AI brand visibility does not decide whether AI recommends you. Cultural impact does, according to a study of 1,069 brands by Manifest. Alex Myers, Founder and CEO of the cultural impact agency, shared the findings at aiblLIVE London 2026.
His case is that AI judges brands much as people do. So the work moves upstream, from GEO tactics to brand strategy, with one message across every channel. Here is what the research showed.
All figures as stated on stage by Alex Myers, from Manifest’s own research.
Because AI weighs why a brand is worth choosing, beyond how often it appears. In Manifest’s UK data, TalkTalk had the most broadband conversation and coverage but was the least recommended. Virgin, with similar visibility, was about the most recommended. Findable brands such as Tesco Mobile and Pizza Hut also trailed.
Your friends didn’t check your backlinks. They didn’t check what words you used when you asked the question. They understood you and the context.
Alex Myers, Founder and CEO, Manifest
Myers says most of them do not earn recommendations. He found no link between an llms.txt file and AI recommendation. Self-serving best-of lists get read but not trusted, because AI spots the bias. And attempts to game the models fail, because AI adapts in a way a fixed algorithm does not.
It uses Cultural Velocity, a framework built to measure cultural impact. Four pillars, imprint, magnetism, momentum and acceleration, sit over 57 signals calibrated by category. In cohorts of ten, the top three brands for cultural velocity were 2.6 times more likely to be recommended. For generic questions, that rose to nearly 6.5 times.
Ecover asked people to wash their clothes less. Manifest’s Rewearing is Caring campaign turned the pile of worn clothes on a bedroom chair into a lifestyle idea. Ecover’s cultural velocity rose, and its AI recommendation score followed about three to six months later, ahead of brands with far bigger budgets.
If a human recommends it, AI probably will too. If we think culture first, the machines will follow.
Alex Myers, Founder and CEO, Manifest
Alex Myers is Founder and CEO of Manifest, a cultural impact agency working in the UK, the US, the Nordics and Australia. He spoke on the Growth track at aiblLIVE London on 20 October 2026.
If your brand shows up in AI answers but rarely gets picked, this is the research to read. The full PDF goes deeper than this page, in the speaker’s own words.
For CMOs, brand directors, heads of digital and SEO leads. Six pages, about a nine-minute read.
