Last month, Ogilvy debuted its Generative Impact tool—a new set of practices and techniques designed to ensure its clients remain prominent and visible in LLM-powered AI search tools.
Chatting with B&T, Ogilvy One ANZ’s chief experience officer Jason Davey, alongside his colleague Laura Stoll, Ogilvy PR’s head of strategy, Davey said generative AI and chatbots were having a “significant impact on the commercial fabric of the internet”.
In the years to come, that might sound like quite the understatement. But with more than half of Australians now using AI tools to discover products—up a staggering 109 per cent increase in just one year—brands need to navigate this new market reality today.
Generative Impact explained
Generative Impact operates on two main principles: technical discoverability and earned reputation. The offering responds to how AI engines understand content and natural language queries. This means optimising content not just for keywords, but for how people ask questions in AI agents.
Secondly, Generative Impact leverages trusted third-party sources—media coverage, reviews, influencer mentions, and social media discussions—that signal to AI that a brand is credible.
It was created in collaboration with Semrush, using its proprietary framework with Ogilvy PR’s earned media with Ogilvy One’s strength in digital experience optimisation. Together, these smarts guide the development of editorial, web content and communications, to enhance brand and organisational prominence when AI crawls, categorises and indexes content, giving brands the chance to have a seat at the table.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve all started to integrate AI into our working and personal lives. But what really got our attention was when we started noticing AI agents—like ChatGPT or Perplexity—actively referring users to businesses, products and services. We started asking, ‘Why are some brands being recommended, and others not at all?” Davey said.
For marketers, that question quickly turned from curiosity to concern. In early 2025, Ogilvy noticed several of its clients experience 20 per cent drops in organic search traffic to their websites.
“AI is becoming the first and only point of contact. And if your brand isn’t part of that recommendation, you’re basically invisible,” Davey said.
We already know that social media influencers hold significant sway over how consumers shop. Trusted recommendations matter, and now, AI search engines are the messengers. But the way they deliver answers is by trawling reviews, recommendations, and media coverage that already exist on the internet.
“The fundamentals of the internet have been created from content linking to each other and creating a network of information. Search and reputation have been built around links as an endorsement of content for authority or credibility,” Davey said.
“The LLMs recognise that if someone’s endorsing a brand on their social feeds or blog posts but they’re not linking, then there’s no commercial backing for that; it’s a genuine endorsement. So that’s been quite different to backlinking strategies for SEO, where you were constantly looking to have credible sources linked to your content,” Davey added.
Reputation has always mattered. Traditionally, though, it’s been built for audiences. “Now, we also build it for AI interfaces. It means making sure the brand narrative shows up in the right places; it’s not just backlinks anymore—it’s unlinked mentions, third-party validation, testimonials, blog posts and even Reddit threads. That’s what Generative Impact is built to navigate,” Stoll said.
Generative Impact, in Stoll’s mind, is more like “PR for the AI age,” where the target audience doesn’t only include people, but the algorithms shaping what information they receive.
One of the more surprising shifts in the LLM landscape is that it’s not always favouring the biggest brands. AI search has “a democratising effect,” Stoll said. Smaller brands or startups show up in LLM results over category giants because they’re being talked about in the right places, by the right people. That could be a mention in a Reddit thread, a review from a credible influencer or a citation in a trusted publication.
“It levels the playing field, in a way. But only if you know how to play,” she added.
The Two Parts of AI Visibility: Content & Credibility
Generative Impact’s journey is only at the beginning. Ogilvy said it is already working with several clients, though it was too early to share specific case studies. To be clear, Ogilvy is not the only agency working on adapting its PR, earned and SEO strategies to ensure its clients stay atop the pile—even within the walls of WPP.
What the agency did say is that early adopters have a “first-mover advantage”.
“There are entire categories that are still immature in AI visibility. If you move now, you’ll have far fewer competitors showing up in results,” Davey said.
“We feel uniquely qualified to provide this sort of advisory service, given our combination and depth of skills. This is a global challenge, and as a global network, we’re able to help clients beyond a local geography in this space. We’re getting a lot of interest from our international offices, affiliates, and clients,” he continued.
“This is an area that is having a radical transformation on the consumer experience, therefore it’s requiring the marketing industry to adapt and adopt a change,” he said.
In the future, Davey envisages that people will have their own personal agents follow their lives around and get to know them. We’re already seeing this with agents understanding and creating memories with individual users.
“I can definitely foresee a future where part of life is to have an agent that grows with you through childhood and teenage years and adulthood, and understands your preferences and helps you navigate the world and predict what you might need next, and those sorts of things,” Davey said.
While this might sound a little futuristic to some, in many ways, it’s already happening, and brands and agencies need to catch on, lest they get left behind.
For Stoll, it’s also about mindset. “If you treat AI like just another tool, you miss the bigger opportunity”.
The brands that learn to work with AI, not just around it, will be the ones who stay visible, relevant, and trusted.
