The Growth Engine for Consumer Brands
The only agency built by founders of a brand currently doing over $100 million a year. Brand + DR + Creative + Creative Strategy & Intelligence + CRO + Demand Planning, all powered by the largest brand value model of its kind.
We don’t list our customers’ names. As operators, that’s what we would have wanted: to be protected from the endless calls that come from being on a vendor’s site. Just know that many of your favorite brands are already on Marathon.
- Branded Search Volume +78% Since Pre-Campaign A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search volume up 78% — from 497 to 883 daily organic searches. Measured pre-campaign baseline (Jan 1–21) vs. week of Mar 9, 2026. Cube.js verified.
- 1.93x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Every $1 in brand spend returned $1.93 in proven incremental revenue over 6 months. 80/20 DMA geo-holdout, $454K spend, 90% confidence interval 1.45x–2.41x.
- Brand Search: YoY Decline → +30–40% Positive Comp A Fitness Brand That Changed the Game Reversed declining branded search into +30–40% YoY growth within weeks of launching brand campaigns. Prior trend was consistently negative year-over-year.
- 2.5x Proven Revenue Lift at Major Retail Partner An Outdoor Brand Built for the Backcountry Geo-holdout test measuring brand campaign impact on wholesale sell-through at a major outdoor retailer. Excludes all DTC channels. 90% CI: 1.24x–4.46x. Brand building materially drives wholesale revenue unreachable with DR.
- Weekly CM$: ~$140K → $209K (+68% YoY) An Apparel Brand You Already Wear Weekly contribution margin grew from $140K to $209K — the biggest positive YoY comp on record. CM$ has not declined week-over-week since Marathon took over.
- 2.39x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Beauty Brand Your Friends Keep Recommending 2.4x validated incremental Brand ROAS across a 6-month geo-holdout — with 97% probability of positive return. Higher Than All DR. Includes TikTok Shop lift. Bayesian synthetic control methodology.
- New Followers: Single Digits → 1,000+/day A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Follower acquisition went from ~2/day (44 total Jan 1–21) to 1,000+/day (6,826 Mar 1–10). Brand equity captured in real time before it showed up in revenue.
- 1.88x Higher Lift in Walmart vs DTC A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Brand campaigns drove nearly 2x the incremental lift in Walmart compared to DTC — proving brand investment reverberates across every channel. Walmart 6.2% lift vs DTC 3.3% in the same geo-holdout.
- Contribution Margin: 24.0% → 25.2%, CM Dollars +20.1% YoY An Automotive Brand Going Viral CM dollars grew from $17.4M to $20.8M year-over-year on $72.2M → $82.6M revenue. Cube.js verified. Margin rate and absolute dollars both improved simultaneously.
- YoY Branded Search Comp: -50% → +70% A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search went from down 50% year-over-year in January to up 70% year-over-year in March. A full reversal in under eight weeks. Source: Mar 12, 2026 call transcript.
- Branded Search Volume +78% Since Pre-Campaign A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search volume up 78% — from 497 to 883 daily organic searches. Measured pre-campaign baseline (Jan 1–21) vs. week of Mar 9, 2026. Cube.js verified.
- 1.93x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Every $1 in brand spend returned $1.93 in proven incremental revenue over 6 months. 80/20 DMA geo-holdout, $454K spend, 90% confidence interval 1.45x–2.41x.
- Brand Search: YoY Decline → +30–40% Positive Comp A Fitness Brand That Changed the Game Reversed declining branded search into +30–40% YoY growth within weeks of launching brand campaigns. Prior trend was consistently negative year-over-year.
- 2.5x Proven Revenue Lift at Major Retail Partner An Outdoor Brand Built for the Backcountry Geo-holdout test measuring brand campaign impact on wholesale sell-through at a major outdoor retailer. Excludes all DTC channels. 90% CI: 1.24x–4.46x. Brand building materially drives wholesale revenue unreachable with DR.
- Weekly CM$: ~$140K → $209K (+68% YoY) An Apparel Brand You Already Wear Weekly contribution margin grew from $140K to $209K — the biggest positive YoY comp on record. CM$ has not declined week-over-week since Marathon took over.
- 2.39x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Beauty Brand Your Friends Keep Recommending 2.4x validated incremental Brand ROAS across a 6-month geo-holdout — with 97% probability of positive return. Higher Than All DR. Includes TikTok Shop lift. Bayesian synthetic control methodology.
- New Followers: Single Digits → 1,000+/day A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Follower acquisition went from ~2/day (44 total Jan 1–21) to 1,000+/day (6,826 Mar 1–10). Brand equity captured in real time before it showed up in revenue.
- 1.88x Higher Lift in Walmart vs DTC A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Brand campaigns drove nearly 2x the incremental lift in Walmart compared to DTC — proving brand investment reverberates across every channel. Walmart 6.2% lift vs DTC 3.3% in the same geo-holdout.
