prestonrlisted

# Preston Rutherford *Co-founder Chubbies; DTC brand builder.* **Voice:** Brand-first contrarian, anti-direct-response purism. Narrative-driven; argues against ROAS-only optimization. ## Frameworks - DTC revenue should be decomposed into three types—paid, triggered, and baseline—each with distinct revenue per session characteristics. Baseline (organic branded + direct) has the highest quality and LTV but is unmeasured and neglected when teams optimize for short-term attribution metrics like ROAS and email revenue. - The 95/5 rule: only 5% of customers are in-market at any time, so brands should invest in reaching the 95% who aren't shopping now to build memory structures that drive future choice, rather than competing exclusively for immediate conversions in the expensive 5% pool. - Brand spending should be evaluated not by direct ROAS but by buying high-probability leading indicator behaviors (e.g., branded search, SMS subs) that can be quantified for incremental contribution dollars within a specific time window, with monthly cohort-level tracking. - Attribution vs Incrementality: Attribution claims credit for conversions that would have happened anyway (especially branded search), while incrementality measures whether ads actually changed behavior that wouldn't have occurred otherwise. Marketing should optimize for incremental lift through controlled experiments, not dashboard ROAS. - ROAS-only optimization creates a negative feedback loop: teams over-index on high-RO