TBWA\Australia has launched ‘Rise’, a new strategic service aimed at ensuring brands remain discoverable and recommended within AI-driven platforms. Its purpose is to help clients optimise their brand’s visibility inside large language models (LLM), such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews—much like SEO did for traditional search results.
As generative AI tools become increasingly prevalent, traditional search engine usage is experiencing a notable decline. Traditional search engine volume is predicted to decrease by 25 per cent by 2026, largely due to the rise of AI-driven search experiences and the growing dominance of alternative discovery platforms.
The launch follows the recent appointment of Lucio Ribeiro as TBWA Australia’s first-ever chief AI and innovation officer. Ribeiro led the creation of ‘Rise’, its bespoke methodology and strategic framework to ensure brands can effectively navigate and capitalise on the evolving AI-driven search landscape.
B&T sat down with Ribeiro to get insight into ‘Rise’, and understand its importance for potential clients.
“People have started using more and more large language models for search, even though Google still dominates, but it’s predicted between eight to 15 per cent of online users, use large language models every day for search,” said Ribeiro.
With a growing percentage of users now utilising LLMs, it’s never been more important to ensure brands are not only visible, but also that each brand has its best attributes displayed, and the information is accurate. This issue stems from LLM’s ability to lie confidently, depending on where and how each platform sources its information.
The strategic service is broken down into three parts. The first being simply being present.
“Are you even showing up when someone goes on ChatGPT or Perplexity or Google Gemini and searches your specific category,” said Ribeiro.
“Then the second part is, let’s say you are showing up, but maybe you’re not showing up with the best attributes of your brand, then the third step is either making sure that you are showing up with the right attributes, or correcting the attributes that doesn’t provide justice for your brand.”
He concluded with stating that ‘Rise’ is important because when people are comparing specific categories, brands want to be perceived accurately in order to give consumers the best insight into why its company or product is the best. By way of example, Ribeiro posited that users could head to an AI search tool looking for healthy food plans. But these LLMs could, in theory, present the user with a litany of unhealthy choices, lying confidently all the while. This could naturally have significant implications for brands.
But there is significant opportunity for brands that get it right.
“Brands that move now will have a true first-mover advantage”, he said.
Led by TBWA’s PR and social media sister agency Eleven, ‘Rise’ provides brands with a 360-degree audit and LLM optimisation roadmap designed to assess and elevate their presence across both owned and earned channels. From identifying gaps in brand representation and reputation, to implementing bespoke tactics that improve discoverability and ongoing performance monitoring to measure AI visibility improvements, ‘Rise’ is helping businesses become future-fit for an AI-first search landscape.
‘Rise’ is powered by TBWA’s proprietary tools and AI platform, Collective AI. Built on an end to end Gen AI suite of services, Collective AI leverages over 50 years of TBWA’s ideas and insights from more than 11,000 creative minds in over 40 countries.
