AI isn’t coming. It’s here, and it has already changed how your customers find a business. That was the message Jerry Martinez brought to the Tamarac North Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, with help from three presenters who weren’t human.
The talking car is parking in the driveway
Jerry opened with a video of himself. Except it wasn’t him. It was an AI avatar, and nobody in the room could tell until he said so. His point: the line between real and generated is already blurring, and your customers are living on the other side of it.
They ask AI where to eat and who to hire, and they get an answer without ever seeing your website. The whole talk came down to one job for a local business: win attention before AI makes the choice for them.
AI doesn’t just answer anymore. It acts.
With his hands off the keyboard, Jerry told an AI agent to book a two-week, direct flight from Fort Lauderdale to the Dominican Republic, leaving on a Saturday a week out. It searched, picked the flight and finished the booking. No website visit, no research. He had done the same thing to replace a garbage bin that a truck destroyed.
“This is not the future,” he told the room. “This is today.” When an assistant shops, compares and buys on someone’s behalf, it picks from the businesses it already knows about.
Hope is not a strategy
Yes, you can tune your website and your listings so AI finds you. Do that. But hoping an assistant recommends you is not a plan, and as Jerry put it, hope is failure.
The reliable version is the one that has always worked: build a relationship with the most people possible, so when they need what you sell, they think of you first, and the AI they ask already has your name in its data. The way you do that is by telling your story, and video does it best. Jerry showed the room the behind-the-scenes footage and the finished 30-second spot Sunray produced for International Jewelers Exchange, the kind of story that runs on CBS, ABC, NBC and streaming.
Meet Ray, built without writing a line of code
Jerry’s second non-human presenter was Ray, the AI assistant that helps run Sunray day to day. He built it himself through “vibe coding,” describing what he wanted and letting AI write the software. If a marketing agency owner can build his own Jarvis, the tools are within reach of any business in the room.
Streaming TV at a local-business budget
People spend about 34 hours a week with media, and more than half of it is video. For years, television was for businesses of a certain size. Streaming changed that. You can now run a professionally produced spot on top-rated programming and show it only in North Lauderdale and Tamarac.
Sunray is an Amazon partner for Prime Video, and places the same campaigns on Netflix, Peacock, Roku and the other streaming platforms. Amazon’s shopping data means the ad reaches the right household: if someone bought dog food, they have a pet, and a vet or a groomer can reach them. The media companies ask small businesses for big minimums. Sunray doesn’t.
Jerry’s comparison for the room: pay someone $200 a day to hand out flyers on Rock Island Road and you might reach a few hundred people. For about $30 you can reach a thousand people watching their favorite show at home, targeted by what they buy. And for anyone who thinks their audience is too sophisticated for streaming, 81% of adults stream something.
Does joining the chamber help AI find you?
Jerry asked Jessica, the AI assistant who co-created his slides, and the answer was yes. Membership builds the signals AI looks for: consistency, credibility and connections. Your chamber profile, events, backlinks and citations tell search engines and AI tools that you’re legitimate. When your business information matches everywhere, from your Google Business Profile to the chamber directory to your social pages, AI trusts the data and is more likely to surface you.
What comes next: AI leaves the screen
The talk closed with the third phase. First, AI that answers questions. Then AI that does work for you, like the agent that booked the flight. Now, physical AI: the drone that followed Jerry around the room (the audience named it Peter) is the preview. In Jerry’s words, a year from now we’re going to wake up in a very different world.
What to do this quarter
- Make your information match everywhere. Google Business Profile, chamber directory, website, social pages: same name, address, phone, hours and services.
- Tell your story on video. A commercial people recognize does more for AI discovery than any trick, because it builds the awareness AI reads back.
- Be seen where attention is. Streaming TV lets you show up in your own ZIP codes, on real programming, at a budget a local business can carry.
- Get an honest read on your marketing. Book a free marketing diagnostic and we’ll review how AI, search and your competitors see you today, and what to fix first.
Sunray Media Consultants is an independent marketing agency in Lauderhill, Florida. We work as the fractional marketing department for South Florida business owners, and alongside in-house marketing teams, across TV, streaming, radio, social, search, AI assistants and outdoor.
