What do brands do that you find, what do businesses do that you find as a buyer create value or destroy it? I think I care. I care about a brand that I like, right? They make me feel a connection, right? Like, listen, I could buy anything at any price value, but how do I feel, right? Is it a statement about me? Does it say what I am? And I think that's the magic of what we do. And I think what we buy, what we wear, what we interact with is a statement on yourself. 100%. 100%. And I think, you know, one of the brands I was lucky to work on was Yeti. And listen, a Yeti is $300 more expensive than its competitor for a piece of plastic. But if I don't pull a Yeti out at a tailgate, that says something about me. It doesn't say something great about me, to be honest. If I pull a Yeti out, it does say something about me too, right? So I think that's really the key. Can I have a sentiment that both what I think, what my beliefs are, and yes, the brands I interact with are absolute portrayals of that. So you've used three words, right? You've used energy in the beginning, you used how you feel, so feeling and now sentiment, right? So value creation, right, is, you know, for brands certainly, and brand is a driver of purchase. Totally agree with, it is the greatest performance engine in the history of performance engines.

Hook them on this drug of feeling great about the pride in where you work and the work you do and the place you represent. That buys you great space to go do more work. And it also delivers quarterly returns, right? And I think that like brand and performance, quarterly in 200 years are a false binary, right? And that quote unquote performance marketing has to be brand accretive and brand has to drive transactions somewhere. Right. Otherwise, it is an exercise in art.

Was the product of quality of value that I could make that investment? And that is also brand. When people say, you know, if people really try and get into it, I think brand is pricing power. Of course it is, yeah. What can I charge for this product depends on how I feel about the brand. Does the product keep the promise of that trust, right? Like, you know, if you guys say it's incredible and it is incredible, okay, the promise is there. But it's value, not premium. That's right. And to your point, that's what so many CFOs don't understand, which is the power of brand shows up in every one of the metrics they're measuring. Right. Shows up in CAC, LTV, durability of revenue, revenue, margins, all the things that they are reporting on on that 12 week basis. It's all it's all a narrative about whether the brand worked or didn't. Listen, you cannot performance your way out of this. No. Right It not going to happen If performance is down it is staying down unless the brand reacts Right Because performance is where you capturing a monetizing demand but if you're not continually creating and nurturing it, your performance is the thermostat of the brand, right? Oh, yeah. Well said. If the brand is strong, performance will take care of itself at a much lower investment. That's the other thing that you try and stress is, listen, gosh, you know, I look at branded search, you know, like, do you think Yeti had much of a problem with people searching us on Google? You know, nah, pretty good there. What do you think that did? Well, it's organic, organic traffic. It's unbelievable, right? Same with Uber, but you had to put it in a good frame of mind. you have to put it in a positive, positive framework, right? The more you can drive a brand that, you know, just for the CFOs listening, the cheaper things become for you to use your performance metrics. And that is the key. That's what we're talking about.

So I would create more creativity and space for creativity to occur, and I would absolutely destroy them at all. Mediocrity is the death of every great brand, every great marketing campaign, and that is safety. And I think marketers, we don't want to get fired, and I think that is a curse. I always say, look, they fire me, fuck them. That's on them. You know, if they fire us, guys, for trying to do something great, who cares? We'll go do something great to someone else, but don't make decisions out of that fear, right? Out of wanting to be in that mediocrity. Go be great. Go fail. I don't care. But if you are in the middle, you have done yourself and this business an enormous disservice. Yes, it is. It is hard to be, it is hard to stand out and apart when you're in the middle. — Paulie Dery