About → Working With Us
Working With Schaefer

No jargon. No hand-offs. Just results.

Here's what the working relationship actually looks like — how we communicate, who's on your team, and what we each bring to the table. No surprises.

Tell Us About Your Brand → About Schaefer
01 — Communication

We work the way you work.

Slack is our preferred communication tool — it's how we run internal operations and it keeps everything fast and organized. But if email works better for you, that's completely fine. If you prefer async video updates over Loom, even better.

The goal isn't to get you on our system. The goal is for you to always feel informed, comfortable, and confident about what's happening with your campaigns. We'll match our communication style to yours.

Slack — preferred
Email
Loom — async
What to expect
Fast responses
We treat response time as a signal of how seriously we take your business. You won't be waiting days for answers.
Plain language, always
We explain what's working and what isn't in plain terms. No hiding behind jargon or vanity metrics.
No surprises
If something isn't working, you'll hear it from us before you notice it yourself. We'd rather have a hard conversation early than a harder one later.
02 — Cadence

A rhythm that gives you your time back.

The first couple months are intentionally more frequent — you're new to us and we're new to you. Once we're in the rhythm of performance management, we shift to a cadence that keeps you fully informed without taking over your calendar.

Months 1–2 · Onboarding
Weekly calls
  • Performance updates on every active campaign
  • Walk through what we're testing and why
  • Get your feedback quickly so we can move fast
  • Build confidence in the process together
Ongoing · In Rhythm
Biweekly performance calls
  • What moved, what didn't, and what's next
  • Changes and adjustments since the last call
  • Upcoming creative and strategy decisions
  • Your questions, answered directly
Monthly · Every Month
Deep-dive review
  • Full performance breakdown across all channels
  • Audience and creative analysis
  • Strategy adjustments for the month ahead
  • Longer-term direction and opportunity review
03 — Your Team

Senior people, start to finish.

The typical agency playbook: partners and senior strategists pitch you, impress you, and win your business. Then the account gets handed to whoever has bandwidth — usually someone early in their career who's learning on your budget.

That's not how this works. Every person who touches your account — the account manager, the creative director, the paid media strategist — has been doing this for ten to fifteen years or more. You know who they are from day one, and they don't change.

We're also not stacking clients. Your team isn't spread across thirty accounts hoping to carve out a couple hours for you each week. When your campaign needs attention, your team is available — because that's how we structure the work.

10+
Years of experience, minimum, on your account
100%
F&B — we don't work in any other category
Same.
Team that pitches you = team that works your account
Your account team includes
Account manager
Paid media strategist
Creative director
Research & insights lead
04 — The Deal

We do the work. You keep us sharp.

Our job is to lift the full weight of paid media off your plate. Your job is to show up, stay engaged, and hold us accountable. The engagements that produce the best results are the ones where both sides are pulling.

Your job
Stay engaged and push us.
  • Show up to biweekly calls prepared and ready to give feedback
  • Respond to emails and requests on time so we can keep moving
  • Ask hard questions — if something doesn't make sense, say so
  • Share context about your business that helps us make better decisions
  • Come with a clear outcome in mind — or let us help you find one
Our job
Everything else.
  • Research your buyers, category, and competitive landscape
  • Build and manage every campaign, ad set, and creative test
  • Write and produce creative briefs grounded in buyer psychology
  • Optimize relentlessly — budget, audiences, bids, creative rotation
  • Deliver results, and keep delivering until we hit what you're after
05 — A Few Months In

What clients tell us after the fact.

People usually come to us with a paid media problem. What they notice a few months in is that we're different in ways they weren't expecting.

01
We're serious about performance — and we mean it.
We back our work with a guarantee because we're confident in what we can do. That's not marketing language. It's a reflection of how seriously this team takes delivering real results. We will work until we get there.
02
We're easier to work with than expected.
Low drama. Straight talk. No ego. We're down to earth people who happen to be very good at what we do. Clients usually say the working relationship feels more like a trusted partner than a vendor — and that's exactly how we think about it.
03
We find problems clients didn't know they had.
If you don't come in with a perfectly articulated problem, that's okay. Diagnosing what's actually wrong — not just what looks wrong on the surface — is part of what we do. The research process often surfaces the real issue.
04
The F&B focus makes a real difference.
We don't need to learn your world on your dime. We already know the buyers, the shelf dynamics, the DTC nuances, and how purchase decisions work in food and beverage. That's not something a generalist agency can fake after a few onboarding calls.
06 — FAQ

Questions we hear a lot.

More about the guarantee, pricing, and platforms? See the full FAQ →

How long before our campaigns actually go live?
Typically 3–4 weeks from contract to campaign launch. The first phase is buyer research — we need to understand who's actually buying in your category before we spend a dollar on ads. That takes 2–3 weeks depending on how quickly buyer interviews can be scheduled and how fast the feedback loop moves. Campaigns follow right after.
Do we need to come in with a clearly defined problem?
Not necessarily. Having a clear outcome in mind — a ROAS target, a cost-per-acquisition goal, a revenue number — helps. But if you're not sure what's broken or where to start, diagnosing that is part of what we do. The research phase often surfaces the real issue, which is sometimes different from what everyone assumed going in.
Who is our main point of contact?
You'll have a named account manager who is your primary day-to-day contact. You'll also know the paid media strategist and creative director on your account from the start. These people don't change — there's no handoff to a junior team after onboarding. The people you meet in the pitch are the people working your account.
How much of our time does this actually take?
Not much, by design. The biweekly cadence (after the first couple months) is built to keep you fully informed without taking over your calendar. Outside of calls, we try to batch questions and decisions so you're not getting pinged constantly. The biggest ask is responsiveness — when we need feedback or creative approval, getting it quickly keeps campaigns moving.
What if things aren't working?
We'll tell you before you notice. If a campaign direction isn't performing, we surface it on the next call and come with a plan — we don't wait for a monthly report to raise problems. If results targets aren't hit within 3 months of launch, the guarantee kicks in and we return 100% of fees for that period. No argument, no negotiation.
Do you work with brands outside the US?
Our primary expertise is in the US market — retail CPG, DTC, and QSR brands operating in the US. We understand US buyer behavior, shelf dynamics, and platform advertising patterns in this market deeply. International brands looking to grow in the US are often a fit; brands operating only outside the US are typically not where we add the most value.
Ready to start?

This is what working with us actually feels like.

Tell us about your brand and where you're trying to go. If it's a fit, we'll tell you clearly. If it's not, we'll tell you that too.

Tell us about your brand →
See our results first →