“They made us postpone a January push we were emotionally attached to. Sales still hit the festive target — with less wasted spend in week one. I still wish they had flagged the creative fatigue a week earlier than they did.”
Thao Le · Ecommerce lead · Gift retailer · Paid media planning retainer
“After the modeled conversion update, our agency chart looked like a miracle week. The attribution review memo gave finance a date-stamped explanation and three interim KPIs. We did not cut search — we stopped celebrating fake purchases.”
Quang Vo · Performance manager · Education brand · Attribution change review
“The open briefing was denser than I expected for ninety minutes. Action list landed in two days. Our social buyer argued with one recommendation; we tested it anyway and the CTR recovered without touching budget.”
Mai Dinh · In-house marketer · Hospitality group · Performance briefing
“Post-mortem facilitation kept creative and media from blaming each other over a soft launch. The memo’s test slate was short enough that we actually ran it the following sprint.”
Hieu Phan · Brand lead · Regional CPG · Campaign post-mortem
Extended story: Highland retail Tet calendar
A specialty food brand selling into Dak Lak and neighboring provinces asked us to rebuild their festive paid media plan after two years of overspending in the first January week. National creative was arriving on schedules written for Ho Chi Minh City demand.
We moved the purchase window twelve days earlier, capped daily prospecting spend, and required the agency to export Monday–Sunday ICT reports. Verified orders through the festive period matched the prior year while paid media spend fell roughly a fifth. The uncomfortable part: pausing a favorite prospecting campaign mid-spike when frequency climbed without store traffic to match.
The retainer continues with monthly planning memos and a standing attribution checkpoint whenever a platform changes lookback settings.
Extended story: Education lead quality after a view-window change
An education advertiser saw cost per lead collapse on paper when a social platform lengthened view-through windows. Enrolment advisors reported no matching uptick in qualified conversations.
Our review separated click-path leads from view-through credit, reset weekly targets to advisor-accepted appointments, and wrote a one-pager for the board. Spend shifted toward search for high-intent courses while social returned to upper-funnel messaging with tighter frequency caps. The “miracle CPA” disappeared from the slides — and the enrolment pipeline became readable again.