Being in love with the possibilities of creativity her whole life, Ann Marie Almariei (known to her friends and colleagues as ‘AMA’) has refused to limit herself to any one medium, industry, or even reality. For over 20 years, she has helped global agencies and clients alike navigate and succeed creatively in traditional, digital, and virtual spaces.
Always looking to challenge herself, she currently works as Fractional Marketing Director, providing marketing direction, guidance and leadership for several startups and small businesses who cross over the web2 and web3 space. AMA doesn’t consider this to be a job or a career, but rather the best entrepreneur boot camp anyone could ask for.
One notable client includes Memik, a Web3-driven, AR-powered content creation platform. AMA is partnering with Memik’s founders to provide strategic direction for overall marketing efforts, directing key team members on execution, and managing external vendors to deliver campaigns and build funnels that optimize results. In addition, she is helping to lead a music-driven NFT project for a Memik NFT project offshoot.
AMA also runs workshops and strategy sessions to help companies develop Web3 strategies through use of blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse. An early advocate of NFTs, she draws on her 16+ years of virtual content creation in Second Life to help guide those who are new to the space.
Prior to being a Marketing Director, AMA served as Micro-Content Director at VaynerMedia. She worked directly for the forward-thinking serial entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuck, co-managing a portfolio of 72 brands. Labeled an “unfathomably deep repository of industry knowledge” by her co-workers, AMA pushed the boundaries of social in the digital space. She certainly made a lasting impact; after she left VaynerMedia, Gary Vee remained in close contact to help her build her first startup under his guidance.
Before Vayner, AMA served as Director of Content and Strategy at Devries Global, and as Creative Director at 360i. She spearheaded social strategy and content development for a wide variety of P&G brands like Olay, Pantene, and Fekkai and developing integrated digital campaigns, and websites for clients including Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, and JCPenney. She helped the retail giant become the first major brick-and-mortar store to make their entire catalog available to shoppers within Facebook, and also helped the soda giant navigate Facebook’s radical transition from being a mere social network to a Web-based ‘operating system’.
AMA also helped guide Coca-Cola’s foray into the Web3 world of Second Life, helping them become smarter marketers in virtual environments. Calling AMA an “excellent detailed creative” and “a joy to work with”, the CMO of Coca-Cola marveled at her “vast knowledge and experience in the use of virtual worlds.”
At the time, AMA was already a Second Life vet and not just as an avatar. In her previous role as Creative Director at Cheil Worldwide—in which she was hired to lead the digitalization of the agency—she built Cheil’s office in Second Life. It was popularly used for global client meetings. She also took the digital creative reins of the Samsung US and Global accounts, leading the building of Samsung’s social and digital presence and playing a not so small part in the growth of the electronics giant into the top selling manufacturer of television and smart phones in the world.
AMA continues to defy boundaries—and cross borders—using personal disruption to foster her own creative growth in the age of digital disruption. She is following through on her plan to live in a different city every couple of years (having moved from New York to Boston to Nashville to Las Vegas since 2016).
A highly sought-after marketer and strategist, AMA was once described by a mentoree as the “living manifestation of the internet.” You can often find her mentoring early web3 professionals, speaking in twitter spaces, and as a presenter and contributing panelist at web3 events.
