YBM Agency Wins Bronze at the 2026 Jay Chiat Awards for AI Strategy
YBM Agency has won Bronze in the AI Strategy category for "Building the Intelligence Layer for Local Business," developed for East Coast Granite & Tile and Cabinet Connect. The recognition celebrates a customized system that brings marketing data, customer insights, sales follow-up, and execution into a more connected operation. Instead of treating artificial intelligence as a stand-alone tool, the team designed it to solve practical challenges faced by businesses operating across multiple locations.
A Major Achievement in AI Strategy
The award reflects more than adopting a popular technology. A successful AI marketing agency must understand where customers encounter friction, where teams lose time, and which decisions need better information. The project began with those questions, then connected technical capabilities to specific operational goals. Its value came from applying intelligence where it could make workflows clearer and responses faster.
The AI Strategy Behind the Award-Winning Campaign
East Coast Granite & Tile and Cabinet Connect operate in markets where customer needs, inquiry volume, and sales activity can differ by location. Information may sit across advertising platforms, customer records, reports, and communication channels. Without a shared view, teams risk slower responses, duplicated effort, and missed opportunities to understand what drives results.
The solution linked marketing performance, customer behavior, reporting, lead management, and sales follow-up in a unified workflow. Rather than treating each interaction as an isolated event, it helped connect the steps between a first inquiry and the next sales action. This created a clearer foundation for teams coordinating work across several business locations.
Automated reporting and connected customer data can make patterns easier to see. Teams can compare performance, identify bottlenecks, and adjust priorities using a more complete picture rather than disconnected reports. The objective was not to replace judgment with an algorithm, but to give people more relevant information when deciding what to improve next.
"Human creativity. AI precision."
The Future of AI-Driven Marketing
The next stage of digital marketing is likely to involve fewer disconnected experiments and more systems that share context across departments. For multi-location businesses, connecting campaigns with customer inquiries, reporting, and follow-up can help turn marketing activity into more coordinated action.
This Bronze award recognizes a strategy built around measurable business needs: improved efficiency, faster customer response, and more informed decisions. It also points to a broader direction for the industry, where AI supports people rather than replacing them.
For the YBM team, the achievement is both recognition of completed work and motivation to keep improving what technology can deliver for local businesses.