
A premium supplement brand saw retail sales jump 40% in six months after one strategic shift: switching from direct response TV to brand advertising. That single result changed 25-year media pro Peter Sengenberger's entire belief system. In this...
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A
I was as doctor as possible. I didn't believe that brand advertising worked or could be measured or could do anything. I love direct response. I was crazy about it and thought there would be nothing else. Then I tried brand advertising.
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Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elin Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects and I'm joined by my co host. Rob Demar is the chief product architect at Misfits and Machines.
C
Hello. Hello Elena.
B
Hello. And today we have a guest, Peter Sangenberger. He is a 25 year media pro, the founder of the Grow with Peter substack, and someone with one of, I think the most interesting career arcs in marketing. He's been an agency founder, a consultant, an e commerce brand owner, and most recently led demand generation and brand strategy at bamboohr where he brought offline media and brand thinking to a B2B SaaS company for the first time. He started his career in direct response, spent most of it as a self described performance only marketer, and over time became a convert to brand advertising. So Peter, thank you so much for joining us.
A
Thanks for having me.
B
I'm going to kick us off, as I always do with some research and I thought today we'd pull something directly from our guests. So Peter has a great substack. As I mentioned earlier, he recently published an article titled Brand is a leverage problem, not a tactical one and I wanted to feature it because it captures a story. I really can't get enough of that. We're going to talk about today someone who spent decades in performance marketing read the effectiveness research and then changed their marketing belief system a bit. So Peter writes about what he calls the performance trap. This idea that an entire generation of marketers has been addicted to the dopamine hit of the immediate return. He uses this analogy. Performance marketing is like a laser beam. It's bright, targeted and efficient at hitting one spot. But try lighting an entire ballroom with a laser pointing. It's frankly impossible. But brand advertising, he argues, is like a chandelier. It doesn't offer a direct line of sight to everything, but it warms the entire room so that when someone is ready to purchase, the path is already visible. He calls this brand prepaid demand. You're paying now for future outcome by reserving mental equity in the minds of buyers who aren't in the market yet. And the cost of ignoring that is that you end up at the mercy of the algorithm, fighting an increasingly expensive knife fight over the 5% who are ready to buy right now. So Peter, thanks again for joining us. I think it's fair to say you're qualified to talk about this transition to marketing effectiveness belief because you are at one point about as doctor as a marketer could come. And when we talked, you have so many great stories. I wish we could talk through all of them. But what I wanted to start with is you described how you worked with a premium beauty supplement that went gangbusters on tv. Then they started sort of optimizing themselves into a corner and had to make changes. Could you please walk us through that story?
A
Yeah, for sure. No, I really have come full circle and have been lucky enough to be in the game long enough to have so many interesting experiences. But yeah, you're right, I was as doctor as possible. I didn't believe that brand advertising worked or could be measured or could do anything. I started off in direct response television where you go from problem unaware to pulling out your credit card and buying something immediately. You know, like a Beachbody P90X workout. Brand advertising is not that. It is a much longer discussion where you have to bring people, they have to be aware of you, they have to be aware of their problem, they have to be aware of the solution you can offer and then they can start to consider you and then real marketing process can begin to happen. But performance marketing as it pertains to digital, I've done a lot of work in E commerce as well and a lot of the great marketers I work with, I mean really it's an amazing generation of marketers that has come up in E commerce and has been focusing on digital channels and performance and they pulled out some. There's been some amazing brands built and lots of fortunes made, but really there's a bit of a squeeze going on. And I wrote another substack about digital. It's an oligopoly. You don't have that many outlets, you don't have as many places that are really going to generate a performance based return for you quickly and in a way that you're happy with the measurement on. So we're seeing Meta's and Google's share of the market continue to increase. There's new entrants and stuff. New like TikTok. It's not necessarily new, but seeing new entrants come in. But really it is very much a Google and Metagame and their margins are increasing, the cost per ad unit is increasing and that's not slowing down. But you are seeing a shakeout in D2C and you're seeing a large shakeout primarily because over reliance on performance marketing. And I, I've heard it so many times and I've been there but I've come full circle and I, I've now seen the light in that. You really do need to be thinking about the entire funnel and about, and about making sure that people are aware of you and will be considering you in the future. You want to be remembered.
B
Was there a particular moment, I know that you were working with this supplement brand like they were doing drtv. Was that the moment for you or has this sort of been happening over time, you've kind of come to these beliefs or was there like a specific instance where you're like, I need to change some of this.
