Are you spending more on ads but getting less in return? You're not alone. In this eye-opening conversation, Preston Rutherford, co-founder of Chubbies (which achieved a nine-figure exit and continues to see 8 years of consecutive growth), reveals why most modern brands are stuck in what he calls "the performance trap." Preston breaks down the crucial 95-5 rule—the reality that 95% of your audience isn't actively shopping at any given time—and explains why optimizing only for immediate conversions is slowly eroding your brand. 

He shares the hard-earned lessons from Chubbies' journey, including their midlife crisis moment when efficiency metrics looked great but the business fundamentals were deteriorating. This isn't about choosing between brand and performance—it's about finding the right balance to build sustainable, profitable growth. If you've ever wondered whether your marketing is building a moat or just buying clicks, this episode is essential listening.

—

Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

—

Chapters: 

(00:00) Intro

(04:08) The Journey of Chubbies

(08:49) Navigating Early Success and Marketing Performance

(16:10) Identifying Brand Erosion and Its Consequences

(22:00) 1000 Free Postcards with Post Pilot

(22:58) The 95-5 Rule

(28:53) Balancing Demand Capture and Generation

(32:25) Testing and Incrementality in Marketing

(52:30) Understanding The Brand’s Impact on Revenue 

(58:47) Insights from Data Analysis

(1:04:18) Running Media Differently for Brand Building

(1:09:37) Identifying ICP for Marathon Data

(1:12:30) Fast Funding the Way You Need It with Wayflyer

—

Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 
• Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact 

Relevant Links:

• Preston’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonr
• Chubbies Website: https://www.chubbiesshorts.com
• Special Offer | PostPilot (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://postpilot.com/
• Special Offer | (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://wayflyer.com/

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

It's not because my ad sucks,

it's because it's speaking

to saying the wrong thing

to this person. At this time,

I'm not speaking to this vast majority

of people in the way that they want to be

spoken to.

Hey, this episode is brought

to you by OMG Commerce.

That's the agency that I get

the privilege of running.

Do you ever feel like it's Groundhog Day

when it comes to your marketing where

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Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today we've got a return guest.

This guy is lighting up

LinkedIn on the daily.

You can hear him on all your favorite

podcasts if you're into marketing at all

and you've ever tried to determine how

much should I be putting into performance

versus brand and is any of this

real and how do I measure it,

then this guy is a beacon

of light in our industry

and so excited to have him back on

the podcast. But I've got the one,

the only Preston Rutherford co-founder of

Looking Good Today.

Preston, how's it going man?

And thanks for coming back on the pod.

Yeah, I mean, we were talking

about this a second ago,

but I think my first go with you is

my first ever podcast appearance.

So thank you for just getting me going.

But now I'm excited to be here. This

would be a lot fun, that glowing intro.

Playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you

bet. Playing a very small part in

your podcast career there. But

yeah, I think it was the first,

I was watching LinkedIn, I was like,

Hey, wait a minute, this guy's good.

And it looks like maybe he's just

kind starting to post on LinkedIn.

So I jumped on it like, Hey,

come on the pod. And you did.

I love it.

And the rest is history, man.

But I love what you and

team built with Chub.

I love how it's continued to succeed and

I want to talk about that a little bit

in a minute because it's such

an important note to make.

And then I think really the time is right.

You've been talking about this for years.

The time is right to be thinking

about brand building and performance

marketing, sustainable, profitable growth.

It's just all kind of lining up.

We had the COVID era rock and roll,

crazy Hair on Fire growth where just

grow growth, spend, spend, spend.

We'll figure out profits later to,

oh shoot, we got to make money.

We're not making any money

now. Let's measure everything.

And so I think we're coming to

this place where it's like, okay,

let's look at this holistically.

And just so you know,

I've always felt like marketing

has to drive some kind of actions.

It's got to drive some.

If we're advertising and people

do nothing with that advertising,

what are we doing? In fact,

you'll appreciate this.

My first little consultancy

right out of college,

I was working with local businesses,

my tagline was marketing that builds

your brand and your bottom line.

Love that.

I was trying to help the local car

dealership and local retail stores.

It was super fun, but.

Love.

That.

I love how you guys have done this

and that led to a nine figure exit

with Chub and just your perspective

here is really, really valuable.

So maybe talk a little bit about the

journey for those that dunno with

Chubby, how you got to your

current philosophy on marketing,

and then we'll talk about Chubby's success

right now because it's kind of crazy

how well it's doing right now, but

tell us a little bit of the story.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah,

absolutely. So I'm a tiny,

tiny part of the success.

So one of four co-founders

and we started the business back in 2011.

We were four or five years out of college,

just didn't want to work for other

people more than anything and just we're

looking for something to

start and stumbled upon

the shorter, short, the whole

vibe of let's just be different.

It was different from what was in Vogue

at the time from a men's app peril

perspective where it was very stuffy

and Abercrombie and Fitch shirts off

guys standing in front of the store,

spring you with cologne playing horrible.

I dunno, German house music or whatever.

And.

You had to look a certain way, we're too

cool for you, you can't hang with us.

And there's, thats the opposite

of what we think should exist.

So that was like a foundational premise.

And then the shorts were just super,

super long and we all kind grew up

either playing soccer or rugby or we were

from the south and all of those things.

You're used to sort of

shorts actual short.

And then there was a sort of

aspirational look back to our dads

on their spring breaks in college when

they were growing up and how awesome they

look the mustaches and the

shorter and that whole thing.

So all that kind of came together

and we're just like, well shoot,

let's just try to, we don't

want to work for other people.

It'd be fun to work together. Let's just

try to start something. So I was back.

In 21. You guys helped.

Were you writing that trend or do you

feel like you kind of propelled that

trend? Because there was a time,

I'm a kid of the nineties and so we were

with my basketball team in high school.

We were coming off of all the old uniforms

from the seventies days were super

short.

Super short.

Shockingly, almost

obscenely short. Exactly.

And then it was the Fab five for

missions. Everybody's going baggy shorts.

That was the rage. Totally. Now

definitely short, excuse me, the trend.

Did you guys launch that trend back to

short or did you just ride the wave that

was already there? What's

your perspective on that?

I mean, dude, this is 2011,

so I'm obviously very biased,

but when we came out with shorter shorts,

it was absurdly different. Yeah.

I think guys really propelled

that. I think you did. I think.

So. Yes, I definitely think so.

And it's one of those things that

takes 15 years to really kind of get

going. It just takes a long time.

But no, we were starkly different,

and I think that was one of the main

reasons why we were able to stand out

because there was that latent

demand of people who were,

it was like sometimes there were

shorter folks who had to cut the

shorts that they had.

They had to go to Savers or Goodwill

and they had to find older shorts.

Or there were folks who generally,

maybe they had bigger quads or something

like that and they wanted to show 'em

off.

Or you had folks who played

sports and just kind of wanted a

better short that just kind of

fit with what they were used to.

There were all these sorts of things

where there was latent demand,

and so there was this niche of

people who were down with it,

but broadly it was very

frowned upon and viewed as

stupid and less masculine,

all of this kind of stuff.

