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Possible 2026 Roundup: Brand & AI

This year’s Possible Conference in Miami made one thing clear: the novelty of generative AI is waning. In its place is a hard mandate for agentic workflows and radical authenticity. Brands face a definitive crossroads: slide into an “Age of Slop” filled with generic digital content, or step up to a new “Golden Age of Media”.

Commanding Authority in Agentic Search

The consumer journey has fractured into a non-stop digital swirl of AI queries, social validation, and chatbots. Under the hood, consumers are starting to rely on direct, AI-generated answers over traditional web links.

This radically changes discovery. Brands must shift from optimizing strictly for keywords (SEO) to optimizing for large language model (LLM) behavior. Because roughly 75% of model training data relies on conversational, community-driven platforms, the stakes are high. When an AI agent spends tokens to solve a problem, your brand needs to be the authoritative source cited. Marketers must treat AI engines as primary stakeholders, using high-quality proprietary content to win both human and machine attention.

IP Activation: Brands as Entertainment

Consumers are starving for great stories, not thinly veiled commercials. To win in a democratized creator economy, brands must view their heritage as cultural intellectual property rather than advertising assets.

weinermobile — *Credit: iStock.com/Ward DeWitt*

Oscar Mayer turned the Wienermobile into entertainment with the “Wienie 500,” drawing 8 million livestream viewers on Fox.
Kraft leveraged its classic macaroni necklace for a limited-edition Mother’s Day jewelry collaboration.
Heinz celebrated the NFL draft’s 57th pick as “Mr. 57”.

This isn’t advertising; it’s culture—a springboard for audience participation.

Community-First Storytelling

Resonant brands build genuine communities, transforming passive observers into active participants. Content must evolve to address the actual problems real people are trying to solve.

Hoorae CEO, Issa Rae, demonstrated this with her premium TikTok micro-drama series Screen Time, prioritizing audiences through mobile-first storytelling that garnered millions of views. Similarly, Discover Puerto Rico uses hyper-local storytelling with creators, like Bad Bunny, to organically attract high-intent travelers instead of merely tourists.

The Rise of Agentic Commerce

The leap to agentic AI introduces autonomous, multi-step execution across the marketing funnel. This expands our creative canvas into Agentic Commerce.

As model costs drop, personalized AI assistants will deliver hyper-relevant, interactive ad experiences. Consumers will be able to virtually try on apparel or visualize products together in real time, driving frictionless conversions. Starmark is already implementing conversational, adaptive AI display ads for travel and tourism.

The Creative Mandate

Ultimately, brands must stop contributing to digital noise and design intelligent ecosystems that meet customers where they are. Said another way: being able to make more marketing or content more quickly with AI isn’t worth much – unless what you’re making is different, interesting and useful. Human judgment, brand authority, and creative storytelling remain the ultimate differentiators.

Get ready to explore: A dispatch from Possible 2026

Brett wrote about the AI Overload at Possible last week, but there was more to the conversation than LLMs. Here are some of my favorite tidbits from an action-packed conference.

1. Brand creative empirically outperforms pure performance creative

After seven years of tracking and measurement, MMA, in partnership with Ally Financial and Campbell’s, unveiled financial results of their Brand as Performance study. The bottom line: brand affinity creative (advertising designed to make a consumer like the brand) converted customers at a higher rate and led to longer customer lifetime value. Not only that, the study showed that sales lift in groups exposed to brand affinity creative extended for six months beyond the three-month study period, showing the long tail of work that makes prospects like you.

2. Reach is worthless, but engagement pays off

Top performing brands that are winning culture and winning at the register, like Kraft-Heinz, Tubi and JCPenney, are winning through engagement. It’s not about getting in front of the most people the most times. It’s a game of making a deeper impact by delivering things that bring joy and make people want to spend time with you.

3. Use AI to do things you couldn’t before

It’s a failure of imagination to only look to AI for ways to do what you can already do. Instead, take bigger swings at things that simply weren’t possible before. To power their Five-Star Theater holiday effort, Amazon used a customized agent to scrub through tens of thousands of reviews for the most Shakespearean takes on their products, worthy to be read by actors.

4. Everyone’s just experimenting

Even the world’s biggest companies don’t have a playbook for AI and LLMs. The current moment is all about experimentation. Just trying new things is the overriding recommendation from the theorists, marketing leaders and experts.

