Any time an interviewee makes me ask my boss, “Can we say that in a newsletter?” you know it’s gonna be a good day.

Today, we’ve got spicy takes and spicy language from a master of marketing who made his fortune selling spicy shorts.

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Lesson 1: Don’t get hooked on the performance marketing drug.

Preston Rutherford openly admits that he made every mistake in the book when co-founding the shorts company Chubbies.

So I kick off our chat by copping a line from Sheryl Crow: “What’s your favorite mistake?”

“Favorite mista-a-ake.” He sings, then laughs. “Favorite. Obviously a euphemism for gut-wrenching and sleep-depriving mistake. But, just to honor Sheryl…”

He thinks a moment: “Getting hooked on the drug that is short-term performance marketing — and in particular return on ad spend (or ROAS), where effectively all of our marketing investments were evaluated on that basis.”

My eyebrow goes up. Most marketing leaders want to see a measurable, proven return, right? How else do you know what’s working?

Rutherford says that exact sentiment is why he (and so many marketers) over-rotated toward performance marketing. That drive to make all of your marketing efforts systematic, measurable, and scalable.

“ We’re so used to a certain feedback greece telegram data loop on the data side, right? If I’m spending dollars, I’m only measuring success by who clicked on my ad and purchased in a 24-hour period.”

But that feedback loop incentivizes marketing efforts that produce short-term results — at the cost of long-term brand building. Not to mention, it led him away from all of the fun and unusual things that made Chubbies recognizable in the first place.

And what’s worse, the hypertargeting of performance marketing means “you’re spending dollars to claim a purchase that would have already happened.”

 

But if you’re not focusing on return, what are you focusing on?

“Brand is the most important asset that any kind of business builds,” he says. “And is ultimately the least measurable with current tools.”

Rutherford’s hot take? Only 40% of your marketing dollars should be spent on short-term ad spend, with the rest going to brand building.

“You would much rather have someone come directly to you — not being prompted by some kind of promotion or false urgency — but rather, ‘this is just a company that I believe in’.”

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

“What marketing trend needs to die in a fire?” I ask him.

“Generative AI,” he blurts without a moment’s pause.

Y’all. I bark-laughed. (Then I wondered content brand promotion we discussed how if anyone in my reporting hierarchy reads the newsletter, and nervously tugged my collar like Rodney Dangerfield.)

“Creativity is queen. Things that are different are queen,” he explains. “Generative AI is trained on models of what has already been done in the past and what has ‘worked.’”

He puts that last word into business sale lead air quotes. According to Rutherford, this creates two problems: “Only looking backward and, in my opinion, an incorrect definition of what works. It’s based on driving short-term revenue.”