So we just tried to turn the tables

and did all of these things where from

a brand and positioning perspective

made it seem completely,

our goal at least was to

make it completely inarguable

that shorts were meant to

be short, and that if you were

scared to show off your actual legs,

maybe that was representative of a lack

of confidence or that you're hiding

something or that what's in

those pockets of those shorts. So

yeah, no, it was very rare at the time.

It certainly wasn't a trend

that existed in a big way.

Totally makes sense. So yeah, I'm going

to credit you guys with that for sure.

So you say you don't want to work with

people, you want to work for yourselves,

you want something that's not the stuffy

kind of will tell you how to be cool

type of thing like Abercrombie

and Fitch and stuff like that.

So you launched the brand

then pick us up from there.

Sure, yeah.

So I mean at the beginning it was like

we had no money and the first person that

we went to work with to actually make

some shorts for us just took our money.

So it wasn't a blazing

start I guess I would say.

But we kind of funded the

early days with pre-sales.

We were just trying to get emails,

sign people up or we were doing

straight up in-person sales.

We'd do events at bars or we

would sell shorts at the park

very hand-to-hand combat sort of thing

that I think I highly recommend for

anyone who's just starting a

brand sell stuff in person,

but then started to get some early success

and I think started to grow a little

bit, which was the early goal.

And it was the time of Facebook ads

were just becoming a thing and you could

spend a dollar get 10 out or

whatever the exorbitant number was at

the time, same.

Numbers.

And you just start to feel

this godlike power that,

I mean, you can't necessarily cure cancer,

but you can sell shorts on the internet

and put a dollar in and get 10 out

pretty.

Print profit profits at will. Yeah,

it was kind of like the very early

days of Google where you were literally

getting five and Tencent clicks.

It's like you could literally print money

and then those were such unique times

that great take advantage of that.

It was never going to last forever.

So that's kind of.

Well didn't, that's the thing,

we didn't know that, right?

I mean it's hard to know that because

you're like, why would this stop?

No, I don't understand the macro dynamics.

So we basically got obsessed with

that kind of thing, just like, oh,

following the trend of what works,

what drives that 10 x ROAS or whatever.

And so I think we were growing and

I think because we were just so new,

we were doing the brand building thing,

we just knew that was the way to

differentiate and we couldn't spend 30% of

revenue on marketing,

so we had to do crazy stuff that was free.

So that did the brand building

stuff in the early days.

But then as we started to get more of a

flow and we needed more consistency and

predictability,

that's when we just rotated into

just the pure demand capture.

There was this latent demand

for fun apparel short kind of

thing,

and we were just capturing that so we

didn't feel the pain because we didn't

need to create new demand for our brand,

for our product until we needed to.

And then that was less fun and that was

about halfway in. And so we hit a little

bit of a midlife crisis if you'll,

but then that's kind of where we had to

rebuild the business from the ground up

again, all the credit to the team, all

the credit to the other founders here.

I'm just a tiny, tiny part. I just

talk about it on the internet,

but I was generally the one

who was representative of

all of bad decision making

and it was the other founders who

were more representative of like, no,

let's build this thing for the

long term. Let's find balance.

And so then we had to learn what

demand creation, demand capture,

what that balance looks like, how to

measure it, how to think about it,

how to allocate that capital. But

ultimately it resulted a great,

you mentioned all I can share

is a nine figure acquisition,

but now we're going on eight years

of top and bottom line growth.

I'm not in the business anymore,

but Rainer one of the four co-founders

and exceptional team, great guy,

great team on an absolutely

crushing it. It's.

Awesome. Yeah,

it really speaks to what you guys

built in the early days and to

see that sustained growth means

that you got a lot of it right?

You got product right, you got team,

you got the approach to brand

building and performance marketing.

You got that mix. And so I want

to dive in here a little bit.

One of the things you talk about a lot

online and that you and I have talked

about one-to-one is had this

idea of the performance trap and

brand erosion,

which I know is kind of the trap you

guys fell into when you thought the 10 to

one row as was going to go on

forever and ever, and then it did,

and then you're like, oh shoot, what

do we do now? How to rebuild things,

but talk about that a little bit.

What is that performance

trap and brand erosion?

How does a brand know they're in it?

And then we'll talk about

how do you get out of it?

Sure. Yeah. I mean I

think it's that feeling,

you feel it in your gut

where you're just like, Hmm,

this can't be right.

This doesn't feel like this

is what leads to a long-term

generational sort of thing.

You kind of look back at

your actions and you're like,

am I truly generating building

desirability for my brand

kind of thing or am I just making all

of these withdrawals without making any

deposits? If you want to use a

bank account metaphor analogy,

but then it shows up in the data too.

I mean people will cite

a variety of stats.

My C is going, my customer

acquisition cost is going up,

or my CPMs are going up,

or my reach is going down,

cost per a thousand accounts reached

going down or contribution margins

going down. I ran a sale this year,

I ran the same sale last year and the

lift from the sale this year was like

50% of what I got last year. So next

year I'm going to have to double the

discount. Or the only way

I can scale spend on X, Y,

Z channel is if there's a really strong

offer now and I can't just talk about my

product, I've got to throw an offer on it.

All of these sorts of things where you

just look at the business and you're

like, man,

do I feel like I'm in a more defensible

position or do I feel more reliant on

the ad platforms?

Am I getting as much of my revenue from

people searching for my brand name and

coming to my site and buying as I am

from a click on a buy button on an ad?

You start to realize that probably

the answer is no to that, right?

That part of, let's call it,

I don't want to call it organic

demand or unpaid demand,

but just the purchase behaviors

that were driving the mix of that

over time can start to

get a little bit more over

indexed onto the Let's fight for clicks

and get the click kind of thing. You

get into a place where

you're like, well, shoot,

my ROAS is like whatever the number is,

and I've been able to grow

it, but has my business grown.

You start to see those disconnect between

these metrics that we use to evaluate

how we spend our money

and the actual business.

And you start to get into these perverse

incentive situations where you're like,

okay,

I've got to be at a marketing efficiency

ratio of a five or something like that.

Great. And then I need to maximize

realize within that context. Great,

and I need to get a blended five

on that. So you're like, okay,

well I could just remove

some audience exclusions and

that will help me get a

little bit of a higher,

realize I could retarget

a little bit more.

I could spend a little bit

more on brand key with,

you can do all these things

where you're just like, well no,

we need to capture that demand. We need

to make sure we're defending our brand.

We need to make sure we're

doing X, y, z, blah, blah, blah.

The meta algorithm will

handle it or whatever.

And we can get into these slippery

slopes where it's like, huh,

but maybe I'm just claiming credit for

a lot of transactions that would've

already happened. So anyways, there's

this whole cycle where it's like, okay,

well we're spending more to get less.

I'm discounting more now.

I'm more and more competing on

the level of features and price

rather than just who I I'm as a brand.

It ultimately manifests generally in

contribution dollars going down or

contribution margin going down just like

the cash flowing through the business.

Even if revenue's going up,

the cash actually dropping

to cover your fixed costs,

you're not looking as good as you

would generally like it to look.

And if you trend that out two

years, three years, four years,

it's no bueno kind of thing.

You see where we're headed

in the wrong direction.

Sometimes as ROAS climbs

or often as ROAS climbs,

your overall contribution margin may

be going down and the incremental

impact, incremental lift of your marketing

dollars often going down as well,

meaning we're making ourselves feel good

by looking in the ad account and pat

ourselves on the back

with great ROAS numbers,

but ultimately we're not driving

new customers at an acceptable cost.

