FAQs
Leads and clients respond to different stimuli. A well optimised campaign buys attention. Turning a lead into a client depends on the coherence between the promise of the ad, the positioning of the brand and the experience after the click. When that chain breaks, the cost per lead falls and loyalty never takes hold.
The three most common failures
In most cases, the problem stems from media execution.
- Message misaligned with the brand’s territory.
The ad promises one thing, the storytelling says another, and the lead who arrives is not the brand’s target. - No conversion anchoring.
There is attention and there is a form, but there is no follow up between first contact and decision. - The wrong metric.
Optimising for cost per lead rewards the cheapest lead rather than the most qualified one. The platforms deliver exactly what we ask of them.
Creator partnerships follow the same logic. They lend an audience, but they only transfer trust when there is a shared cultural territory.
How to tell whether the problem is strategic
- Cost per lead is stable or falling, and sales are not keeping pace.
- The sales team describes the leads as unqualified.
- The brand communicates differently on each channel.
- There is no written definition of who the ideal client is.
- The campaign works while the investment runs and disappears when it ends.
We begin with a Communication Diagnostic and Audit, 2 weeks before investing. What is missing is rarely optimisation, but direction. In a market saturated with noise, clarity is what converts!
Communication Diagnostic and Audit, from €200
- Duration: 2 weeks
- Includes: an audit of every touchpoint, storytelling and performance analysis, a competitive reading and a report with actionable priorities.
- For those who do not know what is failing.
Strategy and Positioning, between €800 and €2,000
- Duration: 3 weeks
- Includes: the complete VĀC Framework, territory and value proposition, audience mapping, channel architecture, campaign playbook and editorial calendar
- For those who know what is failing but not where to go
Strategic Support, from €600 per month
- Minimum term: 2 months
- Includes: strategic planning ready to put into action, monthly reporting and 2 working sessions per month
- For those with a defined direction and scattered execution
Experiential Marketing and brand activation projects are quoted separately, from €2,500. Prices exclude VAT at the prevailing legal rate, and exclude media investment, production and third party costs, which are passed on at cost. For projects across multiple markets, the range adjusts to the number of markets and languages, following an analysis of the projects, locations and local resources. We state our prices for the same reason we work the way we do: opacity is a form of noise, and noise is no basis for a decision.
The one question test
If you explained your brand today to someone who does not know it, would your explanation match the one your website and channels give? If so, the work is a refresh. If not, no new colour palette will close that gap. That is why every visual identity decision stems from positioning.
Signs of a refresh
- Inconsistent across channels through a lack of rules, not a lack of direction
- Materials from different eras coexisting
- Recognised, but read as dated next to direct competitors
- Does not hold up in digital, in vertical formats or on small screens.
Signs of a rebrand
- The offer has evolved and the brand struggles to bridge the former business with what is new.
- The brand attracts clients who are not the ones it wants to serve.
- Several versions of the brand story circulate internally.
- You can only name how you are different through generic adjectives.
- You have entered a new market and the brand does not translate.
A refresh takes 2 to 6 weeks. A rebrand, because it includes positioning and storytelling before any visual decision, takes 3 to 8 weeks. A brand that modernises attunes itself to its new reality. The work is to mirror what the company has become and say it with the audacity of someone who does not need to resemble anyone else!
A complete strategy project at Vāc takes 2 to 3 months and is organised around the three pillars of the VĀC Framework. Each pillar has a set duration, its own tools and concrete deliverables, presented at the end of the stage and approved with you before moving forward.
The VĀC Framework is not a presentation concept, it is the sequence of work.
