and action. Read the article and get the prompts: Above the line vs below the line marketing, explained

James and Hannah read through the new clause in Meta's Commercial Terms, which takes effect on 30 October 2026 and lets Meta crawl the websites associated with a business's products. They cover why the UK English edition names AI training when the US edition doesn't, which teams carry the exposure, what each of Meta's four crawlers does, why blocking one of them is only a partial control, and three jobs to hand to AI before the deadline. Read the article and get the prompts: What Meta's new crawling terms mean for UK advertisers

A Manual Focus Basics episode, and the foundation for our three earlier pieces on owned, paid and earned channels in the AI era. James and Hannah explain owned media (what you control), paid media (attention you buy) and earned media (what others choose to say about you), starting from Forrester's 2009 report No Media Should Stand Alone. They cover Seth Godin's permission marketing, why a social profile is closer to rented than owned, Gini Dietrich's PESO model, the UK CAP Code rules that keep paid content identifiable, and how to measure each type on its own terms. Read the article and get the prompts: Owned, paid and earned media, explained

A Manual Focus Basics episode. James and Hannah go through public relations from the start: the CIPR's definition, the disciplines PR covers, how it differs from advertising, and what makes a story worth covering, with Seth Godin's Purple Cow as the test. Hannah takes listeners through Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026 survey of 897 journalists, including the 88% who disregard pitches that miss their beat and the four things journalists value in a pitch. They cover how AI has changed both sides of the inbox, why press releases have changed jobs rather than died, and how to measure PR by whether opinion moved. Read the article and get the prompts: PR 101, a basics guide to public relations

A Manual Focus Basics episode. James and Hannah walk through SOSTAC, the six-stage planning model PR Smith created in the 1990s: Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action and Control. They cover what each stage answers, how to tell strategy from tactics, why most plans fail in the Action stage, and why Control is where a plan gets updated rather than scored. Hannah brings in PR Smith's own 2025 advice on AI and SOSTAC, that any AI-generated plan is a first draft only, and they map the stages onto the three layers of AI. Read the article and get the prompts: SOSTAC explained, a basics guide to marketing planning

A Manual Focus Basics episode. James and Hannah separate four words that marketing teams use interchangeably: strategy, the choice of who you serve and why they should pick you; a campaign, a time-bound push that carries part of the strategy; creative, the idea the audience meets; and execution, the delivery. Hannah explains three of Seth Godin's ideas from first principles, the smallest viable audience, "people like us do things like this" and Purple Cow, and they bring in Binet and Field's IPA work on short-term metrics. They finish with how to walk back up the chain when a result disappoints. Read the article and get the prompts: Strategy vs campaign vs creative vs execution, explained

The first episode of the Manual Focus Basics series. James and Hannah explain the three layers of AI from first principles: large language models and chat, agents that take a whole request and deliver it, and orchestration, where several agents run as one system. Hannah covers how a language model predicts text, why the context window matters and why models can be confidently wrong, then Anthropic's distinction between workflows and agents and its published results and costs for a multi-agent system. James grounds each layer in how marketing teams work, why the dull jobs make the best first agent jobs, and why orchestration is a leadership question. Read the article and get the prompts: The three layers of AI, a basics guide for marketers

James and Hannah talk through the five link changes Google announced for AI Mode and AI Overviews on 15 October 2026. The biggest one for brands is a test: a section at the top of some answers for the one or two official websites that can complete a task, such as a return or a booking. They cover what counts as official, who should care about Preferred Sources, why UK teams should watch the creator test rather than act on it, and three jobs to hand to AI this month. Read the article and get the prompts: What Google's new AI Mode links mean for brand websites