We're not fueling we organic growth,

we're not actually

driving the brand to grow.

And that is absolutely no bueno.

Two points of nuance on that super

quickly, two points of nuance on that.

We were mentioning CAC

and customer acquisition.

I got to hit my new customer count.

So then one of the things that you do

kind of as a last ditch effort or it just

continues and you don't stop it,

but it's like bring them in with these

big promos, right? You're like, oh,

I hit my new customer goal

crushed on new customers.

And then you look back six months later

and you're like, wow, that cohort LTV is

horrible and I'm predicting

some of my worst.

Customers that I've ever had right there.

Yeah. I'm predicting I'm requiring so

much revenue from that cohort to just

float my business and it's not

manifesting. That's doom spiral land.

You know what I mean? And so that's

one other thing where you're just like,

oh wow, okay,

I'm predicting an LTB to CAC and

now that's not a real number at

all because of how I've driven so much

new customer acquisition through just buy

now promo 15 minutes rather

than I freaking love this brand,

I'm going to buy from them. Stepping

nuance number one where it's like, okay,

it's not just about hitting your new

customer count goals, it matters,

but it's like how we get them in.

Number two is maybe more

of a subjective thing where

I kind of think about it

as being the wacky, wavy,

inflatable tube man kind of blow up

mascot at used car dealerships where it's

That kind of being the typical or

even the sleazy used card sales person

where it's just like, okay, we're

going to use all the tactics.

That's the whole idea. You look at,

if I'm just going to be putting out 10

million impressions of those 10 million

impressions,

how many of those impressions are with

creative that is like fricking buy right

now. Here's a problem you

have. Here's my solution,

here are the top features and here's

50% off if you buy right now versus

I'm just going to make you laugh and it's

going to tie back to what I do and who

I'm, but that builds the brand,

that builds the desirability,

that preps the 95% that I know

we're going to talk about.

You pick your head up as a founder,

as a marketer, as a whoever,

and you're like, I don't like how

this mix has shifted. I don't really,

is this how I'm presenting myself

to the world? You know what I mean?

And that is one of those humbling

things where you're just like, oh crap.

Regardless of what any metric says,

that just is not right. You know what I.

Mean? If.

All we are at the end of the day is a

feeling that gets someone to take an

action to stop them from buying the

incumbent who's currently meeting their

needs for what I'm trying to do, that's

the thing where you're just like,

I think I got to change. So those

are two nuance on that front.

Yeah, I love that. And

I'll share a quick story.

When I was right out of college,

I was doing some consulting with local

businesses and met this piano dealer.

Great guy, loved him,

but they found out that the only success

they were really having was these going

out of business sales.

And so they would sign up to

acquire this distressed piano

dealer and then they would

just do a liquidation sale.

And they got so addicted to their,

we just got to go out

of business every month.

They have these distressed

inventory sales every month,

and that's legitimately what

they did. So they would start,

we've got this distressed inventory

from this dealership in Illinois,

it has to go today, and that's

all they could get to work.

So it's like we're going out of business

every month. That's our strategy.

And that's an extreme example,

but totally this discount spiral.

That's what some D two C brands can

get into as well where it's like,

I can only exist if I give these

deep discounts and dial up the

urgency to 11, then I can make money

otherwise I can't. And it's like,

I like this brand building where

you're still creating desire,

still making people say, I want that.

I want those shorts or I want that look,

but it's not the same buy now limited

inventory going out of business type of

thing. It's just a totally

different approach.

Totally. Yeah. I mean we can talk

tactics and positioning all day,

but the going out of sale thing and

only doing that over and over is just

classic.

Yeah,

it's like the perfect picture

there of the trap we can get into.

For.

Sure. Everyone can imagine the sign.

You can imagine what the ad

looks like on local tv, right?

Because all seen it before.

I kind of joked too. I was like, we need

to start running ads where we're like,

we're still going out of business,

it's just we're going out

of business again. So yeah,

pretty funny. Today's episode

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Well, let's talk about this shift

that you had where you talk about your

95 5 rule,

and I think part of the point that you've

been making and I've been making for

years is a lot of our businesses

have succeeded off of just capturing

existing demand. Not a bad thing.

We got to have demand capture

and demand generation.

You got to have those balanced

and the right mix and whatnot.

But talk about the 95

5 rule. What is that?

How do you use that to

approach healthy growth?

Yeah, and this is not,

I wish it were mine.

I think it comes from

the Berg Bass Institute,

which I would definitely

look them up and John

and Byron Sharp and the

book, how Brands, all This

availability gets into

some marketingy stuff,

which kind of makes me

gloss over personally,

which is why I try to make this

stuff a little bit more fun.

But the general idea is, and I didn't

know about this until more recently,

so I felt it felt like a jumble of

pain and anxiety in my soul when I was

actually running the media myself

and in the trenches operating.

But just the general idea that

95% of our audience at any

given time is not actively

shopping for my category.

So what there is two things. One,

if I'm spending 95 or a hundred

percent of my marketing dollars where

the goal or the outcome of

success is I convince you to

purchase, there's this massive mismatch,

and this is how I think we were

for a long time at Chevy's,

we were spending 95% of our

dollars going to demand capture,

rational appeal product offer urgency.

I'm going to get you right now.

And a better ad is just an

ad that is more convincing,

but we were only hitting that five ish

percent of people, the vast minority,

whether it's 95, 5 or 85, whatever

the number is, there's that.

And then the other idea,

it's simply being the creative

that crushes it for the 5% just

goes in one year and out the

other for the 95%, right?

Not actively shopping.

So it's kind of like if you've heard

of the term reticular activation or

reticular.

Love, it's like.

Okay, I want a red Ferrari,

so then I see red Ferraris

Freaking everywhere kind of thing.

Where if it's not that, you just don't

see it, right? You don't even see it.

So I'm just like if I'm

only evaluating my creative,

my media, whatever it is by

how I'm capturing that demand,

my job with the 95 is to prep them,

generate a memory, generate a feeling,

get someone to say, I freaking

love that ad when X, Y,

Z happens with that brand.

One of my favorite ads of all time,

that just maybe hit me at a great time.

I don't know,

it was the classic Dollar Shave Club

ad that YouTube ad was just so epic,

funny, so memorable. You had to

watch it, could talk about it.

It was easy to refer to

watch it multiple times.

And I'd like to think CHS made a bunch

of those as well, and I think we did.

But from another brand

and just going way back,

that was one that just true classic true

classics. First big video ad I think

was fricking awesome. The guys sitting

in the office love their product boss.

It's just such a memorable scene where

just that captures what we're all about.

And I remember it and

there's countless examples,

but I'm just thinking about

more modern brands and that

probably did a really good,

both of those probably did a really

good job at capturing demand, right?

You're like, that's freaking awesome

because these are unicorn basic creative,

but it did a much better job at just

prepping all of these people who are,

I don't need a razor subscription

today kind of thing, but,

or I don't need a bunch of t-shirts

today because I just bought some crappy

Hanes at Macy's or whatever.

But I will when my wife says,

you look ugly, and I'm going to think.

