Proving Brand + Performance Drives More Profit Than “Performance” Alone
We run brand media, paid media, creative, CRO, merchandising, planning, and measurement as one system, then prove what actually creates contribution dollars.
Founded by Chubbies founders and operators who took the brand past $100M/year and through a nine-figure exit. That history is why the work is built around profit and scale, not isolated paid-media metrics.
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.
- 2.39x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Beauty Brand Your Friends Keep Recommending 6-month geo-holdout across Shopify, Amazon, and TikTok Shop with 97% probability of positive return. Brand beat every DR tactic tested in the same account.
- 2.5x Proven Revenue Lift at Major Retail Partner An Outdoor Brand Built for the Backcountry Brand media drove measurable wholesale sell-through at a major outdoor retailer. 90% CI: 1.24x–4.46x, excluding DTC channels.
- 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, 90% CI: 1.45x–2.41x.
- ~$2M Annualized Revenue from Web Merch & CRO Marathon Data-Powered Site Work Nearly $2M in annualized incremental revenue in the first four months. Higher revenue per session makes every paid media dollar scale more profitably.
- Branded Search Volume +78% Since Pre-Campaign A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search volume up 78% — from 497 to 883 daily organic searches. Measured pre-campaign baseline vs. week of Mar 9, 2026.
- 1.88x Higher Lift in Walmart vs DTC A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Brand campaigns drove nearly 2x the incremental lift in Walmart compared to DTC. Walmart 6.2% lift vs. DTC 3.3% in the same holdout.
- Contribution Margin: 24.0% → 25.2%, CM$ +20% YoY An Automotive Brand Going Viral CM$ grew +20% year-over-year on a multimillion-dollar revenue base. Margin rate and absolute dollars both improved simultaneously.
- Follower Growth: 2/day → 683/day A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Follower acquisition went from ~2/day to 683/day. Brand equity showed up in owned audience before it showed up in revenue.
- New Customer Revenue Flipped Positive in Four Weeks An Apparel Brand You Already Wear After six consecutive negative YoY weeks, new customer revenue turned positive by week four as brand campaigns improved total demand.
- Brand Search: YoY Decline → Positive Comp A Fitness Brand That Changed the Game Reversed declining branded search into +30–40% YoY growth within weeks of launching brand campaigns.
- 2.39x Validated Incremental Brand ROAS A Beauty Brand Your Friends Keep Recommending 6-month geo-holdout across Shopify, Amazon, and TikTok Shop with 97% probability of positive return. Brand beat every DR tactic tested in the same account.
- 2.5x Proven Revenue Lift at Major Retail Partner An Outdoor Brand Built for the Backcountry Brand media drove measurable wholesale sell-through at a major outdoor retailer. 90% CI: 1.24x–4.46x, excluding DTC channels.
- 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, 90% CI: 1.45x–2.41x.
- ~$2M Annualized Revenue from Web Merch & CRO Marathon Data-Powered Site Work Nearly $2M in annualized incremental revenue in the first four months. Higher revenue per session makes every paid media dollar scale more profitably.
- Branded Search Volume +78% Since Pre-Campaign A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Branded search volume up 78% — from 497 to 883 daily organic searches. Measured pre-campaign baseline vs. week of Mar 9, 2026.
- 1.88x Higher Lift in Walmart vs DTC A Lifestyle Multichannel Food & Beverage Brand Brand campaigns drove nearly 2x the incremental lift in Walmart compared to DTC. Walmart 6.2% lift vs. DTC 3.3% in the same holdout.
- Contribution Margin: 24.0% → 25.2%, CM$ +20% YoY An Automotive Brand Going Viral CM$ grew +20% year-over-year on a multimillion-dollar revenue base. Margin rate and absolute dollars both improved simultaneously.
- Follower Growth: 2/day → 683/day A Food & Bev Brand You've Definitely Heard Of Follower acquisition went from ~2/day to 683/day. Brand equity showed up in owned audience before it showed up in revenue.
- New Customer Revenue Flipped Positive in Four Weeks An Apparel Brand You Already Wear After six consecutive negative YoY weeks, new customer revenue turned positive by week four as brand campaigns improved total demand.
- Brand Search: YoY Decline → Positive Comp A Fitness Brand That Changed the Game Reversed declining branded search into +30–40% YoY growth within weeks of launching brand campaigns.