Pillar 1. Vision Clarity, 3 weeks. Defining the North
- Tools: Vision Archetype Mapping, Stakeholder and Persona Deep Dives, Storytelling Diagnostic
- You receive: Vision Clarity Report, documented brand essence, audience map and a reading of the cultural context
Pillar 2. Audacity Architecture, 4 weeks. Challenging the Norm
- Tools: Strategic Storytelling Canvas, Content Territory Canvas, Audacity Reference Map
- You receive: Positioning Map, written positioning, storytelling territories and a channel architecture with a defined role for each channel
Pillar 3. Conscious Convertibility, 4 weeks. Measuring the Impact
- Tools: Campaign Playbook and Editorial Calendars, Impact Dashboards, Community Engagement Cycle
- You receive: Project Conscious Metrics, campaign playbook, editorial calendar and a configured conscious metrics dashboard.
Experiential Marketing projects add their own execution cost, around €2,500, to the execution stage, depending on scale and production. No stage moves forward until the previous one is decided, because strategy without sequence is intention without form.
How it works in practice
Digital by nature, human by design is not a positioning line, it is how we were born. Our base is Lisbon and our scope is international: we share a time zone with London and a working day with Milan, and we work in English and Portuguese. What we never delegate is the reading of local context, carried out through the 1st Pillar of the VĀC Framework, Vision Clarity. A brand translates from one market to another through work on context and integration, not language.
With international agencies, we collaborate as a peer rather than a supplier
- Local strategic partner: reading of the market, audience and cultural context in Portugal for campaigns conceived abroad.
- Local execution: implementation, production and brand activation on Portuguese ground under the direction of the partner agency.
- White label: strategy and storytelling under the partner agency’s brand.
- Co-pitch: joint participation in pitches that require knowledge of the market.
To start a partnership conversation, we schedule an introductory call. We co-create with those who shape culture, whether that culture lives in Lisbon, London or Milan.
Conscious metrics are indicators that measure the real effect on the business and on the relationship with the audience, alongside the volume of activity. Vāc defines 3 indicators with each client at the start of the project and reports on them quarterly. If the agreed indicators have not moved within 3 months, the strategy is refined.
Most agency reporting measures what is easy to count. Impressions, reach, followers, likes. They tell you the campaign existed, not that it worked.
What we measure instead
- Reach within the defined audience profile, alongside impressions generated.
- Return rate and active audience, alongside new followers.
- Cost per client acquired and average value per client, alongside cost per lead.
- Spontaneous mentions and presence in the category conversation, alongside the number of likes.
- Session depth and assisted conversions, alongside total traffic.
- Storytelling consistency across touchpoints, alongside content published.
If the results do not appear
- A formal review point at 3 months.
- The agreed indicators are compared with the starting point documented in the diagnostic.
- If there has been no movement, we revisit and refine the approach.
- What we do not do is hold a direction simply because it was our initial recommendation.
Conscious communication includes saying what is not working with the same clarity with which we present what converts.
A campaign communicates the brand; a brand activation lets people experience it first hand. It makes sense when the message is already defined and what is missing is proof: a launch, a market entry, a repositioning that needs to be felt rather than announced. At Vāc, this line of work is called Experiential Marketing.
The difference in one sentence
An activation creates memory; a campaign wins a share of attention. A memory keeps working after the experience ends, whereas the attention we capture can only be measured while the conversation lasts. Experiential Marketing carries the message through conversations between friends and honest recommendations born of genuine experiences, turning clients into spokespeople for the brand.
What we do in this line
- Brand activation: interactions that spark immediate participation and engagement, in person, digital or hybrid.
- Immersive experiences and set design: scenography that translates identity into a space where the audience steps in and lives the brand.
- Sensory storytelling: sound, space, image and interaction combined to build an emotional connection.
- Cultural collaborations: voices, communities and movements that amplify relevance and credibility.
When we do not recommend it
If the brand does not yet have a defined positioning, an activation amplifies the confusion instead of resolving it. In those cases we start with strategy, and the experience follows.
An Experiential Marketing project starts from €2,500 and takes at least 1 month, depending on scale and production. We turn brands into spaces people can inhabit, but only once we know what the brand has to say.