When it comes to creating memorable tourism work, we always put our heart into our home state. Starmark’s creative efforts in partnership with the Amelia Island Convention and Visitors Bureau and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE) brought home six awards from the 2022 Florida Governor’s Conference Flagler Awards Ceremony, including Best in Show and four of their top honors — “The Henry” award.
Created by VISIT FLORIDA and named after pioneering developer and industrialist Henry Flagler, the Flagler Awards honor stellar tourism marketing that helps maintain Florida’s position as a top travel destination.
A Best of Show and Several More Wins for Amelia Island
There’s a lot to love about Amelia Island, Florida, and our marketing efforts made sure to spread the word to both consumers and the meetings market.
Every month, we delivered Amelia Island eye candy to the inbox subscribers in a series of New York Times Great Getaways Emails. This campaign earned Silver in the Direct Marketing category.
Our three “Henry” winners for the Amelia Island CVB included the Amelia Island Meetings Brochure, which lured meeting planners back to the island post-Covid by showcasing the destination’s ample outdoor venues, amenities and hospitality. This stellar meetings brochure also won Best in Show.
Also taking home a Henry were our series of four Instant Experience Travel Guides showed the different facets of Amelia Island, including family travel, arts and culture, romance, and spa and wellness. And finally, the Amelia Island Event Ads were recognized with a Henry for combining video and storytelling to promote the island’s signature happenings.
“We appreciate the recognition our marketing efforts have received from VISIT FLORIDA and our peers, and we are proud of the work we’ve produced with our creative partners at Starmark.”
— Amy Boek, Chief Marketing Officer of the Amelia Island Convention & Visitors Bureau
An Award-Winning Reunion for PIE Airport
A timely and touching PR effort earned Starmark and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE) The Henry award for Creativity in Public Relations. Inspired by an unexpected cross-country friendship formed during Super Bowl® LV in Tampa Bay, Starmark and PIE, with support from airline partner Allegiant, planned a super reunion.
This activation went from the airport to throughout the destination, and local and national media picked up the story and ran with it.
“We are honored to receive such a prestigious recognition in the competitive and innovative Florida Tourism industry. I am very proud of our airport team and our partnership with our agency, Starmark.”
— Jeff Clauss, Airport Air Service Development and Marketing Director for St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport
WEBINAR SERIES: Ways to Prepare Your Business for Web3 and the Metaverse
Starmark has joined forces with the Miami-Dade Mayor’s office and Bizhack Academy for Season 6 of #BizHackLive’s Digital Marketing Masterclass series, “Ways to Prepare Your Business for Web3 and the Metaverse.” Hosted by Dan Grech of Bizhack and produced by Brett Circe of Starmark, these live, interactive webinars will offer tips and tools from industry experts to help business owners navigate the next big wave of digital marketing. Register for the free four-part series below!
Masterclass 6.1: How Brands Are Rewriting the Rules of Marketing in the Metaverse
From a company’s look and feel to its voice and tone, learn everything you need to know about brand representation in the virtual world in the webinar series’ first session.
Guests
Franchesca “Cesi” de Quesada Covey
Partner @ TheVentureCity and Tech Innovation Advisor @ Miami-Dade County
Currently at TheVentureCity, Cesi invests in early-stage companies and becomes an extension of a startup’s team by providing strategic growth insights and capital. She also serves as Tech and Innovation Advisor to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. Before joining TheVentureCity, she drove cross-Facebook company strategy development and built and scaled business development teams supporting Internet.org, SMB commerce, and crypto efforts – Novi and Diem.
Jay Miolla
Managing Director @ The Cuttlefish, Inc.
Part strategist, part creative and part producer, Jay has been on the forefront of immersive tech for over 15 years, inventing and launching bleeding edge digital experiences for major brands. Jay is motivated to make the seemingly “impossible”, very possible and to prove that this medium will truly change the world and the way in which we interact with it. A frequent speaker on the topic of AR/VR/MR, Jay is happy to share his knowledge with anyone interested in learning about the space.
Jacqueline Jones
Head of Strategic Partnerships – Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging @ LinkedIn
As Strategic Partnerships Lead for Global Inclusion at LinkedIn, Jacqueline’s role is to unlock significant economic opportunities for diverse groups via thought leadership, partnerships and new product offerings. She creates synergies between business partners to open new opportunities, products and markets. She is known for her collaborative approach and skilled leadership of cross-functional teams. Her areas of specialty include: business development, product management, strategic planning, market research, sponsorship design, and content marketing.
Masterclass 6.2: The Financial and Legal Implications of Web3 for Business
Going beyond the hype of NFTs and cryptocurrencies, this session will explore the practical business implications of Web3 with industry powerhouses.
Guests
Brett Malinowski
CEO @ WGMI Media
Brett Malinowski is an NFT entrepreneur that has established himself as a pioneer within Web3. With over 100K subscribers on YouTube, he has devoted most of his efforts educating on the early nuances of NFTs while showcasing the web2 business potential for viewership. He is the founder of WGMI media, one of the first media sources to focus exclusively on web3 and NFTs. Brett has had continued success with NFT brands like Magic Mushroom Clubhouse and NFT Academy that has been a central hub for creators, builders and NFT enthusiasts all over the world.
Kimberly A. Prior
Co-Chair, Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology Group @ Winston & Strawn LLP
Kimberly is a leading financial services regulatory attorney, advising financial institutions and other businesses with respect to legal, regulatory, and corporate matters. She has extensive expertise advising clients in the distributed ledger, blockchain, and digital assets sector.