A
I was doing a lot of E commerce consulting and doing some media consulting as well and I was getting called in by a lot of marketers who are just having problems with the doom loop of optimizing themselves into a corner and were not able to get the returns that they wanted anymore. And it was a very confusing environment for, for one of my clients who was a really high end supplement manufacturer manufacturer and they had built multiple brands on Dr. I mean going back to the print days, they were hot in print and then they discovered TV and that was a massive unlock for them. And then they were doing audio and then Amazon became a big channel for them and still very, very direct. But the TV return started to diminish over time and they were unable to spend the amount of money that they wanted to. So we tried everything. Start with the creative, start with the messagings. Do the focus groups figure out, you know, like, is this a creative issue? Is this a media buying issue? I didn't think it was a media buying issue at all. I thought we were buying quite smartly. But as I tried to turn the thing around, I noticed one important thing. Their retail doors kept growing and they already had a decent retail footprint. But they unlocked a couple of large national retailers and that really stifled direct response. And I came to a point where I said I can't spend more than X and get you any kind of return, which is minuscule. However, your retail sell through is multiples of that number. If we're able to influence that retail sell through with brand advertising and instead of getting in front of a small amount of people who are highly likely to convert immediately, we instead talk to our target consumer in a big way on TV in prime time where they are. Let's find these very well healed customers and make them aware of us. In an environment that's conducive to learning about us. And TV is just. Is just the best. It's a lean back medium. You're not scrolling the ad before you. When you're scrolling on Meta could be for toenail fungus and the one after you could be for a DUI lawyer.
C
Really?
B
You have an interesting algorithm, Peter.
A
No DUIs here and no toe fungus either. Yeah. So we were showing up on Anderson Cooper, on Brett Baer, on Fox Business on the weekends on the Hallmark Channel. And we're appearing right after the Chevy ad for the new Silverado and right before the Stouffer's ad. It was a very doctor kind of creative. We split, used mostly 15s and 30s and kind of let her rip. Did some math on the end, did a lot of consulting and convinced the folks who were the owners of the company who founded it that brand advertising was going to take them over the top. And. And we held our breath for a while. We turned it on, had four formats going. Instead of being mostly 1 20s and 60s, we flipped it completely and went very heavy in 15s and 30s and wanted to stay consistent. So we put it on, decided the amount, decided the media plan, and let her rip. And nothing happened for a while. The doctor still performed the way it was, but we were just trying to clock as many impressions as we could, trying to get the reach out there, trying to get reach, reach, reach, reach. And we're seeing these huge primetime earrings going out and getting millions of impressions. And we're just kind of like, okay, this is adding to the attention, you know, and you can walk. You know, I had to hold the client's hand, be like, look, a third of the market has seen us twice already this month. Okay, next month it's going to compound. It's going to keep compounding. And next time they walk into a retailer, they're going to see your product and be like, I know exactly what that product is. I know its story, I know its brand promise, I'm going to pick it up. Six weeks later. We started to see a little uptick and then a bigger uptick. And then it was literally like flat. Within, I want to say, six months, I believe it's about 40% increase in retail sales turns, which paid for the media many times over and frankly made the direct response part, which had been front and center, almost irrelevant, almost an afterthought. So I was, I was sold. I was really convinced and thought, wow, there's a lot of people in this position. So that's why it's such a pertinent topic right now because performance is getting harder, people are getting shaken out and marketers need new channels. And I heard a lot of people, they, they we've tried CTV and it didn't work well. Okay, but I'm glad you tried it. But we need to really talk about, well, a lot of things really. But I think, I think most companies, consumer oriented companies as well as B2B companies should definitely be have brand and have a really strong answer for brand.
C
Hey, did you find, just curious, did you find with that increase in brand spend a halo effect that did occur with your direct response?
A
The direct response was a little bit. It was pretty much unchanged. One thing we did was we retail tagged the shorter forms. Okay, never, I never retail tag a longer form direct response spot. But for a branded spot, we wanted to retail tag it. It brings some authenticity, some legitimacy. And then we had some really nice retailers to name. But when we did that, we were kind of going all in on, all right, let's build retail for sure.