5. Tentpoles of marketing in the last decade are officially deceased

Before LLMs, social referral traffic to brand and publisher sites was already plummeting. AI answers and summaries are driving search referrals down even further. Video engagement is in decline, too. So stopping customers with video and driving them to your site is officially a dead strategy. It’s time to try new things and reexamine old assumptions about what works.

AI Overload at the Possible Conference in Miami

AI, AI, AI! When every booth is “AI-powered” and every keynote is “AI-driven,” it’s hard to tell who is actually doing something new and who just updated their PowerPoint template. It all started to blur together and all started to sound the same. Sifting through all the white noise, I did find some key learnings and insights that I found valuable. Starmark has long been supporters of the MMA and the Possible conference is top notch for marketing and media technology.

Here are the three biggest shifts I noticed at the conference:

The “Workforce” Shift: From Tool to Teammate

The biggest takeaway from the “Enterprise AI Agents” and Coca-Cola sessions isn’t just “use AI to create content.” It’s the move toward Agentic Workflows. When the world can be flooded with generated content, they are finding that longer form content, and premium content stands out.

Last year was about Generative AI (making things). This year is about Agentic AI (doing things).
If your team is still “prompting” AI one by one, you’re behind. The “Possible” standard is now automated agents. I like the idea of small discreet “Insta-workers” that run autonomously in the background to flag inventory or spend issues before a human even logs in. The idea you can then string them together with handoffs sounds like a more flexible way to get value over generative AI.

The “Strategy” Shift: Vulnerability & Answer Engines

There were many sessions about AEO/GEO, the move from SEO to Answer Engine Optimization (or Generative Engine Optimization – the final term is still up in the air). This is a noticeable threat to website traffic, but also has real opportunities that can be executed now to get ahead.

The fact that “AI can refute your brand marketing spin” is huge. AI prefers substance over spin, and it severely punishes inconsistency. As marketers this may be a tough adjustment, but it’s necessary.
As always, AI models are trained on data, stats, science, and Reddit/LinkedIn are important off site content that is used to train these models. If what your website says doesn’t match what real people are saying on Reddit, the AI (and therefore the consumer) will call you out. Substance is now a survival tactic, not just a brand choice.

The “Process” Shift: Agility over Planning

We have been talking about Agile for over a decade. But it’s always great to hear how others are doing and what benefits they are finding. McCormick discussed their shift to “Agile Pods” and “2-week sprints”, which highlight a massive change in their marketing department’s structure.

If it works for the audience, it will work for the brand. Instead of long plans pushed onto a platform, marketers must adapt their strategies to fit the audience’s existing behavior and needs.
Being agile lets them try new things not in the plan, test, and learn. It opened up a lot of experimentation for them they didn’t have previously.

The Bottom Line: If you had to delete every slide that mentioned “AI” and only keep the ones that changed your business goals, you’re left with:

Community over Reach (Creators/Reddit/LinkedIn).
Agility over Planning (2-week sprints).
Outcomes over Metrics (Effectiveness over Efficiency).

How Amelia Island found its unwind

It’s no secret that Florida is home to hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. But with so many places in the Sunshine State vying for consumer attention by showcasing white, sandy beaches and sparkling blue water, Amelia Island Convention & Visitors Bureau (AICVB) recognized the need to stand out within this competitive landscape and distinguish itself from the “sea of sameness.”

It was also critical to take a deep dive into the true and authentic value proposition that the destination offers while at the same time evaluate what travelers seek in a vacation.

Building the foundation

AICVB and Starmark enlisted key destination stakeholders that represented virtually every aspect of the destination—from longtime residents and elected officials to industry partners — to develop a foundational “North Star” phrase: a singular, guiding concept designed to keep every creative decision anchored in the brand’s core purpose.

Now that we had the groundwork, we employed a multi-phased testing strategy to ensure the campaign would resonate with target audiences. We began with benefit testing, identifying the functional reasons travelers choose Amelia Island — such as its uncrowded beaches and Southern charm. The second phase included various emotional positioning statements to learn how, in fact, we made them feel. The data was conclusive: the most powerful draw wasn’t just “taking a trip,” it was the promise of a total mental reset. This research-backed insight solidified our core message, ensuring the campaign was strategically informed and delivered an authentic, compelling message.

