Big AI Energy

If you’re not first you’re last.

Being at the forefront of AI and technology in the advertising workspace is essential for productivity and success. Knowing this, I’ve made it my goal to be a resource for my teams when it comes to AI.

AI SQUAD CREATiVE LEAD.

Thrilled to share that I’ve been tapped as the lead creative for all things AI at MRM Detroit. Our agency launched specialized “Squads” to drive focused growth across key innovation areas, and AI is mine to champion.

This means I’m training teams, fielding questions, and shaping long-term strategies that keep us ahead of the curve.

THE HACKATHON.

For MRM Detroit’s AI Hackathon, I joined Team T313metry as the creative partner on a cross-functional team of developers, UX designers, and project managers. Our challenge was to help Juniper Loop (a fake wellness brand) use AI to build more meaningful, sustained customer relationships across the wellness lifecycle. All within 48 hours.

We created a prototype for a Lifecycle Communication Engine — a consent-aware marketing decisioning system that identifies churn risk, recommends retention treatments, drafts branded creative, simulates outcomes, and requires human approval before deployment.

My contribution sat at the intersection of art direction, UX thinking, AI prompting, and product storytelling. I helped shape the visual identity and creative direction for Juniper Loop, explored AI-generated mood boards and assets through Adobe Firefly, shaped email design concepts, and helped translate the team’s technical build into a polished narrative judges could quickly understand. I even created a custom model image agent, trained on the Juniper Loop brand energy, to generate consistent stylized content to create assets more efficiently. 

In the hackathon, our AI-assisted workflow helped reduce time to first working output from 40 hours to 10 hours and shortened iteration cycles from 10 hours to 1–2 hours. More importantly, the project showed how a creative can be a force multiplier on a coding team — helping translate technical capability into a product people can actually understand, use, and get excited about.

Why This Project Matters

This project proved that creative direction is not just the “make it look good” layer — it is a strategic unlock for technical teams.

On a team of coders, I helped create clarity and a foundation for visual direction. I translated abstract functionality into a product people could understand, use, and believe in. I helped define the tone, visual system, customer experience, and presentation story so the technology had a purpose and a personality.

For developers, that meant having a clearer target to build toward.

This hackathon reinforced the value of pairing coders with creatives early: when strategy, design, and engineering move together, teams can prototype faster, make smarter decisions, and build products that feel both technically strong and emotionally relevant.

Secondly, the collaborative effort across the board was inspiring, and we found that using the AI as a team member, rather than something that will just complete the job for us was the key to success.

Nice comments from nice people:

”Thanks for showing up and bringing your A game for the Hackathon! I'm really proud of what we were able to build in a few days and think it will help not only all of us individually, but MRM Detroit as a whole. Having your creative designs in there really differentiated our team from some of the others' presentations.” Chad Wilson, Director, Technology

”Huge kudos to Karlee for her amazing work during the hackathon! She went above and beyond to help drive the project forward, bringing creative ideas, strong collaboration, and a relentless focus on delivering results. Her ability to quickly adapt, solve problems, and execute was incredibly impressive. The final outcome exceeded expectations and would not have been possible without her dedication and hard work. Thank you for making such a meaningful impact and helping make the hackathon a success!” Shelby Moceri, Program Manager

CarBravo Illustrations

Saving on time and cost, I pitched an AI solution to build an Adobe led system to help our art directors create custom illustrations more efficiently. (See the CarBravo page for more info)

American Heart Association: AI Icons

Using an Adobe Custom Model I was able to create an assortment of assets representing individual personas.

AI Caramba!: The name of our training Events.

In this video, I’m demoing Adobe Firefly as part of a larger effort to empower every corner of our agency to create smarter, faster, and more imaginative work with AI.

Fun with AI video tools.

Adding subtle movement to automotive stills using reference photos to set the scene. Brands have the chance to add more dynamic work to their sites and socials to provide a more engaging product. 

Here, I test Runways character consistency in a short freestyle feature. Could we make this into a commercial for a hard cider catered to women? MAYBE!