Preston Rutherford

I used to think Brand was bullsh*t, so imagine my surprise when I was asked to speak at Meta's Performance Marketing Summit about Brand to a room of performance marketers How'd this happen? Many moons ago, I co-founded Chubbies. It's a nine-figure brand now: 8 straight years of top and bottom-line growth, EBITDA up 40% yoy But we almost went out of business first — running the exact playbook a lot of performance marketers are running right now CAC creeping up every year. Only 'growing' when we discounted harder, longer, wider. Same ads, same people, growth on loan from the algorithm Then we incorporated Brand into our 'performance' media, and revenue re-accelerated. More importantly, so did profit Here are 3 mistakes I made, 3 things I learned, and 3 actions you can take on Monday: Here's what I had wrong: 1. I thought brand was logos, fonts, or a brand book nobody opens 2. I thought spending ANY dollars on ads that didn't drive a conversion was the dumbest thing a performance marketer could do 3. And when I finally tried it, I chased the wrong thing — we went for meme-lord reach, piling up views with no connection back to the brand Here's what I know now: 1. Brand is the moat. It's pricing power. It's why people buy from you without you competing on price and features 2. The "trough of despair" everyone's scared of? It doesn't show up — because you fund brand by reallocating your least-efficient dollars, not by adding budget (and other reasons) 3. And it's accountable. Build a behavioral funnel, drive a real action like branded search, measure it with a geo-holdout. It's not a vibes contest More on this "trough of despair" being a nothing burger: 1. The brands we do this for don't see the trough. A ~$75M denim brand grew contribution dollars roughly 50% year over year — with new customers and total revenue climbing the whole time 2. An outdoor brand ran brand media alone — and the lift showed up everywhere its customers shop: its own site, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and strongest of all, 2.5x incremental revenue on a major brick-and-mortar retailer's shelves 3. A six-month geo-holdout showed brand driving 1.93x incremental revenue — while the saturated direct-response they'd been relying on was returning a blended 0.91x Les Binet's research concurs: grow your share of search, and good things follow So, three things you can do Monday: 1. Find the marginal return on your least-efficient dollars. Those can move to brand with no short-term revenue drop 2. Look at the creative you ship. Would your friends be hyped to see it — or "ugh, he's selling me something"? You want a healthy mix 3. Build your behavioral funnel. Define the action at every stage so brand stops being soft and starts being math The full vid is attached. Case studies in the comments. If you still think "performance" brand is bullsh*t — let's discuss What's the data you'd need to see to change your mind? Tell me where you're stuck/skeptical and let's get into it below