Masterclass 6.3: How to Engage Employees and Recruit Talent using the Metaverse
How did companies adjust to quarantine? Can virtual reality actually help with talent recruitment? Get these questions answered and more at this engaging third session.
Guests
Angela Antony
Founder & CEO @ Scoutible
Angela Antony is Founder & CEO of Scoutible, the first gamified predictive professional metaverse designed to help anyone find and achieve their purpose. Antony spent 9 years at Harvard studying psychology, law, and business with a focus on labor market policy. She then worked at the White House zeroing in on one issue – more than 50% of all new hires fail because the most accurate and unbiased hiring criteria known to exist—personality and cognitive strengths—are never measured in the hiring process. Antony founded Scoutible to bring the power of psychology and science to hiring.
Brett Circe
Chief Digital Officer @ Starmark
With all aspects of business and branding now touching mobile, social and apps, Brett ensures that client strategies and tactics integrate seamlessly in the digital realm, in real time. As an internet pioneer, Brett won his first e-commerce website award from Yahoo! in 1995. He has served as president of three technology companies: TKOnet, OmniPilot Software, and most recently, FanWise, a social-reward technology for which he holds two patents. He likes to talk about AR/VR/MR and the Metaverse, Mobile Commerce, Advertising, Apps and anything latest, greatest, newest, best.
Masterclass 6.4: Case Studies of How To Do Business using Web3 and the Metaverse
Real-life case studies. Failures and success stories. New technologies. The series’ grand finale live session will teach practical tips and tools to take your business to the next level.
Guests
Dr. Muhsinah Morris
Director of Virtual Reality Project @ Morehouse College
Dr. Morris is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the VR Project, “Morehouse in the Metaverse”. She believes VR provides a pathway for creating inclusion in society for the neurodivergent through immersive educational experiences that more specifically target vocational rehabilitation goals. She is affectionately known as Dr. M.O.M. (Molder of Minds) by all her students. She continues to mold the minds of educators and students globally in the Metaverse. Her future is authentic transformation of the educational system for our future leaders using immersive technologies in the Metaverse. More recently, she founded Metaverse United, LLC where she helps people find where they belong in the embodiment of the internet called the Metaverse.
Tommy Farr
Founder @ Metaverse Hospitality Consulting Group
Tommy Farr went to school for Hospitality and Business at FSU before graduating on to the St. Regis Atlanta to further train in the hospitality industry. From studying wine in Switzerland to working for Michael Mina to traveling the world consulting with the best hotels, Tommy maximized his knowledge within the hospitality world surrounded by some of the best teachers. When the pandemic hit, a new passion within web3 and NFTs took over and Tommy wanted to find a way to combine hospitality and web3. Metaverse Hospitality was born and the first hotels in Sandbox were built.
Nicholas Romeo
Sales Director @ Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures
Hospitality/Tourism executive with over 30 years experience. Nick oversees all sales at the attraction including events (3rd party resellers, youth operators, DMC’s and meeting planners), development of education programs, and expanding new educational areas and exhibits within the park.
Weather-triggered creativity beats winter forecasts for Amelia Island
After a successful welcome back for travelers as pandemic restrictions eased, in winter of 2021, Starmark and the Amelia Island Convention and Visitors Bureau wanted to find a way to inspire spontaneous getaways for travelers in winter-weary northern cities. The answer was an award-winning weather-triggered digital campaign that outperformed all estimates for media performance.
How to avoid getting iced out by other coastal destinations
With travel advertising ramping back up on the heels of pandemic travel restrictions, Amelia Island needed a smarter way to start a travel conversation to avoid getting drowned out by larger coastal destinations hocking the same old sun and sand pitch. The team needed an approach that was more targeted and more incisive to beat the heat from competitors.
A cool insight drives an even cooler execution
The driving insight for this campaign came from team members from the northern and midwestern states about the low points of winter. You know, those days where you can’t imagine it getting any colder — until it does.
Tapping into the visceral experiences of winter weather and the mindset of wanting to escape from slogging through slush or being cloistered in the house, our team concocted a tiered campaign approach that dialed up the escapism as temperatures dropped in DC, Philadelphia, Boston and New York.
On any day where daytime temperature estimates dropped to a certain point, our standard campaign creative was replaced by the first stage of our weather-triggered ads. And on days with snowfall, a second creative iteration dialed up the appeal of a blue-sky getaway on Amelia Island.
It’s not every day that you see creative assets that are this eye-catching. I’ve worked on hundreds of creative builds in my career, but these really stood out. It’s the first time we’ve been able to build a format in such a personal way that takes a consumer through the entire journey end-to-end — brilliant strategy.
— Padsquad
Both creative approaches were tailored for winter-weary mindsets to grab attention and then pay it off with a quick Instagram-highlights-style tour of experiences awaiting travelers on the island.
Blue skies for the win
This is one of those campaigns where a simple human understanding won the day. We’re thrilled to see results that it worked even better than we expected.
— Dale Baron, Starmark Executive Creative Director
We knew the campaign was something special, but it performed even beyond our expectations. Our media partner reported engagement metrics more than 8x the benchmark performance for similar placements.
Between the end of December 2021 and end of March 2022, the two scrollers and the stories-style placements delivered combined impressions of over 3.1 million with engagement scores of 4.2%, 9.2% and 7.2%, respectively. All on a budget well below what competitors were spending during those months.
The approach clearly resonated with travelers, too, leading to a significant uptick in Amelia Island visitation during late winter and spring. And awards show judges also chimed in with a series of wins — two local gold ADDY awards, a district-level American Advertising award, an Adrian Award and a Hermes Award — for this clever, human-centric, weather-triggered campaign.
