Approach
How we run a connected program
Most companies buy channels one at a time. We connect them into a system built for growth.
This page explains exactly how, including the parts that are harder than they sound.
The problem with buying channels
No business has ever had a search problem.
Businesses have demand problems, conversion problems and measurement problems. Channels are how those problems get solved, not what they are.
Organizing a program around channels is convenient for the agencies selling them, and it guarantees the seams belong to nobody.
Stitched-together vendors
A media agency, a search shop, a creative studio and an email vendor. Each one competent, each one reporting on itself.
Nobody is asked whether the four programs are pulling in the same direction, because nobody is paid to answer that question, and the honest answer would cost at least one of them the account.
Unowned seams
The seam is where one job hands off to the next. The audience your connected TV flight just built, handed to search.
The intent that search creates, handed to a landing page written before the campaign existed.
The conversion data that should tell next quarter’s media plan what to buy. None of those handoffs appear in anyone’s scope of work, and all of them are where the money goes.
The attribution gap
Last-click credits the last thing a buyer touched, which is almost always the cheapest one.
So the channel that created the demand looks expensive, gets cut, and search performance declines two months later with no obvious cause.
The gap is not a reporting inconvenience. It is the mechanism by which good programs get taken apart.
The Five Jobs
Five jobs, run by one team.
A marketing program has five jobs to do: create demand, capture it, convert it, measure it, and scale it.
Channels are just the tools each job uses.
Organizing a company around channels guarantees that the handoffs between jobs belong to nobody, which is where most marketing budgets quietly leak.
Create
Creative and branding, content production, connected TV, streaming audio, podcast and programmatic. Reaching people before they are looking for you.
Capture
Paid search, paid social, SEO and answer engine optimization. Being found, and being chosen, at the moment they start looking.
Convert
Landing page strategy, conversion rate optimization and the technology underneath both. Making the traffic you have already paid for do more.
Measure
GA4, conversion tracking and cross-channel attribution in one layer rather than four. The job almost nobody buys, and the one that makes the other four improvable.
Scale
Budget scaling, cross-channel leverage and bid-strategy evolution. Spending more only where the evidence says more will work.
Nothing falls in the gaps between vendors because there are no vendors.
Who does the work
The strategist is the operator
The people who design the plan are the people accountable for the number. We do not insert a layer of account management between you and the person making decisions about your money.
Our fee reflects senior time and the access behind it. It does not reflect headcount.
Stephen & Michael Saulpaugh
Partners
Meet the team
Hannah Steppe
Graphic Designer
Lauren Furer
Director of Accounts
Joel Salvino
Sr. Paid Media Analyst
Lindsey Bott
Sr. Marketing Manager
Michaela Zusmann
Social Media & Experiential Manager
The system behind the strategy
Enterprise capabilities. Applied by a senior team.
Research, strategy, creative, activation and measurement come together in one connected operating model built to improve performance at every stage.
Research
The research behind every dollar.
Media decisions made without research are guesses with a budget attached. We give every client access to more than 60 licensed research platforms, seven research disciplines and over 1,000 intent and behavioral segments, then put a senior strategy team in charge of turning that intelligence into action
Capabilities
- Audience and media consumption research
- Competitive and category intelligence
- Custom intent and behavioral audiences
- Media pricing, visitation and lift analysis
Strategy & Creative
Senior strategy, brought to life
The people shaping the strategy stay involved in the work. Audience, media, messaging and creative are developed together, supported by award-winning creative talent across every major format.
Capabilities
- Senior-led integrated strategy
- Channel and investment planning
- Audience, messaging and content development
- Static, motion, audio and video production
Launch & Optimize
Built on native platforms. Managed as one program.
Campaigns launch through the platforms best suited to the job, supported by a proprietary monitoring and decision layer connected to the native ad platforms. Our team turns those signals into faster, better-informed action.
Capabilities
- Cross-channel campaign activation
- Native-platform optimization
- Automated performance and anomaly monitoring
- Senior review of material recommendations
Reporting
See what is happening while it still matters.
Real-time dashboards bring media, conversion and business data into one view. Our PowerPack operating system continuously monitors the signals behind the reporting, while senior strategists determine what changes and what happens next.
Capabilities
- Real-time reporting and data visualization
- Cross-channel performance views
- Conversion and attribution analysis
- Executive insights and recommended actions
PowerPack
How an account is run
One standing routine, not a monthly recap.
The operating routine is called PowerPack. It is a method, not a product, and there is nothing to log into.
It connects research, strategy, activation, optimization and measurement in one model. It reviews accounts between reporting cycles instead of waiting for the next monthly deck. And it puts a senior strategist between every signal and every decision.
Automated monitoring scans more data than a person can consistently read. That is the whole reason to use it. The judgment stays with us, and nothing changes in your account because a model suggested it.
What we can reach
Capabilities you would not expect from a team this size
This is the part of the model that is hardest to describe without sounding vague, so here it is as a list of specific things.
Audience and media consumption research most firms our size cannot run in house
Predictable pricing on programmatic display, online video, connected TV and streaming audio
Custom audience development from first-party and third-party data
Independent third-party measurement of brand lift, web lift, sales lift and visitation
Location-based audience targeting and store visit measurement
Category and competitive spend intelligence
Access to premium inventory across connected TV, streaming audio, podcasts and broadcast
Specialist and activation support that scales without adding account layers
None of that is unusual at a holding company. It is unusual at a firm where you talk to the founders.
How an engagement starts
What happens when you get in touch
No pitch deck, and no reason to prepare anything.
A conversation with the people who would run it
Forty-five minutes with the founders. What you are trying to grow, what you have tried, and what you already suspect is not working.
We look at what is actually running
Read-only access to the ad accounts and analytics. We spend a few days in them, because the answer to how a program is performing is not in a summary of it.
We tell you what we found.
What is working, what is leaking, and what we would do first. If that is a fit, we scope it. If it is not, you keep what we found.
Proof, Not Promises
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Readiness is engineered. So is the next stage of growth.
Public Safety & Industrial Equipment
FAQ
Questions we get asked
What happens in the first 90 days?
The first month is measurement and diagnosis. Access, conversion tracking and attribution get repaired before spend moves, because changing budgets against numbers you do not trust is guessing. The second month is restructuring: the accounts, the audiences and the pages the traffic lands on, with the first tests live. The third month is when scaling decisions start, made on evidence gathered in the two months before rather than on a plan written before we saw anything.
What does a senior-led agency model mean?
It means the person who designs the strategy is the person who runs it day to day, and the person you call when something looks wrong. There is no account executive relaying your question to an analyst you have never met, and no junior team learning your business on your budget. It also caps how many accounts we take at once. That limit is the cost of the model, and the reason it works.
What is the difference between a boutique agency and a holding company?
Attention versus leverage. A boutique gives you senior people and direct access, then hits a ceiling the moment a budget requires enterprise buying or research it cannot run in house. A holding company has that leverage and buries it under account layers and approval chains built for its own margins. The difference you feel day to day is not scale. It is who is actually doing the work on your account, and how many people sit between you and them.
When should a company consolidate its marketing agencies?
When the seams start costing more than the specialisms are worth. Three signals: your channels report different numbers for the same week, nobody can tell you what your brand spend did to your search performance, and decisions wait for the next monthly cycle. Consolidate when coordination has become the bottleneck — not simply because you have more than one vendor. Plenty of programs run well across two or three partners when someone is genuinely accountable for the handoffs.
Send us the accounts
We will tell you what we see. That conversation is useful whether or not it goes anywhere.
You will be working with the people who set the strategy