i used to think spending ANY dollars on anything other than purchase conversion ads (aka 'brand building ads') was the stupidest thing any marketer could do turns out i had the wrong definition of brand and being wrong on that front was one of the most costly errors i made while building Chubbies if you're a performance marketer seeing CAC rise, incorporating brand into your mix could be one of the most impactful things you do this year here is what i learned about what a more performance-marketer-friendly definition of brand is sharing here so you don't have to go through the same paid I did - flushing millions (legit) down the toilet thinking all media spend had to drive an easily attributable purchase what brand isn't: • logos and fonts • a brand book nobody opens • disconnected from performance • only for super bowl advertisers • unaccountable what brand actually is: • your moat • pricing power • future incremental growth • the reason people buy without you fighting on price and features every time the thing that kept us from starting was an incorrect assumption i call the mythical trough of despair --- aka the idea you eat a short-term revenue hit before the payoff shows up (if ever) in our direct experience, and across marathon engine customers, the trough doesn't happen and we see that be the case time and time again one of the key reasons: the least efficient 5-20% of current DR spend is completely wasted, so reallocation can, in some cases, drive increases and the long-term compounding we all want, but seems impossible to measure? we measure it. marathon data's brand value model + geo holdout incrementality tests the lift is real. and it doesn't stay on the dtc site. it halos to: • amazon • tiktok shop • and most of all (by a factor of 2) brick and mortar retail shelves construct a funnel of actions, especially the brand actions we need to drive for the 95% of potential customers who are not currently in market, and generally, good things happen enjoy