CEO & Founder
Iain Scott founded the agency in 2006, in the very early days of digital marketing, and has spent nearly two decades helping B2B and complex organisations grow through search, content, performance marketing, and brand-led demand generation. Over that time, he has worked with charities, scale-ups, global brands, and listed companies, evolving alongside every major shift in how people discover and evaluate businesses online.
His work sits at the intersection of strategy, marketing, and technology, with a particular focus on how brands stay visible and relevant in an AI-first world.
Iain is the author of two books on modern marketing, 50 Days of Social Media (2017) and Amazon Best Seller, Socialise (2024), and was a regular guest lecturer at City, University of London. He is also an active voice in the industry as a podcast host, having previously hosted Sharing Social (2020–2021) and currently co-hosting Pitch Purpose (2025–).
He is known for combining clear strategic thinking with practical execution, and for building long-term partnerships rather than short-term campaigns.
After more than four years at Aldgate Tower, exceptional™ is relocating to a brand new home… next door! It’s only a hop, skip and a jump away, but it reflects a bigger step for our agency. Over the past year, we’ve launched exceptional™, sharpened our focus on AI driven discovery, and continued to work with […]
There’s a strange feeling that comes with putting your own business in the spotlight – especially when, for 20 years, you’ve been far more comfortable helping other brands grow than talking about yourself. The day before our exceptional™ rebrand celebration, I genuinely wondered whether we’d made a mistake hosting something so ambitious. A full room […]
After 20 years as Base Creative, we’ve rebranded as exceptional™. Here’s why, what’s changed, and what it means for the organisations we work with.
Google’s search experience is changing – fast. Iain Scott explains how AI Overviews and AI Mode are reshaping search, and what your business needs to do to.
In our new video series, our team explains the role of AI can play in your digital strategy, starting with Iain Scott, Director of Growth at exceptional™.
When were the first commercial solar panels installed? The noughties? The ‘90s? If you guessed the ‘80s, you’re half right… but half wrong. Boston-born inventor Charles Fritts installed the first solar array on a New York City rooftop in the 1880s. Fritts’s panels weren’t just a science experiment. They were a genuine attempt to commercialise […]
We see it all the time. Your company is spending money on a digital marketing campaign – Google Ads, social media, email marketing, SEO and more – but you just aren’t seeing the strong return on investment that you were promised. In this article, I will explain why the marketing model used by most businesses […]
In the early 1900s, Hollywood was making its mark as the home of moviemaking. Aspiring actors were flooding the streets, small studios were consolidating into industry giants, and the once small LA neighbourhood’s population was growing rapidly. By 1923, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler had funded the construction of a lavish residential development nearby. […]
The digital marketing flywheel is a model which will help your business win more work by leading people through distinct phases, each with their own marketing activities and audience: the See stage, the Think stage, the Do stage and the Trust stage. But the buyer journey isn’t always linear. People don’t always see your service, […]