Capturing a Real-World Adventure in VR to Share With Travel Trade
A REAL-WORLD ATTRACTION CAPTURED IN VR: POWERED BY STARMARK
The Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures team tapped into Starmark’s virtual reality expertise to re-create the experience that Boggy Creek offers in a semi-scripted experience, sharing the breathtaking beauty of nature, including wetlands and wildlife, in an immersive VR experience.
Virtual reality can create entirely new worlds. But it can also bring the real world into a virtual one, making it possible to share unique, real-world places and geographies with those who have not been there in person.
With a compelling and innovative way to share the spirit of adventure they provide their guests even before their guests arrive in the Everglades, the Boggy Creek team gained a new sense of confidence and a new way to grow their business.
SHARING A REAL-WORLD ADVENTURE, ANY TIME, ANYWHERE
Tour operators and the travel trade are an important audience for Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures. They book entire buses of guests and recommend the park to hundreds of people traveling from all over the world. Most of these professionals have never been to the park, including many located in Europe, making it difficult to give them a familiarization tour. To help them understand the full Boggy Creek experience — and share the excitement and adventure with prospective guests — Boggy Creek sought a virtual experience that would bring it all to life by putting them right in the middle of the action. And to honor their time, we had to deliver it all in just a few minutes.
“The ability to give a tour operator in Germany or the UK a personalized tour while we are sitting in our office back in Florida is amazing.”
— Margie Bryan, Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures
The aim was to capture the thrill of whisking across the water as you spy turtles, birds and other wildlife in and around the sprawling walls of grass, encountering nature’s predators — including the American Alligator — from the safety of Boggy Creek’s U.S. Coast Guard-inspected airboats. Beyond the main attraction, Starmark showcases the breadth and depth of experiences visitors could choose. These included a seminole native village, gem and fossil mining, a baby alligator pond, the onsite barbeque restaurant, tiki bar, large pavilions, and the latest addition to the park, the butterfly encounter.
VIRTUAL REALITY AND 360° EXPERIENCES
Starmark created a VR experience that showcased the tours and activities Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures creates across the headwaters to the Florida Everglades.
Participants in VR can free roam explore the park, and hop on an airboat to enjoy a 2 minute scripted adventure showcasing everything the attraction has to offer.
In addition, the sales staff can meet with travel professionals in the UK and Germany in VR to give them a personalized tour of the property and explain everything a guest can do while in the park. These real-time interactive sales demos far exceed anything that Boggy Creek has done in the past with video or Zoom meetings alone.
“Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures is forward-thinking in their marketing and sales to the trade, and preparing for the metaverse now will give them a huge leg up on the competition in the future.”
— Brett Circe, Chief Digital Officer, Starmark
FUTURE WORLD-BUILDING
Phase one of the VR attraction was launched at the IPW trade show in Orlando, Florida. Future phases will continue to bring more Boggy Creek experiences into the virtual world. Prospective visitors will be able to explore, ask questions, buy tickets, and even be hosted as a metaworld in the Metaverse for guests around the world to enjoy 24×7.
Webinar: Expert perspectives on the Metaverse for marketers
Starmark is hosting an online panel discussion with these industry experts in VR to explore the Metaverse possibilities for marketers. Join us to explore the possibilities, perspectives, examples and questions that come with this emerging world.
Part strategist, part creative and part producer, Jay has been on the forefront of immersive tech for over 15 years, inventing and launching bleeding edge digital experiences for major brands. Jay is motivated to make the seemingly “impossible”, very possible and to prove that this medium will truly change the world and the way in which we interact with it. A frequent speaker on the topic of AR/VR/MR, Jay is happy to share his knowledge with anyone interested in learning about the space.
Global Head of Virtual Reality, Go-to-Market & Content Partnerships @ HP
Joanna is an award-winning Hollywood and Silicon Valley media executive with a track record of launching cutting edge content and technology to drive revenue, audience engagement and brand love. She currently leads HP’s initiatives for Go-To-Market and Location Based Entertainment for Virtual Reality. Joanna is passionate about supporting Creators and building out the Metaverse and XR Content Ecosystem. Joanna is executive producer on Double Eye Studios’ “Finding Pandora X,” winner of Venice Film Festival Best VR Experience and SXSW Audience Award for Virtual Cinema Spotlight. Joanna has been listed as “50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment,” “Top 50 Original Voices in VR,” “Top Women in Media: Game Changers,” and more.
Chris believes that Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies will profoundly disrupt the way in which humans learn, play, work and socialize. The implications for shared experiences via extended realities will impact nearly every facet of our lives. Chris was an early adopter of modern Virtual Reality in 2013, I became active in the VR developer community to prepare for the impact immersive technologies will have on society. Ranked by Onalytica as a Top 100 influencer in both AR and VR, he keeps a close pulse on the social, educational, artistic and entertainment spaces of the VR, AR, XR movement.
With all aspects of business and branding now touching mobile, social and apps, Brett ensures that client strategies and tactics integrate seamlessly in the digital realm, in real time. He maximizes the effectiveness of big ideas to achieve client goals and objectives. He investigates online opportunities in every advertising and marketing program. As an internet pioneer, Brett won his first e-commerce website award from Yahoo! in 1995. He has served as president of three technology companies: TKOnet, OmniPilot Software, and most recently, FanWise, a social-reward technology for which he holds two patents. He likes to talk about AR/VR/MR and the Metaverse, Mobile Commerce, Advertising, Apps and anything latest, greatest, newest, best.
