Awestruck Launches Awestruck AI, a New Division That Embeds Inside Companies to Build Real AI Capability

The 4-time Inc. 5000 honoree used the same playbook to transform its own agency in months. Now it’s bringing that playbook to businesses nationwide.

Awestruck, the full-service advertising agency and four-time Inc. 5000 honoree, today announced the launch of Awestruck AI, a new division dedicated to long-term AI implementation for businesses ready to move past the hype and into results.

At the center of the offering is Catalyst, an embedded transformation program. Awestruck deploys a dedicated team into a client’s business, on site or through a structured Virtual Residency, to learn the company from the inside out. The team interviews leadership and department heads, maps workflows, and identifies where AI can create real leverage. From there, Awestruck stands up an internal AI Task Force made up of the client’s own people, then guides that task force to a defined set of tangible AI products the company will actually use.

Those products are built and deployed through Awestruck’s backend agent partner, Lyzr, an enterprise AI agent platform trusted by companies like Accenture, Hitachi, and Willis Towers Watson, with SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA-ready infrastructure. Clients get agency-grade creativity and strategy on the front end, and enterprise-grade AI engineering on the back end.

“We launched this because we lived it,” said Ryan Sprance, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Awestruck. “We ran this exact process inside our own agency. Within months, we had rebuilt our capability set from the ground up. We got faster, sharper, and dramatically more productive. Then our clients started asking how we did it. Awestruck AI is the answer.”

Catalyst

Catalyst follows a proven four-phase process:

1. Immersion. Awestruck’s team embeds in the client’s business, physically or virtually, learning the operation department by department.
2. Discovery. Structured interviews across leadership, operations, sales, marketing, and finance surface the highest-value AI opportunities.
3. Task Force. Awestruck builds and trains an internal AI Task Force from the client’s own team, creating capability that stays after the engagement.
4. Build. The task force and Awestruck drive to a roadmap of tangible AI products, custom agents, and automations, engineered and deployed through Lyzr’s enterprise platform.

Catalyst delivers working AI products, a trained internal team, and a company that operates at a fundamentally higher level than it did six months earlier.

Built on a Track Record of Innovation

Awestruck AI continues a pattern that has defined the agency since its founding. When Awestruck couldn’t find an OTT advertising provider that met its standards, it built its own campaign management system, now known as Awestruck Streaming, and became the national authority on streaming media within the hospitality and destination sector. That same instinct, identify the gap, build the solution, prove it internally, then bring it to clients, now powers Awestruck AI.

The approach has fueled extraordinary growth. Awestruck debuted at No. 25 on the 2023 Inc. 5000 with a three-year growth rate of 11,247 percent, and has earned a place on the list four consecutive years, super-serving tourism and destination marketing, hospitality, and entertainment brands with OTT/CTV advertising, creative production, and strategy.

“Unyielding innovation is one of our core values, and Awestruck AI is its next expression,” said David Marcy, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Awestruck. “We rebuilt our own business with AI before we ever offered this to a client. Awestruck AI is the exact system that transformed us, delivered by the people who did it.”

Residencies are structured as long-term partnerships, typically spanning multiple months to a year, with ongoing support as clients scale their AI capabilities.