As a creative, you usually want to just go with your gut, but the testing process on this one was a game-changer. We weren’t just guessing what would work; we were using those results to spark the stories we ended up telling.
— Marlo Russom, Group Creative Director

Editorial whimsy meets Southern elegance

Starmark created the “Find Your Unwind” brand campaign to meet AICVB’s needs. The name serves as both an invitation and a promise, shifting the focus from the destination’s map to the visitor’s mindset. To translate this “Unwind” promise into a reality, the campaign visuals captured personalized moments in a high-end editorial style that feels whimsical, imaginative, and even nostalgic.

We paired the elevated imagery with a benefit-driven narrative, inviting visitors to let the ocean breeze guide them as the feeling of total relaxation takes hold. It’s a sophisticated reminder that Amelia Island is a place where you can truly “do you.”

We are so jazzed with the launch of this campaign that was built on an extensive brand discovery with our client. The lyrical messaging and nostalgic look/feel play right to the hearts of our targets.
— Dale Baron, Executive Creative Director

A multi-channel sensory experience

The campaign execution was designed to be as elegant as the destination itself, supported by a robust toolkit of assets for a mobile-first audience. The team produced a series of :15 videos tailored specifically to our primary target markets. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, these “snackable” films highlight the specific version of an “unwind” that resonates most with families, couples and luxury seekers.

The “Find Your Unwind” print ads lean heavily into the Southern charm aesthetic, utilizing lush photography and a minimalist layout to create a literal visual exhale on the page, standing out against the cluttered layouts of competing destinations.

On location and off-the-beaten path

To bring “Find Your Unwind” to life, the Starmark production team spent a week on location capturing the island’s natural beauty and unscripted moments that define the Amelia Island experience. By utilizing high-end cinematography and a soft, natural lighting style, we leaned into the elegance of the destination—from the early dawn majesty of the sun peeking through the sand dunes to the golden hour glow dappling through swaying Spanish moss.

With the launch of this new campaign, we have officially entered our new era of Southern elegance. This is a story rooted in Amelia Island’s unique charm, which is our biggest differentiator in the travel landscape.
— Gil Langley, AICVB Chief Executive Officer

A sense of nostalgia and a new state of being

By aligning consumer insights with a sophisticated brand voice, Starmark and AICVB carved out a unique space for Amelia Island in a crowded marketplace. The result is a brand identity that doesn’t just invite travelers to a destination—it invites them to a state of being. “Find Your Unwind” stands as a testament to the appeal of a true, restorative escape and carefree nature of days gone by.

Starmark’s Shift from Waterfall to Agile Drives Growth with IBM Targetprocess

As part of our celebration of 10 years of going Agile, IBM has published an article about our journey with Targetprocess, a tool we are still completely satisfied with 10 years on. Here’s an excerpt:

A critical success factor for Starmark when migrating away from waterfall and to Agile was to find the right software tool to run our business using Agile methodology. It needed to be technically savvy, but also have a great UI for our creative teams too. After piloting multiple tools, we landed on Targetprocess (by IBM). It has the perfect blend of sophistication for our developers, and user friendliness for our managers and creative teams allowing everyone to understand their workloads at a glance.

Read the IBM Case Study on Starmark here.

Starmark Shines: Earns Gold MarCom Award for FPL’s Experiential Installation

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Starmark has been honored with a prestigious Gold MarCom Award for our outstanding work on the Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) experiential installation at Junior Achievement of South Florida’s JA World.

This coveted award recognizes excellence in marketing and communications, and winning Gold is a testament to the creativity, strategy, and dedication of the entire Starmark team, as well as the visionary partnership with FPL and Junior Achievement of South Florida.

The Award-Winning Experience

The FPL installation, a key component of the JA World “hands-on” learning experience, was designed to be much more than a simple display. It is a fully immersive, experiential environment that captures the vital role FPL plays in the community, providing students with a tangible, interactive understanding of:

Rewarding Pathways: The diverse and exciting career opportunities available within the energy industry.
Energy Generation: How power is created and distributed, including FPL’s commitment to clean, sustainable energy solutions.
Financial Literacy: The importance of budgeting and energy consumption choices.