A leading national public research university teams up with a leading advertising agency to achieve its goal
Starmark helped the University of Florida break into U.S News & World Report’s “Top 5” for public universities.
Finding a new fanbase
When you have a storied history of winning college football, basketball and baseball national championships, plus producing dozens of Olympians in everything from swimming to soccer, how do you change your reputation of being known as a “sports” school?
The University of Florida (UF) faced that challenge. Everyone knew the Gators, but what people didn’t necessarily know was that it was a leading national research university — discovering breakthrough solutions in agriculture, artificial intelligence, medicine and many other disciplines.
With a new brand platform that captured the essence of the university’s “Momentum,” UF enlisted the help of Starmark to roll-out the brand campaign; developing a variety of creative assets and finding the right media placements that would create game-changing results — all with the ultimate goal of breaking into U.S. News & World Report’s “Top 5” for public universities.
Bringing the brand to life
We began by developing an integrated media strategy that targeted U.S. News & World Report voters including higher education influencers and peers, along with government entities and elected officials. The plan was to shift their perception of UF in industry publications they consumed daily, as well as unique placements that would capitalize on their penchant for college sports.
We created an entire library of videos, display ads, podcast, print, emails and social units to amplify the Momentum story.
Business
Arts & Medicine
Agriculture
We also created a microsite that leveraged the new brand elements — from colorful graphics to tone and voice — that offered a rich user experience for all types of audiences; complete with micro interactions and animation to engage the viewer.
Making the Grade
Starmark’s partnership with UF did in fact contribute to the university moving into the “Top 5” — a prestigious honor that puts UF up there with some of the most well-respected brands in higher education. With a passion for higher ed marketing and a few Gator alumni on the Starmark team, this achievement was indeed a win-win.
Creating 100K new Play+ fans during playoff season
Starmark teamed up with Sightline Payments to create more than 100,000 new Play+ accounts during four months of NFL playoffs.
How?
Well, this success story started with a few simple insights and duking it out on the gridiron of data.
Winning Aspirations
Play+ is Sightline Payments’ proprietary gaming technology product, a FDIC-insured reloadable account to fund sports betting and other gaming activities, as well as daily spending. To date, this was the company’s largest effort to create new Play+ customers and re-engage lapsed account-holders. But to determine how many and where, we had to crunch a ton of data.
A Data-Driven Media Plan
We created a data model, based on sign ups over the last three football seasons, to determine how many new accounts we could expect organically. Then we applied the media plan and budget to the model to predict how much lift the campaign would provide. Finally, we identified a control market where no media would be placed to measure the accuracy of our model.
Our goals were to create new account sign-ups and re-engage accounts with no activity since last football season. This resulted in a two-layered media plan balanced based on a wealth of data to deliver the largest predicted return on ad spend.
Insights gave our creative a tight spiral
For the prospecting effort, the team used four key triggers from our consumer research as the basis for our concepts: illusory skill effects (feeling smarter/like a winner), the visceral biological rush of winning, being at the center of the action and instant gratification.
We tested a variety of concepts with audiences that mirrored our media audience to determine relative performance. The top performing concept, Get in the Game, was ultimately selected for production based on its clear articulation of being part of the action and receiving instant gratification for the win.
“It feels good to tap into the excitement and fun of sports betting. This campaign made us part of the conversation this season. And the sign-up numbers show that.”
— Courtney Zell, Sightline Payments VP of Marketing
Creating hundreds of media placements with a single shoot
Throughout the process, creative and media collaborated closely on the campaign idea and the shape of the effort. So by the time we had the concept nailed, we also had a complete view of how many individual master ads (16 total), variations (plus another 32), refreshes and retargeting versions (add another 80 ads, if you’re still keeping count) we needed to get the job done.
That intel allowed us to plan a wall-to-wall one-day shoot to capture still images, gifs and video to bring to life the instant gratification of our Get in the Game concept.
With the help of our friends (and wizards of both practical and digital effects) at Diamond View, we shot our two wall breakthrough scenes in single takes using custom-made destroyable props.
“I’ve never sweated so much on a shoot day. Pure nerves. We wanted it to feel completely real, and the only way to get that is to have the players come through a real wall. We did rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal to get the timing, the reactions and the marks for the talent absolutely perfect. Because once we destroyed the prop wall, that was it.”
— Jacob Edenfield, Starmark Group Creative Director
Two different sub-crews coordinated schedules throughout the day to capture six different variations of our master videos, while shooting hundreds of campaign images to give the effort enough variation to stay fresh throughout heavy runs on social, in display and through connected TV.
A game-winning touchdown
The campaign was the largest success to date for Play+. In addition to creating more than 100,00 new sign-ups, we saw a double-digit increase in the percentage of existing accounts who bet on games using Play+.
“This felt like our introduction to a much broader national audience. We’re very proud of how this effort came together.”
The fans loved the campaign, but so did the referees. This effort took home a Silver ADDY and a Gold Hermes award from our industry peers. Most importantly, this campaign delivered serious returns on ad spend. Thanks to our media model and smart placements, this still ranks as the most efficient new account sign-up media effort Sightline Payments has run.
Generating charter school enrollment leads for the 2020-2021 year
Charter Schools USA and Starmark worked together to carry out a successful integrated lead-generation marketing campaign that contributed to a 63% increase in student enrollment for the 2020-2021 school year. We were able to reach this milestone during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the need to adapt was critical to our success. The campaign’s paid media plan included the latest digital marketing trends and gave the brand a strong presence that was optimized for 11 markets throughout the Southeast.
