Backing our own Brave with the Mental Av-AI-lability Index
Backing our own Brave with the Mental Av-AI-lability Index
Bet you didn't think we could talk about AI and still be original, different and brave, right? Well, we’ve done it (permission to boast, momentarily). Introducing Babel’s latest research report, in partnership with Sapio Research. The Mental Av-AI-lability Index is a first-of-its-kind matrix, exploring the intersection between human memory and AI recommendations. With a goal to discover whether it’s more important for a B2B brand to be remembered by buyers or recommended by machines, we binned-off ‘safe’, survey-led research and took a swing at something different.
While I sound confident now, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, the process from ideation to delivery carried a fair few hair-raising moments. We were doing something we’d never done before - combining survey data with AI availability to create an index grid across Babel’s key sectors (Telco, Cybersecurity and Enterprise) AND their dozens of sub-sectors. I’d be lying if I said doubt or anxiety never crept into our minds. We were all nervous about how it would actually work and if it would even land.
But that uncertainty is pretty much the definition of bravery. Being unsure and doing it anyway; having the courage to recognise a great idea and find a way to bring that story to life. And thank goodness we kept moving forward, because what a goldmine of data we unearthed!
Practising what we preach
The first thing you’ll hopefully notice about the Mental Av-AI-lability Index is that it isn’t just another dusty, gated PDF. It lives natively on our website, as a fully searchable, easily navigable HTML experience. I’ll be extra transparent here and admit this wasn’t easy; it took up hours of the team’s time, sorting out kinks and smoothing out the experience. But it was important to do. As we’ve learnt from our last piece of research (The Brave Benchmark) and from discussions with SEO experts like Alice Widger on our podcast, gating content and research is a pointless exercise. Ironically, if it were gated, it wouldn’t even be picked up by LLM models and would add nothing to our own AI visibility.
This isn’t the only reason, though. It’s a huge piece of work - and it needed to be in order to explore each of the indexes. But because it spans three distinct industries, with each broken down into a further six categories, presenting it as a PDF would also make it a nightmare for readers to locate their specific area of interest. We didn’t want people to get bored crawling through data that wasn’t relevant for their sector or brand.
The end result? UX that is just as good as the research itself. It allows audiences to find exactly the data they need, on their own terms - whether they are human or an LLM.
The big question: Mental vs AI Availability
Now into the data.
The core aim of this research was to understand how AI has impacted brand awareness, with B2B buyers increasingly relying on AI during the buying and scoping process. So, before we could start getting crazy with the indexes, we first wanted to understand how much that process was actually changing:
- Mental Availability: 87% of B2B buyers still chose a familiar vendor, proving that B2B buyers still heavily prefer buying from brands they have already heard of, like the ‘Rule of Three’ suggests. Brand equity, and therefore, mental availability, is still a significant factor that influences people.
- AI Availability: But of that 14% who did choose a new vendor, 32% used an AI tool to find that new vendor. That makes AI the biggest source of discovery, having already overtaken traditional search and analyst relations.
The message here isn’t that Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is replacing brand awareness, but rather that brands now need to be strong across both dimensions. AI is how they find you; your brand is why they trust you.
So, where to start? People or LLMs?
Unfortunately for already stacked marketers, it's not about going all in on optimising for GEO, at the expense of brand activity, or vice versa. It’s very much a double edged sword - requiring a multi-faceted approach to win in both areas.
On the LLMs, let’s be clear, while GEO and SEO have some similarities, GEO is far more nuanced, and it doesn’t respond to any of the usual ‘hacky’ tactics floating around out there. Instead, it synthesises multiple sources and runs dozens of concurrent searches - so if you want to ‘win’ at GEO, you need to be focusing on where you’re showing up to increase your chances of being cited.
Enter, PR.
While the temptation can be to rip up the playbook when anything new comes along (aka GEO), in this case, DON’T. If you’ve invested years in building a strong base of brand awareness through PR, well done. You’re about to reap the rewards, thousandfold.
Quality PR and original thought-leadership are perhaps more vital than ever. Consistent appearances in well-regarded media with a positive market perception, combined with a healthy social media presence and differentiated content is the ‘recipe for LLM success’, if you like. It’s not about rerouting your efforts, it’s about doubling down on what’s already working and doing more.
Navigating the GEO Gold Rush
You’d be forgiven for getting lost in the bog of GEO advice out there. And it's this lack of clarity that has directly contributed to the gold rush of ‘snake oil’ opportunists that you can see all over the internet, overselling complex, so-called ‘revolutionary’ hacks for GEO.
Let’s clear that up. There are NO quick hacks in GEO. In fact, rather than rewriting the rulebook, GEO is actually levelling the playing field by eliminating those ‘quick fixes’ we’ve come to associate with SEO. It’s forcing brands back toward foundational marketing. Ultimately, good PR translates into good GEO.
And it’s proven something that we already know - real-world validation matters. Having your brand validated by a trusted, external source is worth its weight in gold. A fact we discovered following our recent win for Technology Agency of the Year at the PRMoment Awards (shameless plug there, sorry not sorry!). Not only did we get a lovely trophy and a great night out, but we also saw a direct, measurable spike in our GEO citations, website visits, and interest from prospective clients. The LLMs validated our authority through this third-party recognition, and in return, surfaced us in more responses.
Long live human content
Okay, let’s address the obvious question. Can you use AI to produce tonnes of content to increase your chances of being cited, purely by flooding the algorithm? This might temporarily cause a spike in your website traffic, yes, but it'll slump, possibly damage your trusted position with AI and your audience, and cause both to literally switch off.
That old game of taking a high-ranking webpage, spinning it, and making it ‘SEO optimised’ is dead. In the world of GEO, the actual quality of the writing matters far more than the quantity. To attain true GEO success, you need original, differentiated content. And for that, you need a wealth of proprietary data, unique insights, and perhaps most importantly, compelling human storytelling to inform it.
Moving the needle
So what can you actually do about all this?
Say you spot yourself on the index, and you’re a Sleeping Giant with aims of becoming a Titan, well, here’s how to get started:
- Prioritise human-first content: Focus on good PR and search-based content that is actually by and for humans, not algorithms.
- Develop proprietary expertise: Create your own, distinct brand identity with a foundation of expertise, and ideally original data.
- Originality: The old SEO game was all about imitation. But the GEO game requires you to do the exact opposite. Come up with something genuinely new and differentiated.
Simply click to read the full Mental Av-AI-lability Index.
Curious to see how your brand shows up vs. your competitors, get in touch with the team.
