Brain Driven Brands: Episode 7

Title: Seven Good Cookies: The Marketing Lie That’s Costing You Growth
Host: Sarah Levinger
Date: September 18, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Sarah Levinger and her co-host dive headfirst into the myth of ad volume as a growth strategy, exposing the neuromarketing truths that 9-figure brands like True Classic, Spotify, and Plants vs. Zombies leverage for sustained success. The episode challenges the popular (and dangerous) advice: “just run more ads,” arguing for intentional brand-building and memorable advertising over creative spam. Listeners are offered both a reality check on current marketing trends and practical, psychology-backed strategies for building “cool” brands that drive meaningful results.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Volume Fallacy: Why More Ads ≠ More Growth

• Overexposure & Consumer Frustration:
  • Modern consumers are increasingly indifferent or outright annoyed by repetitive, irrelevant ad bombardment.
  • Key Stats (04:40):
    • 61% less likely to buy if they repeatedly see the same ad.
    • 49% outright refuse to purchase due to overexposure.
    • 74% say social media ads are “repetitive and irrelevant.”
    • 1 in 3 Americans block ads altogether.
  • Sarah: “It’s irritating to see this many ads… we’re kind of fighting a little bit of, like, permanency in consumer emotions when it comes to apathy.” (05:30)
• Rise of AI-generated ‘Slop’:
  • Consumers easily spot generic, AI-created content, leading to ad blindness and negative brand associations.
  • Nate: “They’re very good at detecting AI slop. Yes, it’s very obvious… dumping a hundred AI generated ads in your account weekly is insane. Insane. No one likes them.” (06:41)
• Misreading the “Volume = Winning” Trend:
  • Brands misinterpret wins with ad volume, mistaking diversity of ideas for sheer number of creatives.
  • Sarah: “Diversity is not equal to volume. Diversity has more to do with how you’re communicating the message… not the amount.” (07:45)
• “More Is Better” – The Cookie Analogy:
  • Nate: “Give me seven great cookies. Don’t give me 50 bad ones because… I’m going to eat all of them. I don’t want any more cookies.” (13:20)

2. Why Most E-comm Marketers Are Missing the Consumer Mindset Shift

• Agencies & Creatives Overwhelmed:
  • High ad volume overloads designers and leads to low-quality output with little strategy.
  • Sarah: “You can’t overload creativity… You have to slow down, marketers… Slow the fuck down.” (25:58)
• The Attribution and Lag Problem:
  • Most purchases occur after a “lag” well beyond the standard short attribution windows.
  • Nate: “A third of our customers hear about us one year before they ever buy. Which makes it asinine to judge my July marketing performance stats based on revenue that comes in in July.” (14:37)
  • Sarah: “There’s always going to be a lag between when they saw your ad… and when they buy. It’s never immediate.” (17:02)
• Emotional Drivers Beat Short-term Performance:
  • Only emotion and relevance can reduce purchase lag, not more exposure.
  • Sarah: “You can’t tell your customers when they can buy because the only thing that can do that is their brain and their body chemistry.” (18:22)

3. The Return of Big Creative Campaigns & Brand-led Growth

• The Prediction:
  • Sarah forecasts a shift away from ad spam toward bold, memorable, big-concept creative campaigns.
  • Sarah: “…I think we’re going to see brands shifting that direction of, let’s just build one big ass campaign this year… because I think that’s the only way you’re going to get attention.” (10:55)
• Marrying Brand and Performance:
  • Brand investments should be made intentionally, then activated with tactical performance strategies.
  • Nate: “We commit to things that we know are brand plays… then we try to figure out how to make it perform as best as possible from a performance growth standpoint. If it doesn’t pan out on a 90-day return on ad spend, that’s fine.” (19:10)
  • Example: Sponsoring an event for brand lift, then leveraging content and placement for performance.
• Testing Brand Ideas Cheaply:
  • Sarah advocates for experimenting in organic channels and communities first, before burning paid ad budget.
  • Sarah: “Why are we not testing in, in like communities? Why are we not testing on organic? Like why don’t we test for free first? That makes most sense to me.” (20:18)

4. Practical Steps to Build a “Cool” Memorable Brand

• Consistency & Distinctiveness:
  • Even small brands can create lasting brand artifacts (mascots, emojis, language) for strong recall.
  • Sarah: “I decided to randomly put, like, a red dinosaur at the front of Tether… It’s literally just so that people recognize that I’m a thing. That’s it.” (24:10)
  • Nate: “He doesn’t know my name, but he knows who I am.” (24:40)
• Personal Brand as a Growth Lever:
  • Building a recognizable founder/employee brand can create immense opportunity and trust.
  • Nate: “I was able to tweet out that I’m looking for a job and within 10 days get insane job offers. I don’t have a resume. Half the people I interviewed with listen to my podcast. If you’re an employee, you need to start taking this seriously.” (02:07)
• Providing Value Beyond Transaction:
  • Valuable brands are those that provide something memorable even if the listener never buys.
  • Sarah: “The only thing you’re trying to do is provide value outside of somebody actually purchasing from you.” (24:45)

5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the core lie:
  • Sarah: “We are about to shoot ourselves in the foot.” (04:46)
• On agency echo chambers:
  • Sarah: “Most marketers in this industry are literally standing face to face with the other marketers next to them and they’re just staring at each other.” (10:07)
• On emotional buying:
  • Nate: “I bought a T-shirt… but the first time I saw that shirt was on an influencer I liked probably 90 days ago.” (16:17)
• On performance obsession:
  • Nate: “You guys are still running cost caps to judge an ad’s performance on its intraday cost to acquire a customer. It’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen.” (26:58)
• On future episodes:
  • Nate: “We should do a whole episode on consideration timeline too, because… your customers do not operate on a 7-day attribution window. They have lives.” (26:29)
• Summing up the strategy:
  • Sarah: “Be more interesting… Seven great cookies. Don’t go for 50, like, mediocre shitty ones.” (25:57)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Ad Volume & Consumer Pushback: 03:50–06:29
• AI Slop & Misinterpreting Volume Success: 06:29–08:15
• Why Ad Teams Are Overwhelmed: 12:12–13:20
• Cookie Analogy – Quality over Quantity: 13:20–13:37
• Building Brand with Purposeful Campaigns: 14:21–19:10
• Brand-Performance Hybrid Case Study: 20:18–21:29
• Cheap Testing & Community Experiments: 20:18–21:12
• Building Distinct Brand Artifacts: 23:26–24:45
• Emotional Buying Lag: 17:02–18:22, 26:29–26:58
• Culminating Advice – Slow Down & Be Memorable: 25:30–26:56

Final Takeaways

• Stop idolizing ad volume. Focus instead on crafting “seven great cookies”—standout, memorable ads with psychological resonance.
• Understand and respect consumer purchase lag. Most people are not ready to buy right away, regardless of attribution metrics.
• Build brands worth remembering, not just seeing. Consistency, distinctiveness, and emotional connection beat brute creative force every time.
• Test big ideas organically, then amplify what works.
• Brand is the future of growth marketing in DTC. As Sarah puts it, “Build a cool brand. Maybe that’s a good business strategy.” (22:30)

For more tactical guidance, Sarah and Nate tease future episodes on measurement, emotional lag, and hands-on brand performance playbooks. Don’t miss out – this episode is the wakeup call every e-commerce marketer needs in Q4.