A Partnership that Powers Learning

Our goal was to create an experience that didn’t just tell students about FPL, but allowed them to feel and interact with the brand’s mission. Receiving the Gold MarCom Award validates our approach in turning complex industry concepts into engaging, memorable lessons for the next generation. We are incredibly proud of the impact this installation is having on the thousands of students who visit JA World each year.
— Jacqui Hartnett, CEO, Starmark

This recognition underscores the successful collaboration between Starmark, FPL, and Junior Achievement of South Florida, demonstrating the power of innovative design to support essential educational programs.

About the MarCom Awards

The MarCom Awards is one of the oldest, largest, and most respected creative competitions in the world. It recognizes the excellence of marketing and communication professionals, with entries judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The Gold Award is given to entries that demonstrate an outstanding standard of quality and creative achievement.

Sparking New Possibilities: FPL’s Storefront with Junior Achievement of South Florida

Nurturing a healthy pipeline of future talent is essential to an organization’s long-term success — and the Florida Power and Light (FPL) team made strong strides in fueling theirs by immersing 20,000+ eighth graders in hands-on learning fun at Junior Achievement of South Florida’s JA Career Discovery Park.

Powering Future Generations

FPL is the state’s largest power utility, with 5 million customers and 8,000 employees. When a high-profile sponsorship opportunity arose with JA World, enabling FPL to connect students‘ current educational choices to their future economic success, FPL and Starmark were all in!

Junior Achievement of South Florida prepares young people with the knowledge, ability and confidence to navigate career and financial literacy. JA World Huizenga Center at the Lillian S. Wells Pavilion is the largest JA experiential learning center in the world and has impacted more than 1.2 million students since its inception in 1959. One of the organization’s flagship programs is JA Career Discovery Park, where 20,000 eighth grade students get to explore careers in “storefronts”. Each of these room-size build outs represents a major South Florida employer or industry.

Igniting Their Interest

JA World offered FPL the ideal setting to illuminate a wide range of dynamic career possibilities — from engineering to marketing to mission-critical drone operations. Our goals: compel students to spend quality time at the installation and open their minds to rewarding energy career paths. Since each student visits all the JA World storefronts, we had limited time to make an impact.

Today’s students, as digital natives, are most at home with visual content and gamified education. Yet, the real world is tactile and dimensional too. So Starmark ideated a strategic blend of both that would stand out from all other flat, static storefronts. Leading-edge digital tech was combined with tangible FPL artifacts, like a rover and transformer, to build a unique, multi-faceted learning experience. Once we developed the strategy and installation elements, we created scale models in VR to test our concepts.

JAW105 FPL Stills Select Retouch Composite Seven High Energy Dec02

Amping Up Excitement

Our strategy and execution:

Keep it hands-on: transform mundane career information into interactive fun.
Keep it moving: short interactions and multiple stations to hold attention and interest.
Keep it energetic: gaming challenges and team activities that weren’t dry or dull.

Starting Strong

As soon as students approached our space, “Welcome! It’s going to be a high-energy day.” set their expectations. Upon entering, 360 degrees of immersive engagement surrounded them.

Seven High-Energy Installations

Each experience was interactive, engaging and fun, fulfilling our “high-energy” welcome promise.

FPL Command Center With Drone

Our mini version of a real-life FPL Command Center housed six working monitors. These included a power device status map, power grid data readouts, flight traffic, weather, drone operations, and maintenance/repair activity log:

The introductory video outlined their critical mission: a team of three students would work together to solve an urgent power grid issue.
We suspended a working drone and assigned a role to each student on the 3-person team:
- Flight operations: ensuring it’s safe to fly the drone
- Flight operator: piloting and looking for the grid issue
- Repair specialist: documenting/logging the issue to dispatch a maintenance crew

“Future Self” Augmented Reality

Discovery Park wants each child to picture themselves in future careers. We embraced that goal with an augmented reality (AR) station where visitors literally saw themselves in an energy career:

Students step up to two life-sized monitors.
AR tech dresses the user in one of four outfits matched to a role: Environmental Specialist, Data Scientist, Nuclear Technician and Renewable Energy Engineer.
Outfits are displayed in a video loop while displaying fast facts about each career.

JAW105 FPL Stills Select Retouch Composite FPL Command Center with Drone Dec02

Line Worker Photo Opp

Hard hats and neon vests worn in sky-high workplace settings: the traditional FPL line worker is among the company’s most recognized roles. Our photo opp leveraged this popular image:

We invited students to don the line worker gear and pose inside an FPL bucket truck prop.
The roofline backdrop and visual perspective trick makes it seem as if they are 30 feet up.
This photo opp was a HUGE hit with the kids!

