Today we’d like to introduce you to Tina Fleming.
Hi Tina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started my career in brand marketing at United Arts of Central Florida before moving into digital strategy roles at the University of Central Florida. Those experiences required communicating with highly diverse audiences — students, educators, artists, donors, and community stakeholders — and balancing internal communications, public relations, government partnerships, and reputation management. That mix taught me how to translate complex priorities into messages that resonate and drive action.
Over time, that multifaceted work naturally led me into AI Optimization. AIO is fundamentally a multi-channel discipline: you can’t think about owned content, PR, technical infrastructure, or brand strategy in isolation. They have to operate as a unified system. My interest has always been at the intersection of psychology, human behavior, and technology, and AI is where those elements now converge.
Today, I lead AI strategy at Avenue Z, a national marketing and communications agency. My focus is helping brands show up effectively across AI ecosystems, not just in traditional search, but in environments like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other emerging intelligence engines. In practice, it’s guiding brands to communicate in ways that are clear, trusted, and discoverable by both humans and machines.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely hasn’t been a straight line. I’ve never had a predefined roadmap. I’ve followed my curiosity and the opportunities revealed when I dug into new problems. That path can be messy early in your career, especially in a field evolving as quickly as AI. But those pivots are what helped me build range.
I’ve also been fortunate to have strong mentors who invested in my growth and pushed me to think beyond traditional marketing frames. That support gave me the space to explore where psychology, behavior, and technology intersect, long before AI Optimization had a name.
A key challenge in this work is staying grounded in real human understanding. AI can make it easy to default to surface-level assumptions, but the best marketers are deep empathizers. You have to care enough to understand the audience’s world and how a brand fits into their actual story, not just a demographic profile. As AI reshapes the industry, that kind of empathy is becoming even more critical, for the work itself and for the next generation entering the field. If we don’t invest in them now, we risk weakening both the talent pipeline and the broader economic cycle.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Avenue Z?
At Avenue Z, we specialize in helping brands speak machine. As a national marketing and communications agency, our standout capability is in AI Optimization, a field we’ve not only embraced but helped define. With search behavior rapidly shifting from keywords to questions and from links to direct answers, the way brands show up online is changing dramatically. Consumers are increasingly relying on AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to make decisions, and traditional SEO tactics simply don’t cut it anymore.
That’s where our AI Optimization (AIO) solution comes in. Unlike legacy strategies, our approach was purpose-built for generative AI. It blends high-authority media placements (so brands appear in the sources large language models trust), conversational content designed for AI-first queries, and deep technical optimization to ensure machines understand and elevate a brand’s message. This solution makes our clients discoverable in a world where synthesized answers are the new currency of influence.
What further sets Avenue Z apart is our commitment to proprietary research. We launched the AI Visibility Index, the industry’s first benchmarking analysis to measure how brands appear across AI-powered platforms. It gives marketers real-time insight into how their brands are showing up in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and how they stack up against competitors. This research isn’t just a snapshot. It’s a living dataset that helps our clients make smarter decisions, faster, in an AI-driven industry.
What are your plans for the future?
AI isn’t slowing down, and neither are we. I’m focused on scaling AI Optimization as a practice, not just a tactic. We’re building deeper frameworks to help brands future-proof their messaging across platforms, from search engines to large language models.
Personally, I’m excited to do more teaching and speaking, helping other marketers get fluent in this space. I believe AI literacy is going to be a make-or-break skill for creatives and communicators in the next five years.
We’re also building new tools and partnerships at Avenue Z that will give brands even more control over how they’re perceived in AI-first environments. That’s where the future is headed, and I’m ready for it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://avenuez.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinafleming/
- Other: https://avenuez.com/ai-visibility-index/
Image Credits
Avenue Z
AAF Orlando
