TBWA Launches Rise To Boost Brand Visibility Inside LLMs

TBWA\Australia has today 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.

Lucio Ribeiro led the creation of Rise, leading the development of its bespoke methodology and strategic framework following his recent appointment as TBWA Australia’s first chief AI and innovation officer.

"The motivator, the why [for Rise] is because the things changing," Lucio told LBB. "There are some estimations that about 10% of everyday searches are happening using some of these tools."

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 disruptive ideas and insights from more than 11,000 creative minds in over 40 countries.

"There are three propositions here," Lucio said of Rise's impact on clients.

"One is discovery. Are you showing up? The second is qualification. Are you showing up with the right attributes? The third is optimisation. Maybe you're showing up, but not showing up with the best attributes. What can we do to make sure you're showing up with the best attributes?"

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% by 2026, largely due to the rise of AI-driven search experiences and the growing dominance of alternative discovery platforms.

"We believe there's a big strategic proposition around editorials, around the right publications," said Lucio. "Each one of these tools – Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google – they have their own rules on what they believe is relevant. So for example, for a trade publication, some of these tools believe that you have more authority whereas other tools rely much more on communities like Reddit, and some other tools rely much more on their own websites."

Led by TBWA’s PR and social media sister agency Eleven, Rise provides brands with a 360° 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.

Kiefer Casamore, executive general manager TBWA\Melbourne and Eleven, said, “AI is reshaping how people discover, evaluate and interact with brands and services, however most CMOs, marketers and corporate affairs have no idea how they’re showing up in this environment. Traditional SEO no longer guarantees brand visibility. If a brand isn’t mentioned by an AI assistant, it’s invisible in that interaction.”