So I think those are the things

where if it was just like 20% off

product shot, white

background, buy now, buy now,

that'd be total wasted money. I think

that's the kind of general idea was that

totally floored me where

it was like, oh my gosh,

it's not because my ad sucks,

it's because it's speaking to

the wrong saying the wrong thing

to this person at this time,

I'm not speaking to this vast majority

of people in the way that they want to be

spoken to. My job there is to

prep to drive that emotion,

whereas with the 5% or whatever

the number is, rational appeal,

be as efficient as possible. You've to

your point, you got to balance that.

We call it brand and

monetization, build that brand,

build that mental

availability, build whatever,

but then you got to clear

that funnel the best of them.

And many of us are good at that, right?

The thing we're not doing is filling

the funnel or building the desirability,

but it's not,

the whole idea here is just to add

balance because many modern brands,

they've gotten out of

balance and it makes sense,

right? Because the data that we now

have access to makes us feel like we're

media gods and that that's all

there is and that's capital T

truth.

But I think everyone kind of learns

when you start to feel this and everyone

feels this and you earn this problem,

this means you've gotten to this place

and you've stayed in business long enough

to have

is the ceiling for my brand or why am I

spending more to get all of these sorts

of things? So you earn this problem,

it's a great problem to have,

but it's just like a classic what got

us here won't get us there sort of

situation. And it's like, okay, reset.

What does balance look like for us now?

How do we get to that

next stage of growth?

And I would love to hear

your perspective on this.

I've got a couple thoughts myself,

but how do we find that

right mix of demand

capture and demand generation?

I do agree with you that most modern

brands are better at the demand capture

piece, whether that's through met Google

or likely a combination of the two.

But how do we find that right mix of

demand generation, demand capture?

How do you view that?

Totally. I mean I think what we learned

for the Chu's example, for instance.

Would say.

We're at 95 5 in favor of performance,

right? 5% was just the slush fund,

you know what I mean?

That just would get cut if you miss

a number on a month kind of thing.

And I was like, okay, great. Nice to

have. I don't have any metrics against it,

blah, blah, blah. And then I think

where we evolved over time after

midlife crisis, let's say two,

three years after that, and

again, buckets are tough.

So to say this is brand and

this is DR and blah, blah, blah.

It's like a channel tactic, creative

kind of thing. What's the job to be done?

So we can have that conversation,

but broadly, just to give numbers,

it got close-ish to that 60

40, right? The classic brand,

60% to brand, 40% to activation.

And it's not just on the paid side

too, right? It's like we've got email.

Email is a freaking awesome way

to capture demand workforce,

and I'm not paying that much for

what we did a lot and SMS too.

So what we did a lot of was like,

let's also view that as our demand

capture engine as well. And not

only use paid for bottom funnel

demand capture because that can just,

and it's a math problem,

but what is the cheapest

way to get you to exit my

funnel is kind of part of the way

to think about it. But yeah, man.

And that freaks people out,

right? No one is at 50 50,

no one's even at 40% to brand. No, I

mean maybe if you're Clorox or whatever,

but if we're talking modern

brands that freaks people out,

they think lack of accountability,

lack of measurement,

they think lighting money on fire.

So the easier answer and what I

think is a productive answer is just

more To brand building more to demand.

You're so far from having

a conversation, we're like,

is this too much brand building?

Most of us are sub 10%.

So if it's 10, get to 11.

If it's 11, get to 12%.

Find a way to inch that up

and just test maniacally.

And you can talk about what

we're testing and how we measure.

But I think one of the big things is

there's this humbling

reality that for many brands,

if you just take the 10%

least efficient spend on dr,

well first of all,

you got to do those tests to find

what the 10% least efficient is.

Most brands are just like, no, this

is my bread and butter. It works.

And if you ask them, how well does it

work? If you were to cut spend 10%,

what would happen if you were

to pulse spend up 30% in a week?

What would happen? Would you see 30%

more growth? No, I've not done that.

We can't do those tests. No. Or you

explain it away in a variety of different,

so I think the first part there is let's

get to a little bit more precision on

the level of incrementality.

If we're spending 95% on performance

and the thing like the bread and butter,

like our top spending ad sets, let's

pressure test the hell out of that first.

And that kind of opens up the conversation

because the whole reason why there's

a debate about the split of brand and

performance is because a fear that you'll

waste money if you put it towards brand.

But the reality is that

most brands not all,

are already wasting way more money,

not pressure testing their

existing performance spend.

They don't have a testing framework.

They're testing, and I love house.

I think they're the coolest.

I love measured all

incrementality testing is amazing.

However, what I would encourage, and

I'm sure they encourage the same,

is let's test some of our

bigger closer held assumptions

rather than these little ticky tack

micro optimizations on the margin that

you're like, oh, was trying nothing.

Is trying a view content

versus an add to cart,

is that going to, sure, maybe

there's something there,

but what about my bread

and butter kind of thing?

These are the things that I encourage

us to get a better feel for the

incrementality of because

that's more fundamental.

And that's where we could basically say,

if I'm spending a hundred

million bucks a year on X, Y, z,

I can free up $15 million because

it's really not doing anything for me.

Or the marginal contribution dollar

generation on that 15 million is

so low that either I could not spend it

or I could just put it to

demand gen, but nothing,

there would be no downside to that in

my business. I think that's kind of step

one in a lot of these

situations we're just like,

let's get a little bit of humility

around where all of the money's going to

acknowledge that we're probably

wasting quite a bit of money there.

So then that takes the conversation

away from the fear being wasting money.

And then it can be a conversation

around different things.

How are we going to build brand? How are

we going to measure it? Yes, I agree.

Having more demand makes sense. So

then what are we going to do about it?

But it's like let's make it as

inarguable as possible and less of this,

I know I'm not wasting money on

performance. I'm running a massive,

I'm taking a massive flyer, a massive

risk of wasting money on brand.

That's a fundamentally flawed

premise that I think we need to get

alignment on first before we then talk

about what the ideal split should be.

So it's kind of like those

two things, it should be more,

and then we're already wasting way

more money on our bottom funnel demand

capture kind of stuff.

So let's acknowledge those things and

then I think we can have productive

conversations going forward.

Yeah, it is really a great point.

And I think that first piece,

we've got to key in on whatever

you're doing now to build your

brand to drive demand rather

than just to capture it.

You got to start testing

doing more of it. And yes,

we would love to get to a point with

our marketing where we've got 0% waste,

probably never going to happen. Nope.

And it's certainly not happening now,

even if you think you're measuring all

of your marketing the way that you should

be. And so I really do credit

house, I'm glad you brought them up.

I'm a big YouTube guy,

and so they've done a lot for us where

this huge YouTube mentality test and

showed that man, you look at

YouTube performance and platform,

the actual incremental impact is probably

almost three and a half times that.

And so really showing, hey,

the way you're measuring it,

what you should be thinking about

is this driving a creative growth or

incremental growth or growth

I wouldn't have already had.

And there there's some challenges there,

but I love the way you frame that.

And I would be curious,

how do you look at maybe some of

those initial tests or initial looks

at how do we understand how

incremental this activity is?

Because there are some tools out there,

some of them are really quite expensive

and house is probably in that bucket for

a lot of brands. How do you start to test

incrementality? What did you guys do?

What do you recommend that people.

