Case study · Manyone
From No. 5 to No. 1, ahead of Designit, Accenture Song, McKinsey and frog
Manyone, a strategy and design company, was fifth in strategic design when it started with 3RD. Four months later it was first, with the biggest gain of the 37 organizations tracked in the category.
Baseline April 24 to May 24, 2026. Latest measurement July 18 to August 17, 2026.
The challenge
Shortlists are now written by AI, and Manyone could not see its place on them
- Buyers increasingly start their research in an AI chat. A company that AI does not name can be left off the shortlist before anyone visits its website.
- Manyone's analytics could not show how often it was mentioned, which competitors were recommended instead, or how its position changed by category, market and language.
- It competes with McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte, firms that have built up far more coverage over many years.
What Manyone did
One internal team, no new agency
Manyone set up 3RD to cover every market and language it sells in. Then its own team read the data, chose the work, and did it.
- 1,470 prompts in five languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, and English
- 12 markets across seven countries, with nine topics and 37 competitors and comparable organizations tracked
- Prompts split into Must-win, Core and Foundational, so the team knew which answers mattered most
- Daily measurement for more than 100 days
- Completed tasks included structured organization data, a Wikidata entity, and an FAQ structure
No new department or agency was needed.
Visibility in strategic design
Manyone overtook every larger competitor
| Organization | Apr/May | Jul/Aug | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manyone | 18.0% (No. 5) | 26.9% (No. 1) | +8.9 pts |
| Accenture Song | 20.8% | 26.7% | +5.9 pts |
| Designit | 21.0% | 24.2% | +3.2 pts |
| frog | 20.4% | 20.1% | −0.3 pts |
| McKinsey | 20.7% | 19.6% | −1.1 pts |
| Deloitte Digital | 7.3% | 6.2% | −1.1 pts |
By topic
Gains across every topic Manyone tracks
| Topic | Apr/May | Jul/Aug | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic design | 18.0% | 26.9% | +49% |
| Industrial design | 1.7% | 3.3% | +94% |
| Brand design | 1.6% | 2.2% | +38% |
| Service innovation | 2.6% | 3.0% | +15% |
| Customer experience | 1.5% | 1.6% | +7% |
Manyone is now also named for 17 buyer questions where it did not appear before. Its sentiment score is 86.9, with 19 negative mentions out of nearly 3,000.
What it showed
Four lessons from Manyone
- Positioning is increasingly shaped by what AI answers, not only by what a company publishes.
- An internal team can move its position with the expertise it already has.
- A specialist firm can outrank much larger competitors within its category.
- A single check is misleading: daily visibility ranged from 1.4% to 8.5% within the same month.
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