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 ROAS, chase the dashboard, and call it strategy. Sometimes the right move makes reported ROAS look lower while total contribution dollars, new customer demand, and profit improve. Eventually, the dashboard 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. Marathon Engine starts with brand building and layers performance on top. We activate the full growth system: Brand Media, Direct Response, Creative Production, Creative Strategy & Intelligence, Web Merch & CRO, and Demand Planning & Growth Modeling. Six engines compounding together, measured by Marathon Data.
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 & lifetime value optimization
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 know it’s working? Every piece of creative is measured against business outcomes, and the learnings feed the next round of decisions.
- Creative performance analysis
- Data-informed creative strategy
- Structured creative testing
Web Merch & CRO
Web merchandising and CRO as a growth function, not an e-commerce chore. We use Marathon Data, operator pattern recognition, and structured tests to raise revenue per session so every paid media dollar works harder.
- Revenue-per-session test roadmaps
- Product-level merchandising analysis
- Traffic-to-margin optimization
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.
- Growth modeling & budget allocation
- Demand forecasting & seasonal planning
- Operator-led monthly & quarterly planning
Powered by Marathon Data, the measurement and web analytics layer for Shopify brands that connects GA4, Northbeam, product-level COGS, and LTV data. Every engine feeds every other engine. Brand insights sharpen media strategy. Creative performance informs CRO. Product economics inform budget allocation. The flywheel compounds, giving brands a forward-looking view of growth rather than backward-looking reports.
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, even when it starves real growth
- 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
- Accepts lower reported ROAS when the trade creates more profit, more demand, and better customer quality
- “Why would someone love your product?”
- Brand value measured and tied to revenue impact—validated by causal geo-holdout tests across every Marathon Engine customer
- 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.
Brand + Performance Beats Performance Alone
The proof we lead with is incremental lift, not small-dollar screenshots. Marathon Engine puts founder-level brand operators, senior-only execution, creative judgment, web merch, media, and Marathon Data measurement into one operating system, then proves what actually grows contribution dollars.
Brand Lift Shows Up Beyond Your Site
Measured Like Operators, Not Attribution Dashboards
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
Marathon Engine was founded by Chubbies co-founders who built a brand from zero into a nine-figure consumer business and through a successful exit. We come from brand building, performance marketing, operations, and engineering—and we built the technology to systematize the parts that used to rely on instinct.
Co-founded Chubbies Shorts from zero into a nine-figure brand and through a successful exit. 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
- Built a nine-figure consumer brand through exit
- 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 and helped build it from zero into a nine-figure brand through exit. 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 nine figures through exit
- Deep expertise in brand + performance
- Built Marathon’s data platform
Not agency people. Brand operators who built a nine-figure consumer brand, exited it, and then built the technology to systematize the playbook.
We didn’t just advise on growth—we lived the entire brand lifecycle. Product innovation, competitive pressure, margin erosion, the successful exit, and the realization that brand + performance creates the profit profile direct response alone cannot.
- Every engine built from hard-won experience, not theory
- Proprietary measurement technology connecting brand investment to business outcomes at scale
- Senior operators stay close to the work: strategy, creative, media, CRO, measurement, and business decisions
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.
We built our own measurement platform.
Then we built an agency around it.
Marathon Data is the proprietary software we built to connect brand spend to revenue outcomes. The only statistical model of its kind, validated through causal geo-holdout tests. Every Marathon Engine engagement runs on it. Every recommendation we make is backed by data your team can defend in front of the board.
The largest brand value model of its kind
Built from billions of brand engagements across 30+ consumer brands. Validated through causal geo-holdout tests, not platform-reported ROAS.
- Brand-to-revenue attribution
- Causal geo-holdout validation
- Auditable results your board can defend
Contribution margin over ROAS
Every media dollar is evaluated against what your business actually keeps. ROAS is an input. Contribution margin is the goal.
- Marginal CAC measurement
- Channel-level CM$ tracking
- New customer margin focus
Closed-loop creative intelligence
Every creative is tagged, analyzed by performance vector, and fed back into the next brief. The loop runs every two weeks, not every quarter.
- Creative performance tagging
- Biweekly feedback cycles
- Data-informed creative briefs
The same software that runs every Marathon Engine engagement is also available as a standalone platform for teams that want to run it themselves. Self-serve, no sales call required.
Ready to Build Your
Growth Engine?
Start with a direct conversation about where growth is stuck and whether Marathon Engine is the right operating partner for your brand.