The Assignment
Over the course of the last several years, Charter Schools USA had experienced a rapid growth and expansion. They transformed from a smaller network of schools in South Florida to an education powerhouse with nearly 100 schools serving some 75,000 students in the United States.
Enrollment marketing tactics were mainly executed by individual schools without a formalized digital strategy. With Fall 2020 around the corner, Starmark was tasked with creating a consistent, unified approach to marketing that generated credible leads and applicants for more than more than 40 schools. Florida markets included Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Myers and Palm Beach, while out-of-state consisted of North Carolina and Louisiana.
Our Paid Media Approach
The Starmark team elevated Charter School USA’s marketing strategy with a media-driven, lead generation umbrella campaign that unified the creative for each school, while still highlighting their individual benefits. The creative was also updated over time to stay agile and adapt to any challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, like mobile learning.
Media Plan
Using an omni-channel digital approach, the paid media strategy focused on marketing tactics reaching parents at the right time and place. The campaign was optimized to drive awareness, lead generation and ultimately enrollments. Each digital campaign also included a remarketing strategy, following the lead funnel through to enrollment.
Paid Social Media
Each school had an individual Facebook page, which enabled the Starmark team to promote key differentiators within the all paid social ads. Call-outs like free tuition, world language programs, extracurriculars, STEM, WISH, performing arts and college prep helped the schools stand out and caused parents to stop scrolling.
In-feed ads began as Carousels and eventually were evolved to Dynamic creatives, which optimize the message and visual to generate a personalized version for the user. Each ad directed users to pre-filled lead-gen forms that captured relevant information, putting users in touch with the online admissions office.
Starmark Media monitored the performance of each creative daily and collaborated with the Creative Team to provide insights on how to further enhance the campaign to prevent burn out and drive more leads.
Paid Search
Paid Search campaigns reached parents who were in the consideration phase and were actively searching for keywords related to schools in their county, including charter, public and private schools options.
Through the Google Ads platform, these campaigns helped generate more qualified leads by strategically targeting those who are most interested in the schools’ offerings the moment parents were searching for education solutions for their children. The ads directed to each market’s landing page to collect each user’s information for follow up interactions.
Display Ads
A display campaign generated awareness and provoked brand search, supporting all channels and driving traffic to the individual markets’ landing pages. The display ads targeted parents on multiple devices, following through on the lead generation strategy of the campaign as a whole.
Grand Opening Campaigns
Charter Schools USA continued its growth with two recent grand openings in the state of Florida: Winthrop College Preparatory Academy and Innovation Preparatory Academy (InPrep). It was important Starmark capture the brand essence of what each school was about. The team created Facebook Instant Experience Ads with longform storytelling that was the perfect way to introduce a new school to a new audience.
In-market radio spots and billboards were also utilized to reach parents beyond a digital landscape. The Starmark team set up 90-second interviews with InPrep’s principal and a 15-minute Public Affairs Show. The boards were strategically placed close to the school in high traffic areas, to serve as both directional and informational assets.
Grade A Results
The campaign ran from March-October of 2020. Overall, we garnered 11,435 leads from our efforts. Throughout the lifetime of the campaign, we were able to generate over 60,400,000 impressions with an average blended click-through-rate of .67% and an average cost per lead of $59.49. When the 2020-2021 school year arrived, enrollment numbers for participating charter schools increased by 63%.
Starmark’s marketing efforts helped create cohesion among all the markets; what was once sporadic individual campaigns became an aligned umbrella initiative with a central digital media strategy. In turn, more parents and students gained an interest, applied and enrolled, and gained an education that will create a brighter future for us all.
6 things we’ve learned after using the Oculus Quest 2 Virtual Reality headset for over a year.
It’s hard to believe, but we’re already in our second year of everyone at Starmark using an Oculus Quest 2. We distributed the headsets in late 2020 to assist us working remotely and as a thank you for working under the pressures of a pandemic. Since then, all new hires have also received a Quest 2 as part of their onboarding.
One of the great things about working at Starmark is that we all feel like family, and the team really missed seeing each other in person while we all sheltered in place. These virtual reality (VR) headsets changed that, allowing our team to have meetings that better represented the in-person interactions and communications we were used to before the pandemic. Suddenly, our get-togethers again included eye contact, high-fives — even clapping — and more importantly, no interruptions.
Now that everyone has been meeting in VR for over a year, we decided to take a look back to see what we learned, what works and what doesn’t.
But first, the backstory
The Starmark Innovation Lab always kicks the tires on new technologies to understand marketing applications for our clients. Augmented reality and virtual reality were no exception.
We have been developing 3D renderings of products and packaging since the 1990s. In 2014, our first foray into augmented reality in for SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment was a huge undertaking, long before AR frameworks and toolkits existed. We learned a lot from that experience – and gained a lot of recognition for it, too.
We had also experimented with Google Cardboard for ourselves and our clients, giving them out to understand a simple implementation of VR. By 2017 we got the Oculus Rift to explore how to take our many years of 3D and AR experience into a dedicated virtual reality device. During our experimentations with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, one of the major drawbacks was that both devices required a powerful PC. So when the Oculus Go came out in 2018, we saw the ability to bring these immersive experiences to the masses on an inexpensive platform. At our holiday party that year, we demonstrated a huge Augmented Reality project for the MIA airport, and gave away an Oculus Quest Go as a door prize to get people excited about it.
Launching our current world of VR
March 2020: the U.S. shuts down for the Covid-19 pandemic. As an Agile organization, this really didn’t affect our ability to plan or run work for our clients. Most of the tools we use on a daily basis were already in the cloud. The kinesthetic act of writing user stories in an Agile roadmap migrated to the cloud, and the team didn’t miss a beat.
