In Norse legend, Valhalla was a great hall where the bravest warriors gathered to feast, celebrate and stand together. The Golden State Valkyries built their own for basketball: Ballhalla. Headlined by a hero film featuring the Bay Area community, Valkyries players, and local icons, “This is Ballhalla” is a rallying cry for Valkyries fans and by Valkyries fans. Building that community earned the Golden State Valkyries the title of 2026 Marketer of the Year at the American Marketing Association San Francisco’s 2026 Excellence in Marketing Awards!
The awards, now in their second year since being relaunched, brought together some of the Bay Area’s biggest brands and most inventive marketing teams aboard The Historic Klamath. The night’s winners ranged from global technology companies to local sports clubs and nonprofits.
Apple took home three awards for a single campaign. Google brought Gemini to the Big Game. Uber Eats turned football into a celebration of food. Meanwhile, Oakland Roots, San Francisco GAA and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation showed that compelling marketing does not require the budget or reach of a global brand.
This year’s judging panel included Prachi Gore, CMO of Asana; Steven Fund, Corporate VP of Brand, Creative, and Marketing Operations at AMD; LaSandra Brill, VP of Digital Marketing at NVIDIA; Cristina Pandol Sotomayor, Executive Creative Director of the Golden State Warriors; Jamie Chesler, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing and Customer Communications at PG&E; and Peter Farago, VP of Marketing at Herald AI.
Building Ballhalla
For the Valkyries, the idea behind Ballhalla extends well beyond the basketball court.
The team uses Ballhalla to describe both its home at Chase Center and the community of fans who fill it. This season, the franchise turned that idea into its overarching campaign, “This is Ballhalla,” positioning Ballhalla not simply as a physical destination, but as a state of mind.
The campaign launched in April with a hero film featuring Bay Area fans, Valkyries players and local cultural figures. From there, the idea appeared across broadcast, digital, social and out-of-home throughout the season. It built on the team’s inaugural campaign, “First of a Lifetime.”
Accepting the award, Andrea Fernandes, VP of Marketing at the Golden State Valkyries, thanked Prachi Gore and AMA SF, then summed up the team’s approach: “Marketing just isn’t about driving awareness. It’s about building a community.”
“The goal is to take that electric energy that’s inside Chase Center and to scale it across the entire Bay, because Ballhalla isn’t just inside the arena. It’s everything that you see. It’s a movement across the Bay. It is seeing your neighbor wearing their Valkyries violet.” Andrea Fernandes, VP of Marketing, Golden State Valkyries
The Valkyries’ influence extended beyond the Marketer of the Year category. OLLY won Best Experiential or Activation Campaign for its WNBA Valkyries partnership activation.
Apple takes three for one campaign
Apple had one of the night’s biggest hauls, taking home three awards for “I’m Not Remarkable” / Designed for Every Student. The campaign won Best in Show, along with Best Creative Campaign and Best Inclusive Campaign, making it the only campaign to collect three separate honors at this year’s awards.
Judge Peter Farago, VP of Marketing at Herald AI and an AMA SF board member, presented Best Creative Campaign. He said the category’s finalists were all reaching for “what I would consider to be the pinnacle of marketing, which is really connecting with an audience and trying to change their perceptions, their beliefs. It’s extremely hard to do.”
He pointed to finalist Life360 as an example. The company took an app built around parents keeping track of their teenagers and flipped the point of view, telling it through the teen’s eyes in what he called “really edgy, fun creative” that played out every worry a parent has.
“The power is to make someone feel like they belong and they’re part of something bigger than themselves.” Peter Farago, VP of Marketing, Herald AI, and AMA SF board member
Google won Most Innovative Campaign for Gemini at the Big Game, Uber Eats took Best Integrated Campaign for “Football is for Food” and Anthropic won “Next Big Thing”.
Hometown brands hold their own
Global brands didn’t take every trophy. Several local organizations earned recognition for campaigns built around community, purpose and resourcefulness. Oakland Roots won Best Local Campaign for its 2025 season campaign, San Francisco GAA received Best Bootstrapped Campaign for its revitalization campaign and the City of San Francisco received the Relaunch Award for their campaign.
The San Francisco AIDS Foundation won Best Cause Marketing for Cycle to Zero, the foundation’s main fundraising ride. The team worked with drag queens and local riders to show the ride wasn’t only for a good cause, but a genuinely good time. It worked: 500 people rode, and the foundation hit its fundraising goal. The timing made the win even sweeter. The same day, San Francisco released its HIV report for 2025, showing new diagnoses fell to 136, down from 148 the year before and the lowest on record.
“Marketing for us is also education. It’s reaching people, telling them like, hey, you deserve good health care… It’s not just like advertising or selling someone something. It’s about telling someone like, hey, you deserve really good care and you deserve to be the healthiest you possibly can be.” Jeremy Stilb, Marketing and Social Media Manager, San Francisco AIDS Foundation
In the B2B category, Sofar Ocean won for its Ocean Spotter Configurator. Sofar makes ocean buoys that gather data on waves, wind and sea surface temperature, and its customers struggled to pick from “a million different ways you can configure our products.” So the team built a configurator to guide them.
“Within the first year, we had over a thousand configurations submitted. It’s driven millions of dollars in revenue for our sales team, and it’s something that’s always on.” Shane Swiderek, GTM Engineer, Sofar Ocean
AMA SF also recognized four members of its community with President’s Awards for sustained service to the chapter: Irene Sanchez, Melissa Grimshaw-Vargas, Ipsita Bhattacharya and Rinita Datta.
This year’s winners join a long list of notable Bay Area brands recognized by AMA SF in previous years, including e.l.f. Beauty, Netflix, PayPal, Waymo, Levi’s, YouTube and Wells Fargo.
Full list of 2026 winners
Event sponsors include Viant, StackAdapt, Life360 Ads, Purple Brands, Kargo and Workbox. In-kind sponsors include The Historic Klamath, who provided the venue, and Peakbound Studio for video production.
Official Rideshare Partner: Lyft Ads
Photography credits: Jerome Palencia from Northbound Films
See the full list of finalists and judging panel. For inquiries, contact awards@amasf.org.
About American Marketing Association San Francisco
Since 1938, the American Marketing Association, San Francisco (AMA SF) has fostered and promoted professional learning and career advancement opportunities for members and the community. The non-profit organization serves the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties with monthly programs, events, workshops, and discussions that introduce the latest industry trends and developments, along with networking events that bring together the best marketing minds in the region.
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