Do? Great question. And the thing

about the YouTube findings with House,

what we're seeing with Marathon,

which is just effectively just trying

to measure the longer term stuff,

is that it's even more pronounced.

So I think houses helpers understand

the short-term impact of YouTube and a

variety of tactics on

YouTube, which is strong,

stronger than chosen platform.

But then the longer term impact we're

also seeing is also pretty massive.

So it's like there's generally

people are sleeping on YouTube,

I guess is my point, both from the

short and the long-term perspective.

And it backs out to a rational

first principles perspective.

You're at the end of the day,

seconds of focused

attention is the thing that,

and so that's why TV has

been a thing for so long.

Like the switching costs.

Really odd, built some of the best,

the most iconic brands were often built

on tv. YouTube is our version of tv.

Exactly. Right. And with YouTube,

I dunno what it's like 50%

of impressions are on a tv,

I don't dunno the exact

number, but I think it's.

Between 50, 60%. Yeah,

it's growing, growing.

So I don't know where else you get

those seconds of focused attention

as cleanly and efficiently

and effectively as on YouTube.

So anyways, that's one note

that I want to mention,

but in terms of how do we start to

think about incrementality testing?

So there's the poor person A,

let's call it the duct

tape solution thing.

I was going to say poor man solution,

but let's call it bubblegum duct tape.

And then there's like, let's do it, right?

But then broadly philosophy,

philosophy on measurement,

and obviously I'm biased because I

started the measurement software company,

but this is why,

it's because I think brands

under invest in measurement,

if we're going to spend in aggregate,

let's call it, I dunno what the number is,

1% of our marketing

budgets on measurement,

you just say it like that rather than

thinking about it as a fixed cost and I've

got a broad software budget.

And then you're like, oh, okay,

is that a good no, you think about

it, percentage of marketing spend,

do I think I can get more than a

1% improvement in the results? From

my experience? You're

wasting way more than that,

not knowing some of these answers.

Totally. So I highly recommend, yes,

use all platform tools, but

then have your MTA tool,

have your incrementality

tool, have your MM tool,

and then while we're building marathon,

your long-term have precise

performance brand stuff too,

which was a big missing piece is

why we're trying to take it invest,

don't short shrift the

measurement stuff. And even,

I know you were on the Marketing

Operators podcast recently,

if you think back on one of their older

episodes was when times were maybe a

little bit tougher and they were talking

about what do we cut and what do we not

cut? And I think Cody from Ridge made

a good point where he was just like,

thing you do not cut is marketing

software. You just don't cut that, right?

Because that's marketing

measurement software, sorry,

because that's the north

star. If you're flying blind,

our marketing spend is our

biggest cost in this business.

So if it's not guided by anything

that's really, really bad,

you can get really upside

down on your economics.

So it's like a broad philosophical thing.

It's like whatever you're investing in

measurement software now invest more and

then obviously use it, prioritize

use of it. You can have

an account with name your tool,

and if you don't spend time on it,

you're going to waste money. So

essential something like how,

if you're wanting to

just try some tests now,

first it's a mindset shift outside of

I need to use measurement software.

And that's really important. Or

measurement tools, let's call it.

If you're not going to, regardless

of how you're going to test,

you need to commit to, this is not

going to change my business tonight.

This is an evolution in how we operate.

So let's think about what each test

for the next 12 months looks like.

Let's plan it out and let's commit to it

and let's allocate enough budget to it.

And let's just know that

it's more about information

gathering,

like neutral information gathering

than test if that's a failure or

not. And that's a different way to

approach it. So that being number one, but

I would start with some

of our core things.

If you think about an ad set

where you spend your most dollars,

let's pressure test that. Let's cut

that 30%, cut that 40% for a week,

see what happens.

Post it up hundred

percent geos if you can,

and measure those geos if

you're set up to do that.

Yes. So then we can talk about

that. So the pulse up and down,

just do that to everything

and cycle through that.

I mean starting with the

specific strategies that

you're spending the most on at

any given time.

Because the other thing

is the result from a may

test doesn't necessarily apply.

Next May might not even apply to December.

These are moment in time tests

kind of thing, which is fine.

That doesn't make it bad.

It's just like we tried that two

years ago and it didn't work,

so we're not going to try it ever again.

We don't want that stuff to

happen because things change.

Economics change auctions

change, ad products change,

our brand changes, our creative

changes, but just cycle through,

if I'm going to test and just work down

from the things that I'm spending the

most on, pulse up, pulse down is a great

way to do it. True point on holdouts.

Holdouts are great.

We've built the long-term brand

version of it at Marathon House,

measured name your tool.

They've got amazing tools.

Some people run them

themselves and that's okay,

but I caution because you can do it wrong.

And then if you don't understand the level

of statist complic significance or if

you don't, all of these, it's,

it's a statistical exploration.

It's less like I tested Texas

and Texas grew faster than rest

of country. It's like, no,

Because Texas behaves different from

rest of country for a of reasons.

It's got a different seasonality curve.

You went into that month

with different numbers,

and so it's like you can very easily

be steered in the wrong way. And

I've made this mistake personally,

I would just like, let's just

Texas, California, New York,

let's just do it there.

Boom. That's our test.

I'd say.

I dunno. I dunno if that's better

than nothing, to be honest.

To the extent you can get

down to a DMA level And do

it in that way or even a zip level, I

think that's better. But regardless,

you got to spend more and you got to

run it for longer generally. I mean,

I think people want

answers today, tomorrow,

and you want to spend

as little as possible.

And that's why I think these tools are

clear on how confident are we in these

solutions or what is the variability of

potential outcomes Here I'm showing you

some number, but that's not

the number. That's not as,

that's not the specific,

there's a range of outcomes and I

would always just caution double

click on what that number is, what the

range of outcomes is, what the error,

are you happy with this outcome? Are we

happy with this outcome kind of thing.

It could be something like that,

especially if we cut the test off earlier,

whatever. So the way you set this up,

the way you run the test,

just counter the short-termism that

we as humans are fully laden with

and know that it's just a systematic

thing. You got to give it enough time,

you got to run it

correctly. But the pulse up,

pulse down and just understand, okay,

I added a marginal 20%, what did I get?

And do that over and over and over and

over because you're always going to have

variables.

You're going to have a good product launch

on the next week and you're going to

have a bad product launch on next week.

Totally.

Email toss. So that's why you got

to do it multiple times as well.

It's not just a one and

done thing. It's broadly,

I'm committed to learning

this set of things this year.

I'm not going to boil the ocean. Because

you look back and you're just like,

even if you think about running

a test that maybe is a little bit

longer, you're like, oh my

God, that's an eternity.

But then it's like it takes you

10 to 15 years to get to any

real material scale and profit

generation anyway. So you're like,

you're not going to spend a month testing

what could be something that changes

your changes the way you spend

30% of your marketing. Again,

I would've felt this exact thing

and I was the one who was like,

no, we can't test that stuff. Just we

got to go. We got to go. We got to go.

We got to go. So I'm the guilty guy

here. So I've felt all of these things,

but those are just some thoughts

as it relates to how to do tests.

Yeah, man, it's so valuable

and so much to unpack there.

I want to talk a little bit

about your measurement stack,

and then I want to really dive into

what marathon data is measuring,

how that fits into the overall stack.

