The Distill Playbook · No. 01

Running a marketing function with Claude, human in the loop

A step-by-step operating model for putting AI to work across the marketing function while keeping judgment, accountability and taste where they belong, with you. Ten steps, three phases, and an honest account of where it breaks.

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"AI without a human in the loop is not a faster marketing function. It is a slower brand crisis."

Ten Steps, Three Phases

The phases are sequential and the dependency is real. Fuzzy strategy in means fuzzy content out, at scale, faster than before.

Phase One · Steps 1 to 3

Codify

Write down the strategy, voice and approval rules everything else depends on. Thinking work, not typing work, and the place most implementations quietly fail.

Phase Two · Steps 4 to 7

Set Up the Layers

Four workflow layers where the work happens, research, content, campaigns and reporting, each with a clear division of labour and a named human gate.

Phase Three · Steps 8 to 10

Make It Run

Session continuity, a review loop that turns corrections into rules, and attention scaled to risk rather than volume. This is where a model becomes a system.

What's Inside

Not a prompt library, not a tool tutorial, and emphatically not a guide to replacing your marketing team.

An honest scoping of what Claude genuinely carries and what stays human permanently
The one-page approval matrix, with a blank template ready to adapt
The anchor-and-cascade content structure, one thorough review replacing five shallow ones
Six failure modes, each one committed or witnessed at close range, and their defences
A first-90-days implementation sequence, deliberately conservative in month one
Five prompt templates in the appendix, starting points rather than scripture

Claude produces, you decide

Written for marketing leaders and founders who own the function, whether that function is a team of one or a team of forty. The model scales in both directions because the principles are structural, not headcount-dependent.

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