Six months ago we made the biggest decision in our 20‑year history. The response has told us everything we needed to know: it was the right one.
The response has been phenomenal
On 20th January, after two decades as Base Creative, we became exceptional™ - an agency built solely for making visionary brands visible wherever their audiences search, scroll, or ask.
The clearest proof has been the take‑off of our AI search proposition. In July we published The State of AI Visibility in the Energy Sector, benchmarking 86 UK organisations. The conversations it opened have shaped much of the work we're doing now.
There's been plenty more to celebrate. In June we moved into our new London home at The White Chapel Building in Aldgate. We marked our rebrand at London Climate Action Week. Adriana took the stage at Hero Conf, and Charlie at CopyCon.
Internally, AI now runs through everything we do - from research to our Client Brains, helping us get work approved faster and closer to your judgement, first time. As we head into H2, we carry real momentum and a clear view of where the market is going next.
A look at our key agency and AI search highlights
Six months, at pace
Base Creative becomes exceptional™. After 20 years, a new brand with a single focus: amplifying organisations driving positive change.
The AI search proposition takes off, with our first wave of AI Performance Analyses for B2B and corporate clients.
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exceptional™ takes the stage twice: Adriana at Hero Conf on paid media, and Charlie at CopyCon on copywriting in the age of AI.
We hold our biggest event to date, our rebrand celebration, combining 3 insightful talks with a fine dining and wine tasting evening.
We move into The White Chapel Building, the AI Performance Analyser goes live, and Will Gadsby Peet & Jean Kamara join.
exceptional™ rebrand celebration event
Mike Barry keynote at the rebrand launch event
Cellars & Marketing at the rebrand launch event
London Climate Action Wine event
London Climate Action Wine event
The White Chapel Building, Aldgate. Our new home.
Pitch Purpose episode 6
Adriana on the HeroConf stage
Charlie on the CopyCon stage
Iain embracing our new office
Digital marketing
in H2 2026
Where our strategists see AI search, SEO & paid, social, and analytics heading over the next six months.
Being recommended beats being mentioned
Most organisations are recognised by AI, but far fewer are understood — and fewer still recommended. Across 86 energy orgs, technical accessibility averaged 49/100 while actual visibility in AI answers averaged just 23. The winners will give AI clear, specific, well-evidenced content — the depth it needs to argue for you.
OpenAI has confirmed advertising is coming to ChatGPT, and other platforms won't be far behind — the biggest new ad inventory since paid social. Early movers get the cheapest attention, and paid will sit alongside organic AI visibility, so brands already understood by AI compound the benefit.
Until now, most organisations had no idea how AI describes them. That's changing. With tools like our AI Performance Analyser, visibility can be scored, tracked, and improved — and we expect it to sit alongside search rankings as a board-level metric by year end.
Good SEO is the foundation of AI visibility
None of the AI shift replaces good SEO — it raises the stakes on it. Crawlability, page speed, structured data, and clear on-page content are almost exactly what lets AI reach you. The difference is what happens next: AI reads and interprets your pages and decides what to say about you. That asks more of your content than ranking ever did.
AI Overviews now sit above traditional results for a growing share of queries, and users increasingly get what they need without clicking. Brand visibility within answers, featured snippets, and AI citations drive awareness even without clicks. In paid, with AI-driven bidding doing the mechanical work, advantage shifts to your signals, first-party data, and creative.
Your social presence shapes how AI describes you
A finding that surprised many: LinkedIn was the single most-cited third-party source in AI answers about the energy sector, appearing in 15.3% of responses. Social is part of the evidence base AI uses to understand and recommend you.
In B2B, employee voices continue to outperform brand channels — expect video-first, expert-led content from named people to keep pulling ahead of polished corporate posts. As AI-generated content floods every feed, audiences reward the recognisably human.
Younger audiences increasingly start discovery inside social platforms rather than search engines. Treating social content as searchable turns your channels into a discovery engine, and feeds the same clarity signals AI search rewards.
Measuring the AI-shaped journey
Buyer journeys increasingly begin in AI tools — invisible to traditional analytics until the visit lands. In H2 we're building measurement for this reality: tracking AI-referred traffic, monitoring brand visibility across AI platforms, and connecting AI presence to pipeline.
Privacy regulation keeps tightening and third-party signals keep degrading — while AI-driven ad platforms grow hungrier for quality data. Server-side tracking, clean CRM integration, and a clear value exchange with your audience are the H2 priorities.
AI in analytics is moving beyond summarising what happened towards recommending what to do — flagging underperforming campaigns, spotting anomalies, and suggesting budget moves in near real time. Faster insight, better decisions, no black boxes.
Inside exceptional™
The team, the AI running through our studio, and the experience of working with us.
Welcoming our newest team members
Our strategy and delivery team continues to grow. This half we welcomed Will Gadsby Peet as Strategic Director and Jean Kamara as Campaign Coordinator.
AI isn't just something we advise on, it's how we deliver
We're in the process of developing our dedicated and ring-fenced AI client "brains", each trained on our client's brand, preferences, and past feedback. It pressure-tests work against sign-off judgement before it reaches our clients. The result: work that arrives closer to right first time. Talk to us about how we may use this for our work with you.
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Any questions, thoughts, or want to see how AI search describes your organisation? Get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Iain Scott CEO
Thank you.