But I'll give a quick analogy

here that I think will help.

And you talk about how running one test

is silly. You had to run multiple tests.

So there's the heart issues in my

family, at least with a few people,

and it's like I'm diving

into some of this.

And so you can measure your

resting heart rate. In my heart,

resting your heart is really good.

You can then measure heart

variability and how that speaks to the

health of your heart.

You can also then do lipid panels

and see what's my cholesterol,

but not just cholesterol,

but there's 20 ways to measure

cholesterol. And then it's like, well,

I need to measure that

probably three or four,

five times throughout the

year because you measure once,

it could be based on some other

factors. And so then you're like, well,

maybe I need to do a calcium

check and all of these things,

but if you want to say,

I want be healthier,

or I want to build for the

longterm with my health,

you're going to have to

measure all of those things,

understand what they're measuring,

understanding then based on the reading,

what do you do with that? And

then measure on an ongoing basis,

which kind of feels a little bit

overwhelming, but it's just the way it is.

And I feel like it's the

same with marketing. We can't

run one test and be like,

great, we know what to do

forever now with our marketing,

or this is the salvation for our

brand. We have MTA now multi,

multi touch attribution. Everything

is solved. It's never the case, right?

It's like we've got to stack these things.

We have to understand what they're

measuring, what that's telling us,

what we expect, and then what do we

do with it? And so talk about that.

What do you believe is your perfect

marketing measurement stack?

And then let's go deep on

Marathon data.

For sure, for sure. Yeah.

So I mean, I think broadly,

before you even start talking

about marketing measurement stack,

there's a bit of these things are true

and you can't really argue them.

And maybe this applies to the whole

conversation, but where it's just

most likely if you're running into a

little bit of this with I'm spending more,

getting less or CACs up or

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You've just reached that stage where

it's like, maybe we got to change.

I think we tend to jump to like, oh,

it's like conversion rate optimization,

or I need more creative diversity or blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm like,

those are symptoms rather than

the cost. Part of it is like,

let's get to the cause and

let's understand that most

likely it's that we've just

eaten through most of the

people who know about us, care

about us or thinking about us.

That's very rational. And I think

we need alignment on that first.

Great. Now let's talk about measurement

stack, and that's more specific,

but I do think that there's a

nice multi-touch attribution tool.

Awesome.

A lot of people don't know that

GA has that. It does. It does.

So you can get it in a variety

of different places and then some

kind of experimentation

platform to just test something.

And so we all, I think,

know the great vendors there some

kind of statistical analysis tool like

an mm M of sorts,

an MM where you could just put a lot

of data in and get an understanding

of what's doing what, and it's not

susceptible to the cookie apocalypse,

to the iOS 14, to the blah, blah,

blah. It's just stats, right?

So that's what I would view as just,

and I think all of the ad platforms

put out papers where they talk about,

that's the trinity of measurement,

right? It's MTA, it's testing,

it's MM, M, all of that

together, you triangulate.

And then in my strong opinion,

we need to understand how we're building

the long-term compounding value.

How are we going to over time make sure

we get more and more of our revenue

coming from people searching for our

brand coming direct to our site where it's

not fighting in that auction all

day, every day to get that click.

And so I think that's maybe

the segue to marathon,

but definitely all of them.

And I recommend that if

you're spending, I don't know,

more than a million bucks a year or

something like that on marketing.

So it's actively every brand to

have a full measurement stack.

Got to have it.

And I think that that's one of the flaws

that people are coming to understand is

MTA alone won't solve it, right?

It's good to see click data

and clickstream data and

what are people doing after

they see an ad? It gives you some insight,

but you need that m that shows correlation

when spend goes up on TV or YouTube,

what happens to sales if there's no

correlation, there's no causation,

but then you got to run experiments to

see, okay, but is there causation? Is it,

is there causation? So all

those things work together.

Yeah.

Let's.

Talk about, I think

the other thing though,

the one point that I think might be

helpful, and I know we're short on time,

but I think this might be helpful, is

the MTA or even the

end platforms, we think

they know all of the clicks and

they know all of the purchases,

and that's deterministic.

Whereas models are probabilistic

and therefore less trustworthy.

The reality is 85% of people are

opting out of tracking on iPhones.

A lot of our.

IPhone users, you hover over

the little I in ads manager,

when you're looking at data and

it says, this data is modeled.

So even the click based roas,

which we think is the highest we

switched to from seven day click,

one day view down to one day click

because we're like, we're accountable.

And then the reality is that the vast

majority of this data is modeled because

there's so much data loss. So

there are often questions around, okay,

I view what's in platform

as capital T truth, right?

Because you've got all of the

clicks, you know what everyone did.

It's unfortunately bullshit.

And so I think the more we

realize that the flaw of this,

just from that perspective,

not in terms of all of the other negative

implications that it has on us in

terms of optimizing just for short term

and just getting into this doom spiral,

but of the fact that that data is modeled,

heavily modeled, I dunno how much,

I don't know the specifics, but just

hover over the little eye in Mads manager,

I'll tell you. And then look at the data.

The vast majority of people are opting

out of being tracked on their phones,

and I don't know what the number is,

but 70 to 80% of sessions

are on mobile for many of our

brands, for many of our DC context, I

don't know what the number is for Amazon,

but it's like it's all modeled

and that's okay. It's okay.

So let's not poo poo statistical analysis.

Let's not poo P all of this stuff that

we tend to poo because all of it's

modeled.

Great point, great point. Love that.

And it's only going to

become more and more true.

There's going to be less and less clarity.

There's going to be more and more

privacy. That's kind of part of this,

but we can then still

triangulate and understand, okay,

when we're doing these things,

it leads to this kind of business

outcome that I'm looking for.

And so walk through the, and I'm fine

on time actually just to clarify that,

but what's the thesis

behind marathon data?

What problem are you solving? And

talk to us about how that works.

Totally. Well,

it starts with this realization that

brand is important. Brand is the moat.

Brand is the thing that protects our

ability to generate profits over time.

Protects us from competition,

protects us from someone who's willing

to come in and try to steal my customers

because they can spend

twice as much as I can.

Or some brand from name

your country who just

straight up copies my product and

tries to sell it for half price,

which has happened to I think many of

the listeners of this podcast ourselves

included. What then do we have?

How then do we continue to have people

come to our site and pay twice as much

for our thing, you know what I mean?

Or keep coming to us and

not need to only buy on a

discount or whatever, selling our souls,

that being important and that being

something that tends to happen to every

brand as they reach some level of success.

I don't know what the annual revenue

is, but this general idea

that brand is important,

brand is ultimately the most important

thing for many of us consumer brands,

unless we have some patent,

some other IP brand ends up

being that IP if we're just

selling consumer goods.

So, okay, that being said,

it's been really hard to measure

that so that we can connect

that to actual revenue

growth. Historically,

the way it's historically been done

is surveys, brand tracker surveys.

Let's get our brand awareness. Number

two, problems with that, right?

Is that you've got this

intermediary metric. First of all,

it took three months to get that

metric. So you're already like, okay,

what is this? Okay, my brand

awareness went up five points,

but what period of time are we even

looking at? I don't even remember.

I'm thinking about Black Friday, cyber

Monday, right? So what? There are two,

so whats that are unanswered? What

did I do to get that? And then what's,

how much more money am I

making because of that?

