Let’s be honest. If you’re running an e-commerce brand, there’s a good chance you’ve thought to yourself: 

“Brand marketing is fluff.” 

I believed that too. And that belief almost cost me my business. 

From Shorts to Scale 

Let me rewind for a moment. Do you remember Chubbies, the men’s shorts brand? I was there at the very beginning in 2011. What started out as a scrappy idea eventually grew into a company that was acquired, went public, and today still generates over $45 million per quarter. 

It sounds smooth when you summarize it in a sentence like that, but the truth is very different. About five years in, sales completely stalled. Customer acquisition costs skyrocketed, and we were dangerously close to running out of rope. 

The reason we hit that wall was simple: we ignored brand building. We were hooked on short-term wins, and every decision we made revolved around ROAS. I became addicted to the dashboard, convinced that one more ad tweak or budget shift would save us. If you’ve been there, you know how exhausting and deceptive that cycle is. 

What “Brand” Actually Means 

Here’s the truth most people miss: brand isn’t your logo, your font, or your color palette. It’s not even the slick video campaign you convince yourself will finally make people care. 

Brand is your moat. 

It is the reason customers will happily pay four times more for your product than they would for a nearly identical version at Walmart. It is the reason you survive when Facebook arbitrage dries up, CPMs climb, and your product starts to blend into the endless sea of sameness online. 

When you focus only on chasing the next click, you’re not building a business - you’re racing to the bottom. 

The 95-5 Rule 

Here’s the stat that completely changed my perspective: 95% of your potential customers are not in-market right now. 

That means most of the people you’re trying to convert with discounts, urgency, or clever copy aren’t even looking to buy your product today. And yet, most brands spend nearly all of their budget trying to push those people over the line. 

The smarter play is to build memory and trust so that when those customers are ready to buy, you are the only brand they think about. That is brand. That is your moat. And that is how you scale sustainably, instead of burning cash to win short-term spikes. 

The Brand Lifecycle (a.k.a. the Trap)

If you study growth curves, you’ll see that most companies follow the same pattern. 

At first, everything feels easy. CAC is low, ROAS looks perfect, and growth seems endless. Then you hit the plateau, where acquisition costs begin to rise and forecasts become harder to hit. That’s when brands start leaning harder on performance ads and discounts to prop things up. 

Eventually, you hit the cliff. ROAS collapses. Margins disappear. You’re addicted to sales just to stay afloat, and your once-unique product has become a commodity. 

Most brands don’t survive that drop. 

Building the Moat 

We only pulled ourselves back from the edge by changing the way we thought about growth. We stopped pouring every dollar into bottom-of-funnel ads. We started investing in content and campaigns that people actually remembered and shared. And we shifted our focus toward creating demand that didn’t require us to pay for every single click. 

The result was dramatic. Profits increased. New customers began finding us without expensive ads. And most importantly, our growth became predictable and sustainable again. 

Measuring What Matters 

If your CFO is skeptical about “brand spend,” there are simple, clear signals you can point to. Start tracking brand searches, direct visits, and organic social traffic. Monitor contribution margin—revenue after discounts, cost of goods, and marketing spend—rather than just raw sales. 

And most importantly, pay attention to inbound demand. If more customers are coming to you on their own, not just because they clicked on your latest discount ad, then your brand is working. 

Forget chasing daily spikes. Watch the long-term trend line. That’s what matters. 

The Playbook 

The formula is simple: reach, remember, and resilience. 

First, reach more of the right people—especially the 95% who aren’t ready to buy yet. Then, create stories and content that people actually remember and share, so your brand stays top of mind. Finally, build resilience by creating a strong base of demand that allows you to scale without discounts, panic campaigns, or desperation tactics. 

Performance marketing still has a place, but if you’re only measuring ROAS, you’re building your business on sand. 

Don’t Wait for the Cliff 

You don’t need to go through a near-death experience to learn this lesson. If you wait until growth has stalled and margins have collapsed, it may already be too late. 

Start now. Shake up your marketing mix. Build a brand that people care about and remember. Because when the next ad channel collapses, the next algorithm changes, or the next competitor knocks off your product, your brand is the one thing that will keep you alive. 

So the real question is: are you going to keep chasing short-term clicks, or are you going to build a business that actually lasts?