Career Profiles

There’s a role for every student’s talent and interest at FPL and to emphasize that, we wrapped pony walls with the message profiles of actual FPL employees:

The core message: “Power your passion. Fuel your dreams.”
Walls showcased diverse careers, from Marketing Specialist to Arborist to Data Scientist, with short descriptions and salary ranges.
Creative or STEM, in office or outdoors, it’s easy to see a bright future for everyone at FPL.

Home Energy Specialist

Hot water heaters, AC, washers, dryers and entertainment systems are a staple in most homes. This hands-on learning activity transformed our eighth graders into home energy experts:

Students flipped switches in a living area vignette to see which appliances drew the most energy. The power meter steadily tracks their progress.
Once all four appliances are set to their optimal settings, users are rewarded with a success animation on the meter.

FlowOfElectricityDiagram TwoStudents 3B5A0119 web

Follow the Flow of Electricity

We flip a switch and power turns on. But how does it get to our outlets and appliances?

Our “Follow the Flow of Electricity” mural shows students the steps electricity takes: from power plant to service line to the hand hole outside their homes.
They also learn the names and purpose of all the equipment they’ve likely seen every day, without ever realizing what it was for.

“House Of Savings” Energy Usage Simulator

Now students will know why moms and dads nag us to close that fridge door or turn off that light! You’re never too young to learn about saving energy:

We updated the content and visuals of FPL’s “House of Savings” online tool to appeal to eighth-grade audiences.
They see how to optimize energy usage and lower the cost; bonus win for mom and dad!

JAW105 FPL Stills Select Retouch Composite Follow the Flow of Energy Dec02

Powering Workforce Development

Initiatives like JA Career Discovery Park are smart long-term strategies: they seed future pipeline development at early stages, sparking awareness at a formative time when children are just starting to explore their interests and talents. As our young audience matures in the next decade, they will start firming up their career path and even becoming FPL customers.

Kids who are educated, prepared to lead, inspired to learn, develop, think innovatively…that is what will power Florida’s future. Partnering with Starmark this year empowered us to deepen our support for the valuable contribution JA World makes and elevate our own impact to a whole new level.
— Juliet Murphy Roulhac, Esq., FPL’s External Director, Senior Affairs & Corporate Philanthropy

FPL’s JA Career Discovery Park Storefront was a big success and met all goals set, establishing FPL as a rewarding employer and community partner; introducing the brand to 20,000+ students; and sending each one back home with a new perspective on the rewarding possibilities ahead.

Generative Engine Optimization: Optimizing Content For AI Without Losing SEO

Content creation was once a simple practice: write, edit, submit — and watch the clicks roll in from your website.

Today, content creation is a game of acronyms. Releasing successful content means implementing AI and navigating LLMs to accommodate GEO and preserve SEO. You’re forgiven if that process feels overwhelming. Every acronym represents another moving part, another algorithm to please, and another signal to optimize. What was once a straightforward creative process has become a strategic balancing act between technology, data, and storytelling.

What Is Generative Engine Optimization?

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the deliberate optimization of a website to accommodate AI engines. These optimization steps help websites improve their ranking, and frequency of mentions, within AI-generated overviews. These same steps also help brands increase their footprint across some of the world’s most used large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

For virtually every industry, LLM models and Google’s AI search results are already replacing traditional Google search results traffic.

What Are AI Search Results?

Alongside large language models, Google’s AI search results are the other contributing factor behind many brands’ declining organic search numbers. Since Google launched AI-generated summaries at the top of search results in May 2024, these summaries have created a drastic increase in the number of “no-click” searches: when a user enters a query into a search engine and gets the answer directly on the results page, without needing to click through to a website.

With fewer users reaching your website, brands in every industry are seeking answers to the same question: how do I improve my brand’s ranking within AI and LLM results to recover some of that lost traffic?

How Can Brands Optimize Content For GEO and AI Search Results?