The mission of the Lab was now to identify ways we could maintain our company culture when nobody could see each other in person. Google Hangouts only gets you so far in a creative environment, so we started looking at business meeting software on the Oculus Quest (version 1 of the headset). Like any burgeoning industry, there were a lot of people trying to elbow into this space.
Over the summer of 2020 we tested out Bigscreen, VR Chat, vSpatial, Spatial, Immersed, MeetinVR, AltspaceVR, Alcove, Mozilla Hub and probably some others we are forgetting. It was a lot to sort through and run test meetings with, but the experience was full of lots of learning and a good bit of fun. What we discovered is that every platform had its strengths and weaknesses, and many of the strengths in these platforms weren’t exactly what we needed at the time. For our needs, we decided that Spatial would probably be the best.
Spatial was a good fit for us when we were getting started in virtual reality
Spatial was a good fit for us when we were getting started in virtual reality
Spatial was a good fit for us when we were getting started in virtual reality
Oculus Quest 2 announced
September 16, 2020: the Oculus Quest 2 was announced by Facebook with a starting price that was $100 less than the Quest 1 when it launched. What an incredible price point for a faster and lighter free-standing wireless headset. Suddenly, this Lab experiment was looking like it was going to become a “reality” at Starmark.
After making the decision to go all-in on VR for the staff, it turns out sourcing 45 headsets during Fall of 2020 was not as easy as we’d expected. It was a newly released product, with order limits at major retailers, even with a corporate account. But through a series of incremental orders, we were able to secure enough headsets for the entire Starmark team. Now we just had to get them delivered without spoiling the surprise.
Throughout the pandemic, Starmark has been sending monthly care packages to the team to keep us all connected. In November 2020, we decided the next care package, scheduled for December, would be the VR headsets for everyone. We made a small welcome book to go with it, which included some customized onboarding instructions and an invite to meet in Spatial for our first Agile Sprint Retrospective in VR.
Care package #7, including the Oculus Quest 2
A typical Agile Sprint Retro, which we hold during the last hour of the last day of each two week sprint, goes like this — we review the work we accomplished that sprint so the rest of the company can celebrate the success. We also do announcements like birthdays, anniversaries, new business wins, client updates and the like. Then we “retro” the sprint, and everyone at Starmark has an opportunity to introduce any topic on an index card to describe how we can run the next sprint better. This process is at the heart of being a learning organization. We’ve been doing it for more than six years, and we’ll never stop. Because as things change, we always want to do better — forever.
Our 2020 retros in traditional video meeting software were fairly sedate affairs. Everyone still participated, but the experience certainly lost a little of the excitement of our in-person retros. Well, our first retro in VR was certainly a return to form for the Starmark team. Each time a new person appeared in the retro room, everyone already in the room hooted, hollered and laughed, giving hugs and high fives. Several simply couldn’t stop laughing about how cool it was. Then the next person appeared, and and the same ritual repeated itself…for the first 15 minutes. It was great, and everyone really enjoyed it. Once we all got acclimated, we were able to conduct our retros just like we were in person, showing the work, doing the announcements, and then everyone got to type a note card and stick it on the wall in VR, as usual. The excitement was back. The engagement was back. The connection was back.
And that’s why we’ve been doing our Agile Retro in VR ever since. And because of the great experience, we’ve moved several other meetings to VR — including our February 2021 company meeting, which you can see here:
Over a year later, what have we learned?
Well, as a learning organization, it makes sense to start by asking questions. So we conducted a staff survey, and here is what Starmarkers had to say about their experiences over the last year and change.
1. Using VR beyond work
Over half the staff said they use VR for more than work meetings at Starmark. Other uses mentioned include gaming, exercise, entertainment, meditation and Netflix/movies.
2. What do people like most about virtual reality?
Even though people are working remotely, they love seeing their colleagues in meetings. It’s almost like being together in person. Everyone is more focused and engaged because there are less distractions in VR. They love feeling so immersed. It’s a fun way to work, and it adds an element of excitement. Discussion and chit-chat are way better in VR than a video meeting.
3. What do they like the least?
For slideshows and presentations in VR, the clarity of small text really suffers and can be hard to read. Anything that lasts more than an hour can get uncomfortable when wearing the headset. Also, there is not a very good way to take notes in VR. Forgetting to charge the headset before a meeting can mean you have to be tethered during the meeting. And, there’s the issue of motion sickness. It can take a while to get your “VR legs,” but there are things you can do in VR to prevent motion sickness. Overall, we learned that everyone progresses at their own pace. Some team members had no issues whatsoever, others are taking a long time to get used to this brave new world.
4. Some additional insights we didn’t expect to uncover
Some people are more engaging in virtual reality than they are in the real world. Their personality just comes through better. That was certainly an unexpected finding. Watching someone experience VR for the first time is always exciting, and the Starmark team has certainly found some great uses for the tech. There are some very cool apps that put you into the shoes of someone else, which really changes your perception and gives you empathy. Not only that, several have experimented with ways to combine AR and VR to create a seamless experience.
5. Where do we think virtual reality is going for our clients?
Virtual reality seems like an obvious application for education and travel, and there will be a lot more done in these areas soon. Being able to transport a client into an environment to showcase our vision is a much more effective way to show a big idea — especially for things like activations, trade shows and events. VR in fitness and social spaces is probably going to grow as well.
Inside a VR snow globe for our holiday party prep.
6. What apps do we use for VR meetings today?
A few months into 2021, we started to realized we’d outgrown what Spatial could provide for us. New meeting apps started to appear, some with far superior functionality. We switched to EngageVR around March, which has a lot of features that support online meetings — custom environments, custom objects, spatial audio, participant controls and a whole lot more.