B
Peter, one thing you've talked about on your blog and you mentioned there, there's this want to sort of over optimize or like people get caught in the doom loop. And that's what at first you're trying to do, like just let's make the doctor work better. Like it has to work better and better. But then you said people get sort of stuck in this cycle and it's hard to invest in brand. But what do you think is the true cost of over optimization? You've mentioned it before. That's something that a lot of marketers are stuck in right now.
A
It's something I've come across so many times. You can be over disciplined and it can narrow your thinking and really constrict your approach to solving a problem. Brand isn't intuitive. You have to really have the mindset for it. And here's the thing. What makes someone an amazing performance marketer does not make them an amazing brand marketer. You have to be able to make the mental shift. You've got to start reading some of the academic literature on it. You got to read your Bennett and Fields and you got to look at your Ehrenberg Bass Institute and you've got to start to study A lot of this academic work that has been done is keep showing the same results time and time again. The performance marketing is great where it belongs, but you are shooting laser beams when your goal really might be just to illuminate the room and get a larger result going. What's interesting too is what the downsides too is to being over reliance on performance marketing. You miss a lot of benefits that are much slower to come, but are much bigger.
C
Okay.
A
I turned on brand advertising for a B2B client a couple of years ago. We saw their cost per acquisition across all channels begin to fall. Kind of further to your point, Rob, earlier is that depending on the environment you're in and the circumstances of the marketer, you can really see your CAC start to fall. You can see your, your customers start to stay with you longer because they see you in a brand advertising environment and that reinforces the decision that they've made. You can see they're more loyal, they're less resistance, the price changes. And yeah, overall it really is a memorability game and you don't want to overdo it. You don't want to over saturate the market. But you have to get up there enough times. You have to get a minimum threshold of impressions at a steady amount of heat and keep it consistent.
B
Well, now you've done this at a couple of brands, I feel like it's becoming your, your specialty. How do we transition brands into things like offline media or moving them out of performance thinking? I know you're brought into bamboohr to do that. What has been your experience, like maybe working with them, working with other brands just in general, when you're brought in and you're trying to move people with a mindset, is it. You mentioned education, like what else does it require to actually make that shift at a brand?
A
Yeah, it's a lot of education and I've got to be really patient with it. You got to be able to get in the performance marketer shoes and be able to explain what brand advertising means for them in performance terms as well. I found over and over again the performance person is often also handed the brand role. That's a dangerous move to make performance. Like I said, if you don't have the experience, you haven't seen it work before, that you're not aware of all the different tools and different media you can use to to achieve the goal, you need to be a little bit careful. Ron Pruitt, a venture capitalist friend of mine, he wrote a really great tweet the other day that said the number one reason he's seeing his D2C investments go to zero is lack of media maturity, lack of an understanding that there's more tools to use than just Meta and Google.
C
We are, full disclosure, a TV agency, you know that. And so we are, you Know, a little bit, a little bit biased. We're kind of like a barber telling you that you need a haircut. When we talk about the value of TV from your perspective though, as you're kind of coming in and you've definitely played in a lot of the different marketing channels, why does TV matter so much for a brand's credibility and long term performance? You've already been speaking a little bit to its benefits, but you know, big picture.