Here are a few deliberate GEO strategies we’ve deployed that help brands improve their presence with AI-generated summaries and large language model responses:

Page FAQs: Structured question-and-answer content increases the likelihood of being referenced in AI-generated responses and featured snippets.
More Frequent Crosslinking: Linking pages using clear, intent-matching anchor text helps AI models map topic relationships across the site.
Author Profiles: Including author bios with geographic credentials builds authority and helps language models understand content origin and relevance.
Near Me Variations in Content: Including common phrasing like “dentist near me” or “beach rentals near Amelia Island” helps improve local AI prompt matches.

It’s Time For Your Organic Strategy To Evolve.

We’re entering a particularly challenging, but opportunistic, period of organic search results. New LLM models and AI results create new opportunities for brands to rank well online, even if those brands didn’t previously focus on SEO. At the same time, brands exclusively invested in SEO must now integrate GEO best practices to remain relevant online.

If you’re ready to capture traffic across new audiences reading LLM and AI results, we’re ready to help. Get in touch today for a GEO roadmap that can connect your brand with new online users.

The future is bright at Starmark with an expanded leadership team

Starmark is excited to enter its next era with Jacqui Hartnett stepping into the role of CEO, Katy Gewartowski as President and Partner in the agency and our Founder, Peggy Nordeen, in the role of Chairman of the Starmark Board of Directors.

Jacqui joined Starmark as COO in Florida nearly 20 years ago immediately contributing her expertise in finance, operations, production as well as marketing communications. She helped grow Starmark’s business in tourism, healthcare, business/technology and education on her way to becoming Starmark President in 2010 and a partner in the agency in 2011. Active in community organizations, she was named one of South Florida Business Journals’ Women of Influence in 2021.

Katy took her first position at Starmark in its PR department back in 2001 and quickly embraced the agency’s entrepreneurial spirit — helping to create and grow a custom publishing and loyalty marketing line of business. From there she moved into senior positions in Account Service, ultimately leading the entire client support team where she has played a critical role in both new client acquisition and organic growth. Some significant contributions under her watch include the launch of several award-winning initiatives for clients like Amelia Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, Valencia College and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

About our new President, Chairman Peggy Nordeen says, “Katy knows the agency inside and out, and can harness the power of our team’s thinking to generate return for our clients and for us. In her 24 years as a Starmarker she’s been growing long term relationships, building trust and making a business impact.”

The timing of this expansion of the Starmark leadership team coincides with an exciting new partnership – with Starmark now serving as Agency of Record for Visit Florida Keys and Key West. FAU also recently tapped Starmark to lead its digital experience transformation.

We’ve also just marked our 10 year anniversary of becoming an Agile Agency and dramatically grown our performance media practice, along with launching VR projects for Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures, South Florida PBS — and another VR partner we’ll be announcing soon.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be leading this team of amazing people — many of whom I’m proud to say I’ve worked alongside for 10+ years and longer. It’s going to be an exciting new era for all of us with such incredible client partners who let our strategy and creativity shine,” says Katy.

Starmark to serve as Agency of Record for Visit Florida Keys & Key West

Starmark is excited to announce our partnership with the Monroe County Tourism Development Council as Agency of Record for brand and marketing for Visit Florida Keys & Key West. Starmark will be working directly with three other agency partners dedicated to web, PR and social marketing to define a gravity-defying future for the destination. For the full story, read the announcement from the Monroe County TDC.

As a leading agency in destination marketing, we have always greatly admired the Keys brand. To be here today representing such a beautiful, beloved, vastly unique and incredibly fun destination is a challenge and an honor. As we put together our roadmap for 2026 and the future, all we can say is that we look forward to the rest of the world falling in love with the Keys the way we have.
— Katy Gewartowski, VP, Account Service

An exciting first 100 days

The Starmark team has been busy keeping current marketing initiatives in full swing during the agency transition.

And here’s a look at the stats for those first 100 days:

Roadmapped the remainder of the fiscal year and foundations for FY 25/26
Transferred 100TB of assets into a new cloud-based Digital Asset Management (DAM) system
Created cloud-based master marketing calendar to track every effort across every channel in a way that’s transparent for all contributors
Created custom paid media dashboards and a database to track, manage and steward nine current paid media plans with 100% transparency
Secured Q3/Q4 media inventory valued at $8,483,491 and 336,230,340 impressions
Ensured a smooth transition with no disruptions to paid media presence in print, digital and broadcast channels
Beat industry benchmarks for paid media interaction, clicks and cost per visitor

A new chapter in a star-studded story

This partnership with Visit Florida Keys & Key West is a fresh opportunity for Starmark to build on its strong results and award-winning work with long-term clients, like Amelia Island CVB, and its innovation work for clients such as South Florida PBS and Boggy Creek. If you have sky-high marketing goals, and you’re looking for the right partner to help you reach them, check out our tourism portfolio and get in touch.

