Don’t Get Hooked on the Performance Marketing Drug

Every time the interlocutor makes me ask my boss, “Can we say that in the Bulletin?” You know it will be a good day.

Today we have spicy taking and spicy language from the master of marketing, who sold its wealth with spicy shorts.

Lesson 1: Do not hide on the marketing drug.

Preston Rutherford openly admits that he has made every mistake in the book when the co -founder of the company Chubbies Chubbies.

So I start our chat by covering the Sheryl Crow line: “What is your favorite mistake?”

“Favorite Mista-Ake.” She sings, then laughs. “Favorite. Obviously, the euphemism is for the mistake of the gut and the depression of sleep. But only in honor of Sheryl … “

Thinks for a moment: “Adding a drug that is a short-term marketing performance of a special return to advertisement consumption (or Roas)where all our marketing investments are effectively rated on this basis. “

My eyebrows are going up. Most marketing leaders want to see a measurable, proven return, right? How else do you know what he is doing?

Rutherford says that exact Feeling is the reason why he (and so many merchants) excessively rotated toward marketing performance. Who strive to make all your marketing efforts systematic, measurable and scalable.

“We are so used to a particular loop for feedback on the data side, right? If I spend dollars, I just measure the success of who clicked on my ad and bought in a 24 -hour period.”

But this loop for feedback encourages marketing efforts that give short-term results-a long-term brand construction price. Not to mention, that took him from all the fun and unusual things that make Chubbies recognizable in the first place.

And worse, the hypertension of the performance marketing means “you spend dollars to ask for a purchase that would already happen.”

But if you don’t focus on your return, what are you focusing on?

“Brand is the most important property that builds any type of business“He says.” And ultimately it is least measurable with current tools. “

Rutherford is hot? Only 40% of your marketing dollars should be spent on short -term administration of ads, and the rest will go to the construction of the brands.

“You would rather someone come directly to you – you would not ask you for some promotion or false urgency – but,” this is just a company I believe in. “

Lesson 2: If the content is the king, the difference is the queen.

“What marketing trend should you die in the fire?” I ask him.

“Generative Ai,” he blurred without a moment of pause.

You all. I swung. (Then I wondered if anyone in my reporting hierarchy reads the newsletter and nervously slipped me with a collar like Rodney Dangerfield.)

“Creativity is the queen. Things that are different are the queen,” he explains. “The generative AI is dressed on models of what has already been done in the past and what has” worked “.

He puts that last word in the air quotes. According to Rutherford, it creates two problems: “Just looking back and, in my opinion, the wrong definition of what it works. It is based on the launch of short -term revenues.”

Rutherford quickly qualifies that this does not mean that there is no room for AI in marketing. But for many merchants, it will lead to throwing out what he calls the “sea of ​​east”.

The outbreak from that “sea of ​​east” is that Chubbies was born in the first place. When Rutherford and his friends performed handmade shorts on vacation, unusual cuts and colors had complete strangers who approached them to comment. Not everyone loved them, but everyone noticed them.

That success would never have been realized if they had based their decisions on what had already been done.

Lesson 3: Consider marketing like the construction of friendship.

You probably think this lesson will be touching. Not. This is a lot more concept.

Rutherford says that every idea, tactic, campaign or concept that has absolutely sea Going through this filter:

“Would I send this e -Apost to a friend or would you talk to me?”

For the third time in 15 minutes, I was doubled in laughter, but Rutherford has an excellent point. Stop and think about your favorite brands. They are probably those who talk to you like a human being.

This does not necessarily mean that you have to be funny, unwavering or unusual. But I guarantee that you did not think of someone who explodes you with a corporate speech.

Because at the end of the day, the construction of the brand is actually the construction of a relationship. This relationship will look different if you sell hot sauce, tax software or motherhood pillows – but everyone requires authenticity … and respect.

“Do I treat people who look at my ads as if I were corporate marketing with impersonal customers? Or am the person who sells other people?”

As evidence, he points out that this is precisely the reason why influencer marketing is currently so effective. He is a real person who talks to you as a different person. And our recent information polls show the same story as marketing leaders have poured a large budget into the creator content, building brands and developing authenticity.

Rutherford then drops the oath of little denial: “People can see through our shit. People are not idiots.”