So we're intending to kind

of get out of surveys,

focus on actions like

you're mentioning, right?

Everything I do should drive an

action. Yes, love. So behaviors,

what people do rather

than what people say.

There's a crap ton of that being

generated every day on the internet.

So use behavior and then solve

the two. So whats that have been?

The pernicious problems with measuring

the impact of brand one is tie it to

action as much as you can.

Not everything, But as much as you

can tie it to actions you've taken.

Give yourself a daily number

that is in the form of dollars,

which is solving the second.

So which is like how do I

quantify or predict or look

back and analyze the

incremental revenue impact

of this brand building stuff,

actually make that connection.

And so those are the two things

we're trying to do with brand.

And so think of us as

all of the things I was talking about

on the short term kind of stuff,

but for long-term.

So our whole focus is not the

clicks, not the short-term purchases,

but what's happening over the next

six months and how can we think about

building that bank revenue if you'll

that future revenue that I'm going to be

building into and

realizing. But then also,

how am I driving what we focus on, which

is called resilient baseline revenue.

So even as you look at an mm m readout

for instance, over short-term stuff,

you'll always get some percentage

of the revenue that wasn't explained

necessarily by your short-term

tactics. It was the base sales, right?

The sales you would've gotten anyways

is kind of another way to talk about it.

The big aha for us was like, yeah,

it's fun to look at all the

colors in the chart of the MMM,

but what about this base sales?

Wouldn't it be cool if that was much

larger If the sales I would've gotten

anyways was more?

That seems like that's awesome from

the perspective of resilience and risk

reduction and better

forecasting and less reliance

on third parties that I don't control.

But these all seem like good things.

Why do I focus on trying to build that?

And we realized there was

nothing out there that does that.

So think of us as how do I

build that resilient base,

however you want to define it, right?

If it's like revenue from

brand search or if it's not as

simple, right? You've got

to remove all the spikes.

You've got to invest for spend and

seasonality and blah, blah, blah, blah.

How do I build that

resilient base of revenue?

How do I drive more people to search

for my brand and buy or just memorize my

fricking URL I'm coming by?

Those are the purchase actions that I

want to drive more of. And that comes from

activating the 95% when they become the 5%

sure they're going to be more

likely to click on my ads,

which will make my

performance more performant.

But I also want them to just not

have to go through that thing.

Let's play different games.

Let's spend our dollars to drive brand

search and revenue from brand search,

that kind of stuff. So anyways,

we're trying to, for modern brands,

turn this, it's like

incremental future growth.

Think about it that way. Less

brand brand's a scary word,

but it's an important word and you got

to stand by it because brand matters from

a performance marketing mindset mindset.

We're just trying to turn incremental

future growth beyond what you would

achieve if you were just continuing

to spend in the way you are today.

So brand but into performance,

into a performance marketing workflow

where I get data today on what I

did yesterday so that I can act

and make decisions and basically

run a full funnel ad account basically

across YouTube and meta TikTok,

whatever.

Man, I love that. I 100%

agree brand is moat.

At the end of the day, it's what you have.

And I think brand shows up in

the ability to charge the right

prices. You can protect your profits.

It's the ability to continue

to grow and to have people

searching for your brand.

I know Mark Pritchard,

the marketing director at p and g always

says one of the greatest signs that we

look for knowing that a brand

has traction is brand search

growing over time. That's

what we need to measure.

And I like this idea of resiliency,

this baseline revenue is that growing

and that's going to be an indicator of

am I doing things right?

And I do think there's this sense that

brand is mushy and it's fluffy and you

can't measure it and it's

just in the ether or whatever,

but that's not really true.

Brand can be measured,

you just don't measure it in the same way.

And you do kind of need

of a collection of tools.

But I think this piece that you're

solving of how do we measure the resilient

growth of our brand shows

up with chubby, right?

Would you say eight years in a row?

Like the top bottom line

growth or whatever. Yeah.

Even in the midst of craziness.

Totally. It's important.

It's important to have

that resilient growth.

And so I guess maybe as we wrap up here,

what are some of the insights that pop up?

Do you have any examples

of with this data,

these are the insights that pop up and

then what we can do with those insights?

So some of the data that

has come to the surface,

it's actually pretty interesting. So

the one point though that I would make

is that sometimes people think about, ah,

it seems too good to be true that

you can measure this brand thing in a

performance markety ish way

or even measure the impact,

the revenue impact of the

brand. The reality is that

p and g or Ford or these massive

advertisers,

they've worked with firms to

build these custom models,

they cost millions to

build and to maintain,

and they take a really long time to get

all the data in, et cetera, et cetera,

which is why we lowly 50,

a hundred million dollars.

Brands don't really do this,

but they've been doing it for a long time.

But they've just been these crazy

complex models that were built by these

analytics firms and they

took just a really long time,

but it's proven methodology. They've

been measuring this stuff for forever.

How else

for us modern consumer brand builders

to think that all of the traditional

multi-billion dollar brands have just

gotten there because they've been flying

blind, they've had no data. I think

we need a little humility ourselves.

These are very precise people. Absolutely.

It's expensive to do it that way.

So I think the thing that we're doing in.

America, not that it's not measurable,

it's just not measurable in the way

we're used to. And so makes sense.

Not in the way we're used to and then

up until I guess what we're doing is,

and not a way that we could afford.

Because.

It would be very expensive

to build these custom models.

So part of the thing that we're

doing is, let's try to generalize it.

A lot of the people who built those

super custom models for those big

advertisers from these analytics

firms are the ones who were like,

this is how I would do it if I

would democratize this for everyone.

So when we came together it

was like, oh, this is awesome.

Let's figure this out. But some of

the big things that have stood out,

one of the things we've

always knocked on is

whether or not a follow

or a share is valuable.

I think we've all gone through this.

Well at least I have this hype

cycle of that's all that matters.

It's the worst thing. There's

no value. Maybe it does matter.

So the reality though is somewhere in

the middle there's some value of someone

taking an action and that is an

action, it's a precursor action.

It's a non shopping behavior,

but there is a statistical relationship

between people taking those actions and

your future revenue. So

if you can find that.

So I think that's one of the big things.

So we think about then spending

our money not to drive a purchase.

So now I'm talking about

non purchase campaigns,

which freaks people out

because they're just like,

why would I do a subscriber

campaign that is insane?

Does it have value, blah, blah, blah

to get IG follows, to get, TikTok

follows to get Facebook follows.

Can you imagine getting a

Facebook page like that?

But the reality is that these sorts

of things are opening up additional

reach, lowering the cost per

a thousand accounts reached,

reaching different people. Because as

you think about if you're the ad auction,

right,

you're going to serve media because you're

going to get the highest bid on this

set of people.

It doesn't make sense to serve media to

these people who haven't shown all these

intense signals that they're in

market. So they're not going to do it.

So then when you choose

different objectives, yeah,

the bid is different because the auction's

different and you're reaching all

these people that you

weren't otherwise reaching.

And if you use your best creative

creative that our friend Jacque makes or

that any of these brands have

made that has earned engagement,

talks about who they're what to do,

you're doing the brand building thing

in a performance market. You don't only

have to do billboards and linear tv,

you can do enough performance market.

