If you’ve visited the Element office over the last decade, you’ve probably met Katie Bramschreiber. Those 10 years have been marked by her boundless energy, whether it’s running races, chasing her kids around, or playing a pivotal role in building integrated marketing programs that drive business for our clients.
Now, if you haven’t met Katie in the last 10 years, we’re sorry. We’d like to rectify that situation right away. Read on to get to know our newly promoted Director of Integrated Strategy.
Q: You're from Seymour, Wisconsin, aka Home of the Hamburger. If you had to develop an integrated strategy for Burger Fest, where would you start?
A: Yes, I am from Seymour! Some may say that is why I enjoy the amount of beef and protein work Element has had the pleasure of working on! (#beefitarian)
All strategies, burger-related or not, must start with the end goal, aka, what are we trying to achieve? Higher attendance at the balloon glow? More attendees at the world’s largest hamburger parade? Increased consumption of hamburgers on the festival grounds? Larger media outreach for Hamburger Charlie interviews? (Am I selling you on attending yet?)
From there, we’d work on smashing those burger goals … and several actual burgers at the eating competition.
Q: You’re known for your scary-good Halloween costumes, which have won our office title for many years. What’s your strategic secret to coming up with the perfect costume?
A: Like any well-prepared strategy, you have to know your audience! If I craft a costume that only I understand, it’s going to fall flat come voting time. You’ve got to understand the theme, know where your personal brand fits into it, and have a proper timeline and budget, of course. Then, voilà! Sweet, sweet, candy-fueled victory!
Q: You recently celebrated your 10th anniversary with Element! What were your go-to jams back in 2015?
A: Adele’s 25 Album came out in 2015, and anyone who says they weren’t listening to that (or doing car-karaoke to Hello) is lying.
Q: What’s something brands often overlook when developing an integrated strategy? How does Element make sure all bases are covered?
A: Brands often skip creating a proper measurement strategy that’s in alignment with the strategy and/or tactics they’ve created. Plus, they overlook the natural synergies that happen among those tactics.
When you don’t establish what you’re going to measure as you begin execution, you’re putting yourself in a tough situation when it comes to executing optimizations and pivots. It’s like baking a soufflé, only for it to collapse. You can’t know what went wrong or how to fix it if you didn’t thoughtfully measure the ingredients. Additionally, when analytics or reporting are done in a silo, you miss connection points in your strategy.
For a non-soufflé example, your strategy may have SEO and paid search components, with both working to capture audiences at the point of searching. You might be getting amazing click-through rates on your search ads, but conversions are 90% correlated to organic search visitors—and that is not a fluke! Marketing teams will tend to say, “Well, SEO is working better than search, so turn off paid,” when in reality, SEO is working with paid to raise awareness and optimize for search terms. It’s actually the connection point between SEO and paid that’s boosting traction.
Q: Element’s integrated services include strategy, creative, digital media, SEO, PR, and more. How do you ensure all these pieces work together instead of just coexisting?
A: Collaboration is at the core of every integrated strategy that Element creates. If you want all departments to work together, you have to work together. And we do. A lot.
We believe that getting in a room and analyzing, mapping, and optimizing our strategies ensures that the right hand always knows what the left is doing. If you ever find yourself believing that one tactic, one pivot, or one optimization only affects you or your service line, you are thinking about it wrong. Working within the PESO model (Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned) means that everything overlaps, and our teams ensure that we identify each area of overlap to get the best results.
Q: What would you like to accomplish in your new role?
A: Marketing is evolving. I could have said that 10 years ago, I can say it today, and I will be able to say it 10 years from now. But the reality is that one person cannot be “good enough” in all areas of marketing anymore, because there is too much to know, the discipline is too complex, and it is evolving too fast. That’s why a team is necessary.
Element is just that—an extension of our clients’ teams. My job is to ensure that none of our clients feel like they have to know everything, and that’s why we built the Element crew the way we did. We have experts in every area, and the magic happens when we create perfect brand chemistry (Total Brand Chemistry, some would say 😉) across all these specialties to achieve our clients’ goals.
I am a problem solver. That is my job and my role. I want clients to keep bringing us their biggest challenges and opportunities, because we’re built to figure them out and help them succeed. Don’t think you have to come to us with all the answers for us to just execute; we are here to help you figure it out, make a plan, and impact your bottom line!
Q: We know you’re a proponent of cross-department collaboration. What’s a tip you’d share about keeping communication open, streamlined, and effective across teams?
A: In-person communication. I know, I know, it is 2026, and there are hundreds of amazing communication and project management tools, but nothing will ever replace face-to-face communication when you are striving for clear, effective, real communication. While video conferencing has made a really good second option, nothing beats getting together in a conference room, coffee shop, or restaurant to work it all out! My office currently has seven chairs in it (including mine), and I wish I could fit a few more in!
We’ll work on getting you some stadium seating, Katie! If you’re ready to partner with Katie and the Element team on a strategy that delivers—and measures—real results, let’s talk. And for more breaking Katie news, follow us on Facebook.