A
Yeah, no, it's a great question and yeah, it can sound like we're talking up our own book when we talk tv. But I'm agnostic, right? I go in to solve problems. I've got audio, I've got direct mail, I've got all the digital channels and everything. But there's one thing I've realized in booking media as long as I have on a performance basis, on a brand basis in Japan, in the uk, in continental Europe, in the United States and Canada, is that there is a depth of message problem that needs to be solved in order to persuade your consumer. In fact, I'm working on a book right now that'll be out next year called Depth of Message. And it's basically the theory is, is that not all media is created equal, not all impressions are created equal. Essentially I'm stripping it down to a one to five kind of depth of media effectiveness. Number one is going to be something like a brand sponsorship message, like your logo on a F1 car, say or on a golf bag. Super cool. They don't know anything about you. They see you and you're associated with whatever attributes you want to take away from there. The affinity of being seen in the right place, very expensive. It's a very low depth of message. It's a great impression. Not there's no bad impressions, but there's more valuable ones. A number two would be something like a static ad on Instagram. Static ad. At least you get to see the brand a little bit. There's some copy, there's a little bit of personality, you know a little bit more about the company, probably what they do to them than, than you did going in. And then number three would be that same impression served in video in social media. Now people on YouTube aren't there to watch ads. They're there to learn something or to have an experience. But that video is great because now you've got an audio track and you've got motion graphics that interrupt and show, not just tell, but show. A number four level impression would be something like a podcast ad. This is a Minute long host read in your ear by somebody you trust who's endorsing a product or at least implying endorsement on a product and they get plenty of time for the script to breathe and for there to be a deliberate call to action. People walk away from just one audio impression, really understanding what you're all about. But number five is TV a 30 second TV spot or even a 15 second TV spot. You get all of the above, but you get a bigger association. First of all, it's not skippable, it's on the wall and it's going to be consumed. If you look at your view through rates, you should get very deliberate. If you want to get really nerdy, spend a rainy day taking a look at your view through rates and see how many people actually do look at you. And then map it out. Take a look and then take a look at TV at 98% completion rate for an ad and do the math and see what your real CPMs are. It's an eye opener. TV also is the last trust medium in the world. Nobody believes anything on digital. For what I mentioned earlier, the Internet does not have any legitimacy. It is a sort of a cesspool in a lot of different ways depending on what your consumption habits are like. TV however, still has legitimacy. It, if you're appearing on tv, you are in a very limited, very exclusive category of advertisers. And that matters to customers. It confers legitimacy. TV also the scale of it and your ability to target, your ability to do a lot of stuff in TV is, it's a, it's a very variable medium if you know what you're doing. And the endless supply, absolutely oceans of, of media opportunities out there that are, I mean I'm, I've been buying TV for three decades and I'm still learning stuff.
C
Okay, but you're not a TV cures everything guy, right? Peter? I mean you've actually been a pretty vocal skeptic on connected tv. What do you feel like is that gap between what CTV promises and what it actually delivers?
A
Ctv. It's got a huge promise that it's got the, the power of TV, but the accountability of digital. It's not 100% true, but really I think CTV started off being really expensive. Going back 5, 10 years. The CPMs are so high that you would have to have a very particular use case to choose CTV over linear. That's changed. A lot more inventory has come available and a lot of agencies have popped up selling CTV to just about anybody they can offering them that over Promising on just how measurable it is, how impactful it is. It's going to feel just like meta in 2012. It's just not true. Yeah, CPMs are falling, but they're not as low as they can be. There's still rampant fraud out there. There's some studies out there that'll make your toes curl about how many impressions never get served and how little filters are in place that are keeping the client safe and making sure that their ads are actually shown and that they're shown in their entirety. It's worth being skeptical about your CTV agency. I've written some pretty pointed substacks about it because I've been burned and I've come into situations where the client that's hired me has been getting burned by their CTV agency. And it just makes me really angry. The advertiser is putting up all the risk and no one else has a job but for the advertiser. So they need to be respected and they need to be treated well. And I think that a lot of CTV shops should really clean up their game, but I don't see that happening anytime soon now.
C
Speaking of getting burned, let's double down on that and talk about Programmatic Media, because you've mentioned in the past that's like you're playing against the house and you're. You're playing against the algorithm and that most marketers don't know it any other way because they've started in digital. So what does that concentration of power mean for advertisers and what are they not seeing?
A
I mean, you're playing against the house when you're working with an algorithm. And you're right, most marketers don't even know that they are because they haven't transacted media any other way. The first media I bought was by the telephone, and for about a decade it was a phone and a cup of coffee and a notepad. And you can make media decisions all day long. And it was effective and trustworthy, not, maybe not the most efficient method around. But when you're dealing with programmatic buying, almost anything you're buying digitally is going to be algorithm based. So they have built the algorithm for one reason only, and that is to sell as much of their inventory for as much as possible. And we're seeing a shift into, like, performance. Max Meta2 is bringing a lot of AI into their campaign managers and trying to kind of black box everything for us and trying to make it hard for us to see what we're really buying. It's kind of alarming when you run a performance max campaign sometimes to see where your ads actually show up, because they're not places you would necessarily want them to show up. But the whole reason that they bought these is, yeah, to sell as much of their inventory for as high price as possible. So they get everybody around and they say, how much are you going to pay? How much are you going to pay? And the algorithms do a really good job of maximizing shareholder value, but they really are a strain on advertisers. One of my favorite quotes in history is, and I repeat it all the time, is, price is what you pay, value is what you get. That's Warren Buffett, and he's exactly right. That price is decoupled from value in a lot of ways. And when you're buying on an open market where you can negotiate, where you can add a little creativity to the buy and aren't just buying against a computer, you can inflect more quality media, extra media discounts for continuing the relationship longer. There's a lot of different parameters that you can work with when you're doing things like audio and TV and at home or print buying that you simply just will never be able to in the algorithmic world.