- Contribution Margin: 24.0% → 25.2%, CM Dollars +20.1% YoY An Automotive Brand Going Viral CM dollars grew from $17.4M to $20.8M year-over-year on $72.2M → $82.6M revenue. Cube.js verified. Margin rate and absolute dollars both improved simultaneously.
- YoY Branded Search Comp: -50% → +70% A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search went from down 50% year-over-year in January to up 70% year-over-year in March. A full reversal in under eight weeks. Source: Mar 12, 2026 call transcript.
Your Agency Has a Shelf Life
Your agency wasn’t wrong. Every media strategy works for a moment in time, especially when you have real product innovation. But ad auction platforms have intrinsic problems that no amount of optimization can fix. Most agencies are just a direct response engine. They optimize to Meta-reported metrics, chase ROAS, and call it strategy. Eventually, the math stops working.
Ad platforms eke out all the margin that exists
These platforms are designed to extract every dollar of margin from your business. The auction never works in your favor long-term. The house always wins.
Competitors will bid on your buyers
Within months of a product innovation, copycats appear. Competitors from Abercrombie to J.Crew will enter your auction and drive your costs up. Guaranteed.
Offer-led marketing erodes your brand
“Why should someone buy right now?” leads you down a path of discounts and urgency. The real question is: “Why would someone love your product?”
The Auction Trap
The Shelf Life of Offer-Led Marketing
Six Engines. One System.
Most agencies give you one engine: direct response. That’s all they’ve figured out. We activate all six: Brand Media, Direct Response, Creative Production, Creative Strategy & Intelligence, Web Merch & CRO, and Demand Planning & Growth Modeling. Six engines compounding together. That’s how you build a growth moat.
Brand Media
Create new demand, not just capture existing demand. Build awareness, love, and top-of-mind presence that compounds over time. Own your audience so the auction can’t own you.
- Brand value measurement
- Audience building & ownership
- Brand-to-revenue attribution
Direct Response Media
Full-funnel paid media managed to contribution margin, not just ROAS. Media strategy built on first principles across Meta, Google, TikTok, and CTV.
- Full-funnel media buying
- Contribution margin optimization
- CTV, Meta, Google, TikTok
- Retention & LTV optimization: cohort modeling, email/SMS flow design, and product-level lifetime value analysis
Creative Production
Technology-driven post-production and generative remixing of existing assets. Colorway swaps, photo-to-video animation, hook variations, CTV spots, all at a fraction of the cost.
- Asset remixing & iteration
- Photo-to-video animation
- Hook & format variation at scale
Creative Strategy & Intelligence
What should we make, why, and how do we structure it so we learn? Tag, analyze, and strategy-brief every piece of content, then feed performance data back into the next round of creative decisions.
- Creative taxonomy, tagging & performance analysis
- Data-informed creative briefs & strategy
- Test-and-learn creative pipeline
Web Merch & CRO
Conversion rate optimization and web merchandising that turns traffic into revenue. The engine that makes every other engine more efficient.
- Site merchandising strategy
- Conversion rate optimization
- Traffic-to-value alignment
Demand Planning & Growth Modeling
Not a spreadsheet. A structured, operator-led process. Monthly and quarterly planning across paid media, inventory, promotions, launches, and market conditions. Built from scaling brands to hundreds of millions as operators.
- Push-pull growth models & budget simulation
- Seasonal brand loading & demand forecasting
- Operator-led monthly & quarterly planning
Powered by Marathon Data, the largest brand value model of its kind. Every engine feeds every other engine. Brand insights sharpen media strategy. Creative performance informs CRO. The flywheel compounds, feeding demand forecasting models that help brands plan inventory and budget against leading brand signals rather than lagging sales data.
Traditional Agency vs. Marathon Engine
The playbook that got you here has a ceiling. Here’s where most agencies stop, and where we start.
The Direct Response Treadmill
- Optimizes to Meta-reported ROAS
- Creative = more offers, more urgency
- “Why buy right now?” is the only question
- No brand measurement or attribution
- Margin erodes as competition enters auction
- Marketing calendar built around discount events
- Results plateau after 6–12 months
Compounding Growth System
- Optimizes to contribution margin, not vanity ROAS
- Creative builds love and converts—brand and DR layered together
- “Why would someone love your product?”
- Brand value measured and tied to revenue impact—top-of-funnel brand media on the brand’s strongest creative drives 72% higher incremental ROAS than DR in head-to-head geo-holdout testing
- Builds audience ownership—the only real moat
- Growth compounds year on year
- Full-stack control across all six engines
The hard truth: if you’re running your ads this way, it has a shelf life. Your best-in-class direct response marketers are barking about offers. The platforms are designed to eke out all the margin. The only way to win is to own an audience.