Time flies when you’re making great work: 10 years of Agile Methodology

July 4, 2025 marks the start of Sprint 260. Those 260 two-week sprints mean it has been ten years since Starmark first adopted Agile Methodology in 2015. That’s 260 cycles of learning and improving how we work with our teammates and clients. In that time, we’ve also celebrated 45 years as an agency, made news as an Agile Agency in the Wall Street Journal and rung in 15 years of publishing eTips. But more importantly, in that time, we’ve completed countless dozens of client roadmaps and tens of thousands of stories — every one a win, big or small.

So, to celebrate this milestone, we asked some partners and friends to share their thoughts about being part of our long-running experiment in working smarter. Here’s what they had to say:

Flexibility to change as the market changes

Our market changes every month. To work with a team that can shift priorities while keeping a big project on track is really important.
— Linda Hall, Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment, Charter Schools USA

Staying aligned throughout a project

We’ve built strong campaigns with Starmark by staying aligned, agile and focused on meaningful results. Trust grows when the process works.
— Allie Vatcher, Director of Marketing and Strategic Communications, Valencia College

Budget clarity on every deliverable

Starmark understands how to manage my marketing and project spend because they break the estimate into deliverables, which allows us to choose what we need with full clarity on the scope and final deliverable.
— Britt Williams, Senior Vice President, Digital Growth and Partnerships, ZYNLO Bank

Continuous improvement

You don’t get to 260 sprints unless the system works. But you don’t get there like this — still strong, still evolving — unless you’re doing it better than almost anyone.
— Jack Skeels, Author, Coach and Co-founder, AgencyAgile

Strategic guidance

A FABULOUS team! Starmark’s strategic approach that always goes above and beyond my expectations. They are an extension of my team, and I trust them implicitly.
— Kyle Fisher, Vice President – Public Relations, Marketing and Creative Services, NSU Florida

Trust and partnership

Working with Starmark feels like an extension of our own team. The collaboration is seamless, communication is clear, and projects move forward efficiently. We truly value the partnership and the people behind the work.
— Betsy Young, Vice President, Marketing, Michigan State University Credit Union

If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, see why and how we’ve been living Agile Methodology over the past decade.

Google Marketing Live 2025 in Under 15 Minutes

At this year’s Google Marketing Live 2025, the search leader is going all-in on AI updates that stand to change how digital ad campaigns are created, placed, optimized and managed. Translation: your team has some exciting new tools in our toolbox.

AI-Powered Ads in Search

Google is integrating ads into AI Overviews and the new AI Mode on Search. These placements aim to present ads as helpful suggestions within AI-generated responses, enhancing user engagement.

The New ‘Power Pack’

A revamped campaign suite combining Performance Max, AI Max for Search, and Demand Gen to maximize reach and performance across Google’s platforms.

AI Max for Search Campaigns

A new campaign type that dynamically crafts and matches ad creatives to search intent using real-time AI.

Smart Bidding Exploration

This feature leverages AI to analyze various signals, predicting conversion likelihood and adjusting bids accordingly, thus uncovering new high-performing queries.

Proactive AI Agents

Google Ads and Analytics will now include intelligent agents that detect issues (like missing tags) and recommend instant fixes.

Creative Tools: Veo & Imagen

Advanced generative AI for video and image creation from simple text prompts — ideal for faster, more efficient ad creative production.

AI-Enhanced Shopping Experiences

New features such as virtual try-ons and live price tracking integrated into Search for richer customer engagement.

More Granular Reporting

Performance Max campaigns now support channel-level insights, offering a clearer view of cross-platform performance.

What This Means for Your Campaigns

As your digital partner, we’ll be incorporating some of these new tools and features into your campaigns to enhance performance, improve efficiency, and stay ahead of the curve. Our goal is to ensure you benefit from the latest advancements in AI-driven advertising.

Let’s discuss how to leverage some of these new tools! Reach out to Starmark now.

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