We started to invite our clients and some prospects into virtual reality meetings with us. We hosted meetings for about six different clients last year in VR in industries including education, travel, healthcare and B2B.
We also signed up for the Engage developer program, and our development team — which has been using Unity to develop for AR and VR — is now up to speed on deploying our objects and environments in Engage. Development for the Oculus Quest 2 is an area that the team enjoys as they learn new skills in a platform they not only enjoy, but can showcase to the rest of the staff at Retro too.
Facebook then went all-in, renaming itself to Meta in honor of its goal to build the metaverse. We are all fluent in VR and ready to be on the metaverse journey with our clients.
Let’s get together in VR on Star Beach!
Let’s get together in VR on Star Beach!
Let’s get together in VR on Star Beach!
Want to have a meeting in virtual reality?
Contact us to set up a meeting in virtual reality. We have solutions for education, healthcare, travel and B2B ready to go, and can design, create and build any solution in virtual reality that can be imagined. We love exploring big ideas on this big new platform.
Big digital and creative ideas bring home major wins at this year’s American Advertising Awards gala
This year’s awards gala proved quite a haul for the Starmark crew, with a total of six big wins for Amelia Island, Play+ and our Starmark VR Company Meeting. Here’s a look at the work that won.
Amelia Island Weather Triggered Ads take home two Gold ADDYs and Best of Interactive
The big winner of the night was our Amelia Island Weather Triggered Ad Campaign for Amelia Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. This clever campaign extension triggered high-engagement, cheeky ad units when the weather in Northeast markets dipped. These dynamic units offered an invitation to get out of the snow, slush and cold in favor of clear blue skies. The effort netted two category Gold ADDYs for web advertising and data-driven media. Best of all, this entry walked away with the show-wide Best of Interactive honors, thanks to its unique use of data to drive the creative and media effort.
It was truly a thrill to see this work win this year. I’m so proud of our team for creating something that was such a perfect marriage of audience insight, data and sheer creativity
Back in 2021, Starmark hosted our first company meeting completely in virtual reality. And at this year’s competition, the effort takes home a Gold ADDY for industry self-promotion. You can read all about the experience — or just watch the video, like the judges.
Bringing our team back together safely during a global pandemic was a treat, and we’re honored that the industry recognized the innovation and spirit that make our team unstoppable.
Jacqui Hartnett — President, Starmark
A Silver ADDY goes to the Play+ Football Launch
In 2021, we launched an ambitious fall effort to entice sports fans to try out Play+, the payment platform tailor-made for online sports betting. In addition to more than 100,000 new sports betting accountholders that we won over this year, apparently the awards show judges like the work, too.
I’m so happy to see this campaign recognized. It was awesome enough to be part of this year’s football season excitement. This win just brings it all home.
Brett Circe — Chief Digital Officer, Starmark
About the American Advertising Awards
The American Advertising Awards are the largest and longest running creative competition in the advertising and marketing industry. With over 30,000 submissions each year, taking home the competition’s signature ADDY award is a high honor. Entries that win at a local level are then judged again at a district and national level. Work that places at all three tiers of the competition is universally considered the year’s best of the best.
6 Tips for Avoiding Nausea in Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality — especially on the Oculus Quest 2 — can be fun, entertaining, collaborative and productive. But, it’s none of these things if an intense session in a VR environment makes you feel like you’re gonna spew all over your actual environment. Yes, just like traditional motion sickness, nausea in VR is a real thing. So the team at Starmark put together 6 tips you can use to prevent nausea for a more enjoyable virtual reality experience.
Before You Begin
If you start to feel nausea when in virtual reality, STOP IMMEDIATELY.
Just like sea sickness, you cannot simply “press on through” it. We’re now into our second year working and meeting in VR at Starmark, and this was a lesson a few of our team members learned early in. In fact, if you try to press on once you feel sick, you are actually training your brain to think that the VR headset causes nausea. Eventually, just the act of putting it on — or even just looking at it — might cause your brain to trigger those feelings.
What Causes Nausea in VR?
When what your brain sees, hears, smells and feels are not in sync.
Normally I see just fine, but in VR things are “blurry”
My head is not turning, but, in VR I am “looking around”
I am standing still, but in VR I am “walking”
I am seated, but in VR I am “standing”
I am inside, but in VR I am “outside”
While knowing the cause of something doesn’t always help you cope, it’s helpful to gain a bit of knowledge anyway. The good news is that there are tips you can use to immediately reduce nausea so that you can have an enjoyable experience in virtual reality! Let’s review our tips for preventing nausea in virtual reality!
1. Set Your IPD (Interpupillary Distance)
Interpupillary Distance, or IPD, is the distance between the center of the pupils of your eyes. The lenses of VR devices — like the Oculus Quest 2 — allow you to adjust the lenses in the head mounted display to closely match your own IPD.
If your IPD for rendering is set to a value smaller than reality, it makes the world seem bigger, and vice-versa. Not only that, an improperly set IPD can causes the images in your headset to seem blurry or out of focus.
You can adjust the Oculus Quest 2 to better match your personal IPD.
IPD Range
Lens Spacing Setting
61 mm or smaller
1 (narrowest, 58 mm)
61 mm to 66 mm
2 (middle, 63 mm)
66 mm or larger
3 (widest, 68 mm)
There is a free App on the app store called “Eye Measure”. Point it at your face and it will calculate your IPD.