Results That Speak for Themselves
We’ve demonstrated this across real company growth and real company success—not flash-in-a-pan products. We’re the only agency that can deliver on increasing contribution while growing the business.
Revenue Reverberates Everywhere
Incrementality, Not Attribution
Why the Old Playbook Stops Working
A generation of marketers has drifted way too far to one side. Every brand follows the same arc—the question is whether you recognize it in time.
Where Does Your Marketing Sit?
“Why buy now?” Marketing
- Offer-dependent acquisition
- Margin destruction over time
- Platform-reported vanity metrics
- Vulnerable to copycats & auction pressure
“Why Will I Remember Your Brand?”
- Brand-driven demand generation
- Contribution margin growth
- Audience ownership & real measurement
- Compounding returns year on year
Product innovation works—until it gets copied
Every media strategy works for a moment when you have real product innovation. But within six months, we had copycats. Buyers from Abercrombie, J.Crew—buying our products, reverse-engineering them. You will be knocked off. Get ready.
Competitors enter your auction
People will bid on your buyers and shoppers. Even if they’re not now, they’re coming. And the person willing to accept the worst margin will make your costs go up.
Offer-led marketing is a trap
Modern marketing has confused ads with offers. It’s almost an assumption that every ad needs a discount or urgency hook. “Why buy now?” leads you down a path of margin destruction—not love, not loyalty, not brand building.
The real question isn’t “why buy now”
It’s “why would someone love your product?” Your customers should determine when they buy. Your job is to make them fall in love with your business, your brand, and your products—not distract them with the dopest discount.
The only way to win: own your audience
These platforms are designed to eke out all the margin that exists. The only way to win is to own an audience. That’s what the Marathon Engine builds.
From Onboarding to Compounding Growth
Fast results, deep partnership. We’re on the full stack from day one—that’s how we move this fast.
Deep Audit
We connect to your data, audit your full funnel, and identify where the real leverage lives. Brand health, media efficiency, creative performance, conversion gaps.
Engine Architecture
We architect a custom growth engine for your brand. Which engines activate first, where the quick wins are, and where the long-term compounding will come from.
Full-Stack Execution
All six engines activate. Brand Media, Direct Response, Creative Production, Creative Strategy & Intelligence, Web Merch & CRO, and Demand Planning—working together from week one. Results in the first month, not the first quarter.
Compound & Scale
Every insight from one engine feeds the others. Brand data sharpens creative. Creative performance informs media. The flywheel compounds quarter over quarter.
Built by Brand Builders & Engineers
We come from a background of brand building and a background of engineering. We’ve built brands, not just products. And we’ve built the tech to do it systematically.
Co-founded Chubbies Shorts from zero to nine figures. Lived the entire brand lifecycle—from product innovation to scaling, competitive pressure, and the realization that only brand-building creates a real moat.
- Co-founded Chubbies Shorts
- Chief Digital Officer of a $500M public retail company
- Scaled operations & growth systems
- Expert in unit economics & margins
- Builds the engine behind the engine
Co-founded Chubbies Shorts alongside Tom. Deep background in growth, operations, and the art of building companies that compound—not just products that sell.
- Co-founded Chubbies Shorts
- Scaled brand from $0 to 9 figures
- Deep expertise in brand + performance
- Built Marathon’s data platform
We’re the only team that’s actually built a brand from zero to nine figures and then built the technology to systematize it.
We didn’t just advise on growth—we lived the entire brand lifecycle. Product innovation, competitive pressure, margin erosion, the realization that only brand-building creates a real moat.
- Every engine built from hard-won experience, not theory
- Direct GA4↔Shopify data bridge—session-level behavioral intent connected to purchase outcomes at scale
- No other agency or platform has this technology advantage
The Thinking Behind the Engine
We share the frameworks and first principles that power the Marathon Engine. No gated PDFs, just the ideas that are reshaping how consumer brands grow.
The Engagement Economy
Why the brands winning in 2026 are optimizing for audience ownership instead of auction arbitrage. The shift from ROAS-first to contribution-first growth.
Read the full article →Why We Built This
Own the audience, not the auction
The only way out of rising acquisition costs is to build your own audience. When you own the audience, you control the conversion. No auction, no rising CPMs, no competitor bidding on your buyers.
There is no trough of despair
Contribution margin improves in weeks, not months or years. Every client we’ve taken on has seen immediate improvement from the first weeks. The math works from day one.
Brand outperforms DR by its own standards
What gets called “performance marketing” often performs worse than brand investment when measured by the same incremental standards. The data is clear: brand campaigns drive better business outcomes than conventional DR.
Ready to Build Your
Growth Engine?
We’re selectively expanding our client base. If you’re a consumer brand doing $20M+ in revenue and ready to break through the performance marketing ceiling, let’s talk.