C
You have such a depth to your answer. So I want to ask you a question. I, when I was in high school, someone gave me the book Ogilvy on advertising. All right, the book of David. Obviously a lot of wisdom in there. And one of the key principles that he said in that book was that if you want to work in advertising, you should start in direct response. Do you agree with that? That somebody could potentially benefit or put differently, do you feel like you've benefited because you did make that pivot from direct response and are able to use what you learned in, in those days, years, cutting your teeth and that, that are all serving you now in other forms of marketing?
A
Yeah, no, that's. That's a very interesting insight. And I remember reading that too, Overly wrote that and thinking, wow, that's really interesting because direct response was nothing back when he was in the game. But yeah, direct response. For me, it's been very interesting because my latest work in B2B, the B2B guys are jealous of the B2C people. They're jealous of people indirect response because their decision window is so much shorter and they become masters of, of getting immediate conversions. They also don't have a lot of wiggle room when you're playing in a strictly direct response environment on an early stage of a company. And you're trying to maximize your roas. You, you have to get very creative and it's, it's create some amazing innovations and breakthroughs that make direct response sharper and indeed allow it to continue. But you know, in the B2B world, for instance, things are so much slower and so much more methodical and there's a much larger message that has to be conveyed. It's also not a personal purchase. You're buying pill that's going to make you look great in a swimsuit, that's one thing. But if you're buying a SaaS software that you need to propose to your boss and have the CTO involved and CFO involved, that's going to take a little bit longer to get that, to get that message across into and to prove your value. So I think what direct response has taught me is that I've said this to so many marketers. I'm like, you've got to tell people what's in it for it. And so many marketers don't get it. They don't get it. What's in it for me? Okay, I've sold so much infomercial product over the years and sold so much on QVC and done so many copy tests and split tests and all these other things and it always, the road always comes back to what's in it for me. And that's. You've got to be thinking about that. And so many marketers forget that.
C
Let's keep talking about books here. So you've been doing this for 25 years. We've got a lot of self learners out there that are listening. What resources books do you think people should be checking out that have really impacted you?
A
I think your nod to Ogilvy is a great one. I would definitely start with some Ogilvy materials. I would also take a look at copywriting. There's a gentleman named Alan Sugarman who's one of the all time greatest marketers probably ever. I ran into him once at QVC in London and I couldn't believe I was in the same room with Alan Sugarman who's he's. He started so many products and he did it in print in the 70s. His copywriting take is really good. He's got a couple of books about copywriting that really teach you how to be a marketer, how to tell people what's in it for them, how to frame things. Another book, the 22 immutable. Immutable laws of Marketing and a Branding. Both of those are both indispensable. I Reread them about once a year. There's tons of great resources out there, a lot of amazing podcasts out there. You just got to find who you like. But I would probably start more on the direct side. Talk to people who have to move product right now and how they do it. So some of the D2C pods are really a wealth of information. And yeah, Mo, most of us are self learners in marketing and I'm sure you've seen too, a lot of ink has been spilled lately about the lack of sophistication in many marketers stacks because they're self taught and they don't necessarily see their their blind spots. So yeah, approach it with an open mind and endless curiosity. For me, marketing has been everything I've done I've loved more than the last thing I did. So I love direct response. I was crazy about it and thought there would be nothing else. Then I moved over to E commerce and said okay, wow. Getting off the TV and doing just digital buys and paying paid social and everywhere else is really a thrill. And you've got all these tools that I could only dream of back in the day. And then indeed with brand advertising, that's been another eye opener that can be really fascinating on a strategy point of view to try to accomplish this big unlock and then see it happen a couple times and be like, wow, you can. This TV is for whatever medium we're talking about can really be effective if it's employed. Right. And then in B2B marketing too, I think B2B is fascinating. My media plans are 12 channels. Deep TV is one of those. There's 11 other channels and a lot of digital in there and there's audio and there's out of home and there's sponsorships. Those are really fun to put together. So yeah, never stop learning, that's for sure. And also it's fun to have a point of view like don't be too rigid because you never know. My career's taught me anything. It's that there's always something new around the corner.