So we're getting people to take those

actions because that's a lot of the

playbook that we used at to do this.

It was very much like let's build

our community by distributing

content that wouldn't crush

it in a bottom funnel.

Performance marketing a set

necessarily wouldn't beat the

very product offer urgency sort of thing

that you got to do. Not knocking that.

Totally. So then I think the key

things are run media differently,

use different objectives and it matters.

It helps, it works kind of thing.

And if you want to lower CPMs,

you want to reach more people,

those are the unarguable rules.

But now we're helping to provide a

little bit more context on how valuable

it's so that you can think

about how much to budget,

think about what is the split

for me given my cash profile,

given what I demand from an incremental

role on a 30 day roll basis,

whatever that might be.

So that's kind of what we're finding,

but finding that YouTube is

super valuable on a long-term

context, pretty meaningfully.

But then Facebook as well, I

mean just going out absolutely,

whether it be post engagement campaigns

or trying to get Facebook page likes,

yes, that action matters,

but then it's also the fact that

you're just reaching people you weren't

otherwise reaching. And then it's

like, ah, do I have the creative?

Everyone has more brand building creative,

whether it's amazing and fricking

awesome, different conversation,

but everyone's got to start

somewhere. You know what I mean?

And so we're helping you

to put numbers to your gut,

whereas that putting this piece of content

in front of what people is just good.

That's who we are. That's

what we do kind of thing.

Now we're just validating

that with numbers. But yeah,

I mean to your point, brand

search not a perfect metric. Yes,

it's tied to spend. Yes.

If you spend more on dr,

you will get more brand

search. That's not the point.

The point is that there are other ways

to spend your dollars to more efficiently

drive brand search And to more efficiently

then get those clicks to your site

and more efficiently have them be high

converting. That's more the point.

What we learned at Chubby's is like, yeah,

let's spend our money to drive

brand search more efficiently.

That's what I want to do. That's

how I want to use the ad platforms.

That puts me in a different bucket where

I'm leveraging it to meet my needs.

And so we're just trying to help brands.

I don't want to say see the light because

that's implying that they're blind or

whatever, but just free them up.

To.

Do the things that'll help to truly

drive their business without seeing this

mythical dip. I think that's the other

thing is people transition. They're like,

oh, I going to go out of business. Well,

I'm transitioning to reality is absolutely

not, but it matters how you do it.

It matters how you do it.

And so we're trying to help

people through that as well.

But those are some just quick takeaways.

That's so important and putting data

behind your gut and your intuition.

I trust and believe that if I invest

in marketing in this way with a

really strong brand message

that compels people,

but it's not the buy now save a

hundred percent type of thing.

It's like it's a good brand message.

I believe that's going to work.

I'm going to trust it, but I'd

sure like some data to back me up.

And that's what you guys have

built and what you're doing here,

and it just makes sense.

We look at this all the time with YouTube

and then there's been such an influx

of people coming to MG for us

to help them solve YouTube,

which we do all the time. But hey,

if we can reach the right audience

maybe for a five or $8 CPM or a

$10 CCP M and you're getting a

30 or $40 CPM somewhere else,

that's going to have an impact.

And if I can drive more branded search,

which comes to me at 50 cents or whatever,

that's going to be better than driving

$7 clicks and some of these other areas.

And so it's understanding some

of those things are powerful,

but now you're putting some of the

measurement behind it to see the real

business impact of those things.

And then just trying to validating

it with straight up well run.

Do you hold that incrementality studies

so that when you get those results,

yeah, I mean it trains your

MMM or your statistical model,

but it also gives you data that you can

take to the CO and CFO and just be like,

because the tough thing

that always happens,

and you probably deal with this with

your clients, it's like, oh crap,

October soft or September was rough.

You.

Got to cut all that stuff,

right? Only bottom funnel.

And then when you don't have

any kind of causal holdout data,

there's no way for you to say,

we would be doing worse if we weren't

doing this brand building stuff.

There's no way to say that. But

that's true Or it's potentially true.

And if you're running these

experiments constantly,

if you have this culture

of experimentation, you can

actually say that, right?

Here's the data.

Look at these geos doing way worse where

we're not doing this demand gen stuff

or I don't want to say demand

creating net new demand for our brand,

let's call it. And so that's

what we really encourage.

Anyone who's doing any kind of stuff

that doesn't necessarily optimize for

driving that short-term today

purchase is just run experiments

so that you can have that

conversation where it's just like, no,

this is the whole goal.

We want to make more money than we would

had we just been sticking to bottom

funnel demand capture. That's the goal.

More profit dollars sustainably

over many, many years.

We're all aligned on

that front, right? Yes.

So if we have some numbers

in this missing fluffy

piece, that is the compounder,

right? That's the end of the day.

It's the compounder. It's the compounder.

Yes.

The bottom funnel land capture.

It is the thing that cash

is in on the compounding.

But if you don't have a compounding,

right, I mean, then we're in trouble.

So we want to solve that.

In trouble. Man, it's so good. So good.

I could keep going on this all day.

I absolutely love this stuff.

But we do need to wrap up and we'll have

to do another round in the future and

hopefully not wait a couple years,

but who is marathon data for?

What's your ICP or your ideal client

profile and how can people find out more?

Sure. So ICP, it's like,

let's call 'em generally

modern consumer brands who

maybe reached a point

where they're just like,

I think part of the reason maybe why we're

not seeing the results we want to see

is because maybe we haven't been

able to invest in this brand stuff,

or

I know brand is important,

but I can't figure out how to

invest in it or measure it.

So there's that little bit

of pain or I'm crushing it,

but I don't know what I'm doing

that's helping my pressure.

What should I be doubling down

on? What should I be cutting?

Everything's seemingly working? What's,

there's those things You're generally

spending a lot of money on meta, Google,

YouTube, TikTok, you've

got active socials,

you're trying to expand multichannel,

right? You start a D two C,

now you're on Amazon, now you're

in Walmart or Nordstrom or whoever,

and you don't have to

be all of that stuff.

But those are generally the folks that

we work with may need to be around for

three, four years to have enough

history. So all that stuff,

but pretty much any consumer brand.

Love it. Love it. And then

how can they find out more?

Where can they get a demo? How can

they dive in? That sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you can just slide

into my dms on LinkedIn,

just search Preston Ruther with shorts

in the middle of the first and last name.

Or you can go to marathon data co com or

Marathon Taco. Someone told me

that I think is a way better.

Way to taco marathon taco. That's

perfect. You'll never forget that.

But yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn,

read some of the stuff that kind of

helps articulate these Yammer rings

on the internet, but.

Yeah.

Yep. Love it, man. Really appreciate

the time. I'll double down on this.

You're still one of the best follows

on LinkedIn out there if you're in the

marketing and brand building

and consumer product building.

And if you're in marketing, you got

to follow precedent on LinkedIn.

So just do that.

Checkout marathon data co.com or

the taco. I like that even better. And

so Preston, thanks man. Ton of fun.

Thank you Brett, as always,

and always great to catch up.

Pleasure dude. Love what you're

doing and thanks for the opportunity.

Hope this is helpful for the audience.

A hundred percent. And as

always, thank you for tuning in.

We'd love to hear from you. What would

you like to hear more of on the show?

If you found this episode helpful and

you think it'd be helpful for someone

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