The Shipyard Makes Strategic Investment in FancyAI to Lead the Next Era of Brand Discovery

Independent Agency Executes Long-Term Business Plan to Lead Clients in the Generative Search Era

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Shipyard, the agency famous for Engineering Brand Love, announced today a strategic investment in FancyAI, a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform that helps brands strengthen visibility and credibility across AI-powered discovery environments. With this milestone, The Shipyard becomes the first agency to bring patent-pending GEO technology directly to clients.

As consumer discovery rapidly shifts from traditional search engines to AI-driven platforms, being present in AI-generated recommendations is becoming the next frontier of brand building. For people to love your brand, AI must love your brand. The platform is purpose-built to influence how brands are interpreted, surfaced, and prioritized by these systems, providing actionable insights to improve performance in generative search environments.

The Shipyard’s philosophy of Engineering Brand Love has always focused on building unshakable brands designed to outperform the market. The addition of FancyAI’s GEO technology strengthens that mission enabling clients not only to win in today’s marketplace, but to remain discoverable, recommended, and trusted in the markets ahead.

Becoming the leader in Generative Engine Optimization is a major part of the execution of The Shipyard’s long-term business plan, built on bringing together best-in-class paid, earned, and owned capabilities under one integrated model. This platform is the next critical layer of this plan, melding those capabilities with this proprietary technology to help clients navigate a generative-first future with confidence.

The investment reflects The Shipyard’s continued embrace of innovation — choosing to be early adopters and leaders rather than followers. The agency has a record of consistently investing in strategic partnerships and technology that expands its ability to deliver an ever-evolving, modern suite of products that multiply the impact of every marketing dollar invested.

“The future of brand discovery is being rewritten in real time,” said Rick Milenthal, Chairman & CEO, The Shipyard. “This accelerates our business strategy: we have always believed the agency of the future would be fully integrated, technologically enabled, and designed to lead clients through what’s next. This investment is a major step forward in delivering on that vision.”

As search behavior rapidly shifts away from traditional search engines and toward AI-generated answers, recommendations, and summaries, brands face a fundamental question: where and how do we show up when discovery no longer looks like search? This new platform was built to answer that question, providing intelligence that informs everything from earned media and influencer strategy to paid content, digital presence, and platform prioritization.

The Shipyard has begun deploying FancyAI’s technology internally and with select clients, using the technology to inform integrated scopes of work across paid, earned, and owned channels. The agency is customizing and evolving the platform to meet real-world, real-time client needs.

“Our clients don’t need agencies reacting to change,” added Milenthal. “They need partners who invest early, learn fast, and lead confidently. That’s exactly what this investment represents.”

The Shipyard’s success stems from eliminating traditional agency silos, allowing for seamless integration across disciplines and delivering smarter, more connected solutions for clients. The implementation of FancyAI further strengthens that model by uniting brand, performance, communications, and technology into one future-ready offering.

“AI search discovery is becoming the primary way brands are found, evaluated, and chosen,” said Tom Howell, CEO of FancyAI. “Most companies have no idea how they appear inside AI-generated answers — or whether they appear at all. FancyAI was built to make AI search discovery accessible, measurable, and controllable for brands. The Shipyard understands that this shift isn’t coming someday — it’s already here.”

The investment builds on The Shipyard’s recent acquisitions of TinyWins, the global feelings studio; Fahlgren Mortine, a two-time PRSA Silver Anvil Agency of the Year winner; and Turner PR, a travel, tourism, and lifestyle specialist — further strengthening its operating model.

About The Shipyard
Headquartered in Columbus, OH and San Diego, The Shipyard brings together talented individuals and organizations across the creative, communications, media, and digital landscape to grow brands that audiences can’t help but love. It is uniquely designed and organized to Engineer Brand Love through a unifying approach of paid, owned, and earned channels.

About FancyAI
FancyAI (Getfancy.ai) is a leading Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform powered by proprietary, patent-pending technology that helps brands understand, influence, and improve how they are discovered and recommended by AI-powered search and recommendation systems. As consumer discovery shifts from links to AI-generated answers, FancyAI provides the intelligence and infrastructure required to compete in a generative-first world, making AI visibility measurable, actionable, and scalable.

Media Contact:
Josh Milenthal, Marketing Director
jmilenthal@theshipyard.com
614-783-6017

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SOURCE The Shipyard