2. Ensure Your Headset is Comfortable
In addition to IPD, ensuring that the headset is adjusted for clarity and comfort is also paramount. If what you are viewing is not sharp, or, the headset is causing discomfort, this can also cause nausea.
The Oculus Quest 2 is more adjustable than you might realize. The top strap should support the weight of the headset with the crown of your head if you adjust the velcro tab. You can also pivot the swing arms on the sides of the headset to get a close face fit and proper angle for comfort and clarity. You can also try the spacer provided for people with glasses, even if you don’t wear glasses. Several Starmarkers who don’t wear glasses have commented that using the spacer has helped them, regardless. Lastly, a 3rd party Quest 2 strap can reduce the strap pressure and create more balance on your head.
Try to pivot the headset. You can also try using the glasses spacer — even if you don’t wear glasses. You an also try 3rd party head straps which can be a lot more comfortable.
3. Look With Your Head, Not Your Hands
One of the first things you learn before you even put on a VR headset is how the controllers work. However, using the joystick to “look” around will move the screen view in front of your face to the left and right, which creates a disconnect with your brain. Looking around by moving your head is more natural.
TIP: If you need to look around in 360°, you can sit in a swivel chair, or, stand inside your guardian.
4. Teleport Instead of Walking
“Walking” with a controller can also create a disconnect with your brain. After all, you are not really walking, but in VR it looks like you are. Regardless of what your eyes are seeing, your inner ear can also feel that you are not walking. Try to Teleport instead, which transports you from a spot to a new spot without walking. Many popular apps in the Oculus store offer these types of comfort settings that allow you to adjust how you turn and move in VR.
TIP: You can even “blink” when you teleport to reduce motion sickness even more.
5. Stand IRL When You Are Standing in VR
If you are seated in real life, but standing and walking around in VR, it can cause a disconnect in the brain. Standing in both environments creates alignment. When combined with the tip above of looking by turning your head, standing gives you 360° of freedom to look around versus the more limited options of looking and turning with a controller.
TIP: you can “swing your arms” while walking in VR to create a more natural connection for your brain.
6. Ensure a Comfortable Environment
Using VR can raise your temperature. Certain VR activities can even give you an intense workout. Lower your AC if needed, and pay attention to your breathing. Slow, steady breaths can make your body more relaxed.
Including a fan for air circulation — especially when you are doing an “outdoor” VR activity — can trick the brain into thinking you are outdoors enjoying a nice breeze, reducing nausea even more.
Get Your “VR Legs”
Just like a fledgeling seafarer finding her sea legs, it can take some time to adapt your body and mind to VR. Not every tip above will work for everyone, but the good news is that with just a few minor adjustments, you can have a much more enjoyable experience in VR. Here’s how to get started.
Practice these tips in a short session, then end the session on a positive note.
Next session, try to go a little longer.
Eventually, you will have no problem with longer sessions in VR and look forward to having a more enjoyable experience every time.
Building Audience Awareness for Mobile Eye® by 7Signal®
Starmark created a strategic media plan and comprehensive marketing campaign for Mobile Eye by 7SIGNAL that would reach a B2B audience of IT professionals, from network engineers to C-level, in order to build awareness of the capabilities and benefits of automated digital endpoint monitoring with Mobile Eye.
The Challenge: Making Mobile Eye Top-of-Mind
Mobile workforces, fulfillment centers and hospitals are just a few of the enterprise organizations that rely on Wi-Fi to keep their thousands of devices and workers connected. When even one of their digital endpoints loses a connection, the effects can be monumental, even dire. Effective digital endpoint monitoring can prevent this, and that’s where Mobile Eye comes in.
Lost productivity due to network issues can have a trickle-up effect, first affecting the worker, and then becoming a Help Desk ticket. As it becomes a user experience issue, it reaches the IT Manager until it escalates to the CIO, the Director of IT and ultimately the Vice President of IT as a cost issue.
7SIGNAL needed a plan that would reach and speak to all of these audiences and decision-makers. Likewise, healthcare, warehouse and manufacturing industries had historically been the primary markets for Mobile Eye, so we needed to nurture these top-performing markets.
The Solution: Help the Audience Visualize
The Starmark team developed the “Connect the Dots” concept, which would work hard as the first touch point, getting the Mobile Eye name and credentials in front of our B2B audience as well as give them insights into what’s at stake. This concept focuses on the network oversight Mobile Eye provides as it helps enterprise companies maintain thousands of wireless connections in order to sustain productivity and staff satisfaction.
Prospecting ads provided the big picture, conveying the purpose and benefits of Mobile Eye in a concrete, creative and compelling way. Retargeting ads included compelling proof points, such as the ability for the IT department to reduce downtime by 43% and spend 59% less time troubleshooting when they implement Mobile Eye.
Refinement Through Testing
To bring this idea to life, the campaign uses a graphic that symbolizes a system of workers and endpoints. Through testing we learned that viewers immediately got the symbolism of what we were trying to depict and appreciated how the graphic quickly communicates complexity and connectedness. Testers also expressed a preference for copy that was direct, clear and concise.
Using Testing to Optimize the Campaigns
We performed preference testing on headlines, taglines, images and compositions during the concepting phase to guide us as we refined the creative. We focused on a specific demographic that mirrored our target audience as we learned what resonated with them.
Mobilizing the Audience
After the launch of the campaign, we saw an increase in qualified inquiries requesting information, scheduling a demo, requesting information and completing a form to receive downloads, such as the infographic.
The 7SIGNAL sales team also reported a noticeable increase in “first meetings,” which is important because 70% of first meetings end up in a demo or trial, getting them that much closer to a closed sale.
