Who Is The Ad Alchemist?
I’m the strategist brands call when they’re ready to stop guessing.
If you’re wondering what ad alchemy is—
Hi, I’m Sarah Garrett Vasquez, and I’m The Ad Alchemist.
But this isn’t just a title.
It’s not a professional persona or even a personal brand.
It’s an archetype.
A response to a pattern.
I built The Ad Alchemist because I kept watching brands pour money into marketing execution without ever building a real foundation.
Campaigns got launched. Creatives got scaled. Teams did the work.
But the message wasn’t aligned—
and no one was asking why.
Everyone kept moving.
No one was calibrating.
So I stopped playing along and built the framework myself.
Now, I help brands say the right thing, to the right people, in the right way—before the brief ever hits the agency’s desk.
I’m a strategist who thinks in systems, not silos. The Ad Alchemist started as a way to make sense of what my brain was already doing: tracking patterns, spotting friction, and building communication systems that actually land.
I didn’t want better tactics.
I needed better logic.
So I built it—layer by layer, model by model, across years of applied strategy.
The Ad Alchemist is what happens when advertising finally meets communication science.
My Background: A Visual Start to Strategic Thinking
I started my career behind the lens—photographing brand stories frame by frame. But even early on, I was more than just a creative. I was a pattern recognizer.
I could feel when something looked right but didn’t resonate. When the story was visually strong but failed to connect. And over time, I started to see the deeper cracks in the system:
✅ Beautiful content. No conversions.
✅ Great ideas. Wrong delivery format.
✅ Agencies delivering quantity.
❌ Brands still frustrated by underperforming campaigns and no clear diagnosis.
These weren’t one-off flukes. They were symptoms of a deeper problem.
What I Saw: Patterned Misalignment That Kept Repeating
As I moved between agencies, in-house teams, and consulting roles, I kept seeing the same misfires repeat themselves—across brands, industries, and budgets:
Messaging that didn’t reflect how people actually make decisions
Creative being scaled before strategic clarity
Agencies expected to fix problems they were never set up to solve
Teams and vendors operating in silos, without a shared foundation
Strategic thinking reduced to trend-chasing and retroactive guesswork
Everyone was producing. No one was aligning.
That’s when I started asking the bigger question: What would it take to build a system that prevents this misalignment from happening in the first place?
That question—and the work that followed—is what ultimately led me to build the Cognitive Resonance Framework.
What I Built: The Cognitive Resonance Framework
Every time I hit a marketing wall—whether a campaign wasn’t converting (is it the creative asset?), messaging felt off (are we targeting the right audiences?), or audiences weren’t responding (how can we possibly be any more clear‽)—I couldn’t let it go. I needed to understand why.
Not just why it didn’t work this time, but how to harness it and reuse it when it did.
So I went deep and let my neurodivergent superpowers loose in full research mode. I didn’t just tweak tactics or skim industry blogs—I went into full AuDHD hyperfixation mode. I had to know why persuasive communication works—not just how. I read everything I could find on cognitive science, communication theory, behavioral psychology, and persuasive strategy. Eventually, I went back and earned my master’s degree in Strategic Communication so I could formalize the expertise I’d already been applying intuitively.
I still remember the exact moment I realized I had become the expert I’d been searching for. The answers had been right in front of me all along—I’d just never paused to name them.
That’s when it clicked:
My strategies worked consistently across industries, platforms, audience segments, and formats—not because of luck or gut instinct.
But because I had been simultaneously applying models from persuasion science, neuromarketing, and cognitive theory—layers of influence most marketers don’t even know exist, let alone use intentionally.
So I decided to reverse-engineer it.
I conducted a meta-analysis of my own work across my career—identifying patterns, pressure points, and communication models I’d been deploying without realizing it. What eventually emerged became the foundation for what I now call the Cognitive Resonance Framework.
This methodology isn’t conceptual—it’s operational, adaptive, and scalable.
It bridges academic theory with real-world marketing execution. It’s built for applied use, not just retroactive analysis.
And it’s the missing brand infrastructure that makes everything else—ads, content, campaigns, audience engagement—actually work.
What I Do
I make agencies smarter and campaigns hit harder.
Because I build the system everyone else executes from—aligning brands, teams, and audiences at the cognitive level.
Today, I help brands distill the clarity that everything else depends on.
I don’t replace agencies or internal marketing teams. I make their work click—by giving them the strategic foundation to actually perform and the marketing frameworks to scale with confidence.
I work with founders, CMOs, and marketing leads who are:
Scaling quickly and need cohesion across teams, vendors, and campaigns
Launching something big and can’t afford misalignment
Frustrated with agencies that should’ve delivered—but didn’t
Drowning in noise and opinions but lacking a clear direction forward
Using the Cognitive Resonance Framework, I build brand clarity systems that:
Remove bottlenecks and reduce friction between teams, agencies, and partners
Establish a messaging architecture everyone can execute from—without needing me in the room
Activate overlooked audiences with intentional, cognitively calibrated messaging
Translate vision into scalable systems that fuel content, campaigns, and communication at every level
If your brand has great creative but inconsistent results—
If your teams are executing but your message still isn’t landing—
You don’t have a performance problem.
You have a resonance problem.
And that’s what I solve.
Before you fire the agency, let’s figure out what’s really not working.
Most of our clients come to us after they’ve invested tens of thousands into creative assets or ad campaigns that didn’t land. We help uncover where the disconnect is — before they spend another dollar chasing performance that should’ve been inevitable.
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Unlike traditional agencies that rely on slow execution and overpriced retainers, The Ad Alchemist is built for brands that need high-impact strategy without unnecessary overhead.
✔ We offer targeted, high-value retainers designed for efficiency—not endless, vague deliverables.
✔ We replace time-wasting bureaucracy with AI-powered precision that gets results in weeks, not months.
✔ We don’t lock clients into long-term retainers unless it serves them—you get strategic insights, execution-ready plans, and expert guidance without the waste.
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Our fractional retainers are built for brands ready to move fast and scale without the inefficiencies of traditional agencies.
• 6-month minimum commitment – This ensures we drive real, measurable impact without dragging out unnecessary timelines.
• AI-powered strategy, human-led execution – We combine proprietary AI-driven insights with human expertise to move faster and more precisely than outdated agency models.
• No cookie-cutter solutions – Every engagement is fully customized to your brand’s growth stage, market position, and business goals.
• Implementation-focused – Unlike traditional agencies that rack up billable hours on meetings, our focus is on rapid execution and delivering tangible ROI.
📌 Need a one-off engagement? Explore our Strategy Foundations or Growth Accelerator instead.
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You have three ways to access Sarah’s expertise and The Ad Alchemist’s precision-driven strategies, depending on your brand’s growth stage, budget, and urgency:
1️⃣ Strategic Foundations (Fastest Entry Point)
• Ideal for emerging brands and startups needing immediate clarity on positioning, messaging, and strategy.
• One-time engagement with actionable deliverables and a step-by-step roadmap.
2️⃣ Growth Accelerator (Hands-On Execution)
• Built for established brands that need AI-powered, data-driven marketing execution.
• Includes AI-driven persona modeling, targeted content strategy, and campaign execution.
3️⃣ Precision Engagement (Elite, Fractional CMO & AI-Powered Strategy)
• For brands that need ongoing strategic leadership without the inefficiencies of a traditional agency.
• 6-month minimum engagement with a high-touch, deeply customized approach.
Discover Precision Engagement →
Not sure what you need?
Book a Brand Strategy Consultation to map out the best path forward.