There is an ordinary way to imagine a marketing agency. One person makes the Instagram posts. Another buys the ads. A publicist writes a release. Someone else repairs the website, usually after everyone has forgotten why the campaign began. The work is divided into channels because the invoices are divided into channels. Then a customer encounters the brand and discovers that every room in the house has been decorated by a different tenant.
HVH Media & Marketing is built around a more useful picture. The feed is the front door. Public relations supplies authority. Influencer work brings borrowed attention. The website catches intent. Advertising distributes the message. Events turn the digital relationship into a physical one. The parts matter, but the handoffs matter more.
That is the quiet logic beneath an unusually broad menu of services at the Scottsdale firm founded by Hayden Van Hulzen in 2013. HVH handles social strategy and content, influencer campaigns, PR, branding, websites, Google and social ads, email, SEO and event marketing. On paper, that looks like breadth. In practice, it is an argument against fragmentation.
The elective that won
Van Hulzen did not begin with a tidy founder myth. She entered college on a pre-med track. Then she took a public-relations elective and found the work that held her attention. She spent the next decade around national and global marketing in automotive, sports, beauty and cosmetics before starting HVH.
The career turn is instructive because it explains some of the agency's appetite for different categories. Van Hulzen has described past clients at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum: religious television and a large adult-products brand. The point is not the provocation. It is that attention behaves differently by market, while trust remains stubbornly human.
“Flawed doesn't have to mean broken, flawed can mean real. And real is what builds loyalty.”Hayden Van Hulzen, founder and CEO
Authenticity is a word that marketing has polished nearly smooth. HVH gives it a more operational meaning: the people behind a brand should sound like people, and the firm selling visibility should be visible itself. Van Hulzen built a substantial personal audience and has argued that credibility begins when the marketer can demonstrate the behavior being recommended to clients.
The switchboard, not the billboard
The current sweet spot is clearer than the agency's early client list. HVH now speaks directly to cosmetic dentists, plastic surgeons, dermatologists, aesthetic providers and other high-value service businesses. These are purchases with a particular psychology. Customers research before they inquire. They look for proof, taste, safety, status and a sense of the person who will perform the work. A static advertisement cannot carry all of that weight.
earns authority
organizes attention
lend distribution
create coherence
capture demand
make it physical
HVH's social packages therefore include more than publishing: account activation, demand generation, content calendars, platform optimization, community engagement and reporting. The supporting services close the gaps. An influencer contract without a landing page wastes attention. A press mention without a coherent profile creates curiosity but not confidence. A beautiful feed without measurement becomes expensive wallpaper.
The business model is correspondingly bespoke. HVH sells strategy and execution through ongoing management, campaigns and projects rather than a public menu of fixed-price packages. There is no posted rate card. That structure fits work in which the mix changes with the client: one practice may need authority and patient education; another may need a launch, a new identity and paid demand.
The first failure was the old map
What failed first in Van Hulzen's story was not a campaign. It was the reliable route she had been taught to follow. After the career switch came personal upheaval, debt and the deaths of her boss and a colleague in a plane crash. She lost her job as she was trying to rebuild her life. Entrepreneurship did not arrive as a victory lap. She has compared its first morning to unemployment: no required schedule, no guaranteed income and nothing to fall back on.
The change of mind was less romantic than decisive. A prescribed career had already been displaced by a class she loved; later, stability disappeared anyway. The remaining wager was on her own judgment. That distinction matters. “Follow your passion” is flimsy advice. Notice where your curiosity survives contact with hard work, then accumulate evidence that people will pay for the result - that is sturdier.
HVH opens. Van Hulzen turns cross-industry marketing experience into a Scottsdale agency.
The market closes doors. The team moves client activity toward e-commerce and adds capacity instead of simply shrinking.
The boundaries become public. Van Hulzen discusses authenticity and the willingness to drop clients who damage morale.
The customer sharpens. HVH focuses its message on aesthetic, dental, healthcare and other high-value consumer services.
What survived the shutdown
COVID supplied the agency with a stress test. HVH pushed clients toward e-commerce, helped businesses keep trading and created another service line to handle overflow. The move was not based on a new slogan. It followed a simple constraint: if a customer cannot reach the counter, move the counter.
Another rule emerged around people. Van Hulzen describes a hands-off management style, trusting specialists to reach the agreed goal in their own way. More unusually for an agency, she has said she will fire a client who harms team morale. That sounds costly until one counts the hidden bill for keeping the wrong account: churn, timid work, management time and the slow conversion of talented people into job seekers.
“My team is more important than any paycheck. It's a privilege to work with us.”Hayden Van Hulzen on client boundaries
The public roster now spans operations, digital marketing, social management, web development, video production and editing. That shape mirrors the product. HVH is not positioning itself as a loose referral list. It wants to behave as the extension of a client's team that connects the disciplines.
The part worth copying
A business does not need seven agencies or seven internal departments to borrow the underlying method. Start with the customer's decision. List the moments that create trust before purchase. Give every channel a job in that sequence. Use one clear audience, one recognizable voice and one measurement that sits closer to revenue than likes. Then look for the broken handoffs.
Where it fits
High-consideration, consumer-facing services where reputation, visual proof and repeated exposure shape the sale. Aesthetic care, dentistry, hospitality and luxury services are natural examples.
Where to be cautious
It is a weaker fit when the buyer is reached through a tiny procurement list, the product is a pure commodity, or the company lacks the time and access needed to produce credible expert-led content.
The approach also depends on consistency. A connected system cannot rescue an offer customers do not want, and polished content cannot substitute for competent service. For regulated providers, approvals and patient privacy can slow the very cadence that social platforms reward. The method works when the underlying business can deliver, the customer actually researches online and the client is willing to let strategy travel across departmental borders.
HVH's most interesting claim is therefore not the billion collective campaign views attributed to Van Hulzen's work. A very large number of views can still be a very small business result. The better claim is architectural: attention should have somewhere to go. In a market full of agencies selling more content, HVH is selling the connections between the pieces. The feed is only the beginning. It is simply where the customer is likely to knock first.