No company in ERA Real Estate’s history had ever won the same national award three years in a row. Then they called ERA American’s name again.

• The Marketing Excellence Award, presented at ERA’s national conference FUEL, went to ERA American Real Estate’s VIBE team for the third consecutive year. Catherine Gauthier, the company’s Director of Marketing and VIBE, said the moment hit differently this time around.

“When they announced ERA American again, it was incredibly rewarding and honestly a little surreal,” Gauthier said. “It felt like a true reflection of the consistency and effort our team has put in over time.”

The win is the latest marker in what has quietly become one of the more unusual stories in local real estate: a brokerage that built its own full-service, in-house marketing agency, and named it with purpose.

A name with a framework behind it

VIBE stands for Visibility, Identity, Branding and Engagement. Those four pillars, Gauthier said, are what guide every piece of work the team produces and keep the department from becoming the kind of catch-all that marketing teams often turn into.

“For a lot of people, ‘marketing’ becomes a catch-all term. It can mean everything from events and advertising to design, social media and websites,” Gauthier said. “When we rebranded our marketing team, we wanted to be much more intentional about what we actually deliver and the impact we’re meant to have.”

The team is led by Gauthier and includes Rachelle Wyatt, communications and event manager; Isabella Lombardo, digital content coordinator; Deborah Holbrook, digital experience strategist; and Jonelle Lewis, lead visual specialist. Each brings a specific discipline, and all work out of a shared space that ERA American built during its recent office renovation, functioning as an office within an office where agents can walk in and get real-time input from multiple specialists at once.

Most brokerages in the market either outsource that work or leave agents to handle it themselves. Gauthier said the difference comes down to relationships.

• “Because we’re embedded in the company and in the day-to-day with our agents, we’re able to build real relationships,” she said. “We get to know their style, their habits and how they run their business. That insight allows us to make personalized recommendations and create marketing that actually reflects who they are.”

More than a marketing department

What Gauthier described goes beyond design requests and social media calendars. The VIBE team has created memorial videos for agents who have experienced a loss. They provide feedback on listing pricing and positioning. Agents stop by just to talk through their business.

“While we are a marketing team, our role often goes beyond that,” Gauthier said. “We’re a sounding board, a creative partner and a support system our agents can rely on.”

That trust, she said, is part of what allowed the team to rally agents around a shared brand identity rather than having 120 people pulling in different directions.

“When agents lean into a shared brand message and design, it doesn’t take away from their individuality. It actually strengthens it,” Gauthier said. “That kind of consistency builds recognition and trust much faster than everyone going in completely different directions.”

The business case

Tony Lombardo, CEO of ERA American Real Estate, said the decision to build an in-house marketing team came from a clear-eyed look at how real estate actually works.

• “Nobody calls a real estate company,” Lombardo said. “If you are thinking about selling your house, you would have three or four agents in your head that you would think, ‘I’ll list with them,’ and you may or may not even know where they work.”

That realization, he said, reshaped the company’s strategy. Rather than focusing solely on building the ERA American name in every household, the company invested in making its agents the entry point, with the brand amplifying them.

“We really pivoted to say, we are going to come alongside great agents and give them the tools they need for marketing and promotion,” Lombardo said. “We believe that’s what moves the needle.”

The results back it up. ERA American agents close an average of 11 transactions per person, a figure Lombardo said the company has led the local market in for decades.

“At the end of the day, you want to do more deals. You need to connect to a platform that’s proven,” he said. “We take the marketing, the promotion, the websites, all of it, off their plate so they can focus on getting customers and closing deals.”

Lombardo described Gauthier as the coach holding the operation together, organizing a team of specialists and keeping the work aligned with what agents actually need.

• “You’ve got people who are highly specialized, but there’s somebody who has to organize them and be the person in the middle,” he said.

Her credibility with agents, Lombardo said, comes in part from the fact that she came from their world. Before leading the VIBE team, Gauthier worked as an agent at ERA American alongside her husband, Mark, who remains one of the company’s top producers.

“She’s been in the trenches. She’s negotiated these deals. She stayed up till two in the morning working on her website and figuring out what her brand identity was going to be,” Lombardo said. “She can anticipate what an agent needs. She can see a change in the market and predict what we need to be focused on.”

As for the three consecutive national wins, Lombardo said the recognition proves something the entire industry talks about but rarely demonstrates.

“Every real estate company in the area will tell you they have great culture, great training, great marketing,” he said. “This award is the proof point. Everybody’s got marketing, but what you have here is a team recognized on a national stage as a four-time finalist and three-time winner. And it’s not marketing of the company. It’s empowering agents to be more successful.”

What agents get

Linde Bowman, Vice President of ERA American Real Estate, said what makes the VIBE model work is that it simplifies something most agents find overwhelming.

• “VIBE creates a system that allows agents to market themselves consistently without feeling overwhelmed,” Bowman said. “This approach elevates each agent’s personal brand while building a stronger, unified presence for ERA American across the communities we serve.”

That, she said, produces results on both sides of the transaction. 

Agents gain a path to predictable income and long-term growth, and their clients gain confidence knowing they are working with professionals backed by proven systems.

“VIBE doesn’t just promote listings,” Bowman said. “It positions ERA American agents as the go-to real estate experts along the Emerald Coast.”

Making a national campaign local

The three-peat at FUEL came on the strength of the team’s work localizing ERA Real Estate’s national Move Up campaign. Gauthier said the campaign resonated immediately because it was built around storytelling rather than a simple tagline.

“What made it so effective is that it’s more than just a tagline. It’s a story,” she said. “The brand invested heavily in creating something that’s emotional, adaptable and built to work across multiple platforms.”

The VIBE team took that framework and tailored it for the Emerald Coast. They built a dedicated Move Up landing page, developed social media strategies across Facebook and Instagram, created intro and outro video templates for agents and ran an OTT commercial during MLB programming that generated more than 100,000 impressions with a 70% watch-through rate.

• The landing page alone converted to $75,000 in gross commission income for ERA American agents over three months.

“Seeing something like the Move Up landing page contribute directly to agent GCI makes it very clear that the work isn’t just creative; it’s driving real results,” Gauthier said.

Erin Leban, Head of Marketing for ERA Real Estate, said the local execution is what set ERA American apart.

“What stands out about the marketing team at ERA American Real Estate is their ability to take a national campaign like Move Up and translate it into something that feels completely local, personal and results-driven,” Leban said. “That’s not easy to do, and it’s a big reason why their work continues to stand out year after year.”

Alex Vidal, President of ERA Real Estate, echoed that sentiment.

• “ERA American Real Estate didn’t just follow the brand strategy. They embraced it, made it their own and are absolutely delivering for their agents,” Vidal said. “That’s when you know it’s working.”

What’s ahead

Gauthier said the team is now focused on incorporating AI into its workflow, not to replace the human side of the work, but to help the team deliver more as the company grows.

“We’re using AI as a creative support tool for inspiration and ideation, but also behind the scenes to refine our systems and scale production,” she said. “The goal isn’t to replace the human element; it’s to enhance it so we can be more efficient and more impactful for our agents.”

Even with the technology evolving, Gauthier said the award still comes back to people.

“At the end of the day, this recognition isn’t just about the VIBE team; it’s about the collaboration across the entire company,” Gauthier said. “None of it happens without the agents who trust us and bring these ideas to life in the field.”