B
Well, that's perfect. Transition into my wrap up here for you. Peter, you are a great example of someone I know I've said this, but someone who was able to keep learning and changing their mind in marketing. When's the last time you changed your mind on something? Just in general, something I've changed my
A
mind over is that a truly nosebleed high CPM isn't necessarily a signal not to buy. In fact, for a client, one of my biggest returns on ad spend is on a unbelievably expensive cpm. CPM is over four digits. It's enormous. But the way that that pool of that audience has been selected and conditioned, I'll pay it every day. In fact, I'm trying desperately to get more. Usually a rule of thumb is keep your CPMs reasonable, keep them low, keep a close eye on them. But in this case, you got to throw caution in the wind and say, okay, I'm just gonna keep carrying on here because it's working.
B
What about you, Rob? Did you have something?
C
Yeah, you know, for me, obviously, I'm fixated much of my time on AI, and this one happened to me recently, where I am just. I tend to be brand loyal. When OpenAI and ChatGPT first came out, I'm like, okay, these guys are the leaders, and I am just so into everything that they're offering. And I switched to Gemini. Cause I'm like. I appreciated their integration more, and they were starting to move. So I'm like, okay, I guess I'm. I'm switching. And then I switched again. You know, now I'm on cloud. Now I'm a cloud boy. So, like, it's just. That's a. That's an area where in AI in general, where you just are constantly reevaluating and pivoting and looking at new tool sets. And the idea of being loyal to any of them is pretty difficult because you have fomo.
A
I've had the same path. I was. I was Gemini, and then I was Perplexity, and now I'm all in on Clubhouse. Claude's blown me away, though.
B
It seems like that's where a lot of people are going, is Claude.
A
Yeah, I know. I mean, for now, right? I mean, I don't think we've seen the last coda in this. And they're saying you hear all kinds of rumors, and there's a lot of talk about what's around the corner and what's coming up next. And people say that a lot of stuff that's coming up next is truly frightening.
B
Yeah, well, mine is I'm a B2B marketer, and we didn't really go to events for a long time. And recently, the last few years, we've been going in person and seeing a return on that. So I think there's something about the remote environment, and people are longing for that in person connection and. Yeah, just a different way to get in front of people. So that's one that came to mind. The other one was more personal, which is, I never wanted to watch Breaking Bad. And I finally got convinced by my husband to watch it, and it was amazing. And I'm like, so glad I changed my mind and watched that show. So if anyone's thinking about watching Breaking Bad, you should watch it.
C
Call it up with Better Call Saul.
A
Yes, I did that too, which is even better.
C
I agree.
A
Another thing that changed my mind actually is we started using. One of my clients started using an mmm, and it started to show us things we'd never looked at before. And one thing it showed was that webinars have a major influence in people's propensity to purchase. I thought webinars were dead. No one wants to go to a webinar. Forget it. That was just my own impression. But the MMM proved that to be completely different, which kind of spoiled that
B
shows how much like, you're such an experienced marketer, but sometimes our own just biases. Because I think I kind of think the same thing about webinars. So that's good to. That's good to know that you found that amazing. Pierre, it's been so fun talking to you. I know we've loved working with you too, just as an agency, and you're so full of wisdom and stories. I just love it. Anything you want to plug? I know you got your book coming out next year, your sub stack, anything you want to point people to, just
A
find me on LinkedIn. I'm not really active in other social channels yet, but we'll get there pretty soon. But yeah, my book should be out in late next year. It's called Depth of Message and I'm working on the byline, so we'll see.
B
Love it. Exciting. Big project.
C
Fantastic.
B
Great. Okay. Thanks so much for joining us.
A
Thanks for having me.
B
That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.
A
Marketing architects.
Episode Title: The Performance-to-Brand Playbook with Peter Sengenberger
Date: June 23, 2026
Host(s): Elin Jasper (B), Rob Demar (C)
Guest: Peter Sengenberger (A) – Media veteran, Substack writer, ex-agency founder, and brand strategist
In this episode, The Marketing Architects welcome Peter Sengenberger, a marketer with deep roots in direct response and performance marketing, who has evolved into a staunch advocate for brand advertising based on research and hard-won experience. Together, the hosts and Peter discuss today’s biggest marketing challenges: the over-optimization trap, balancing performance and brand, the evolving media landscape (with a focus on TV and programmatic), and the personal and organizational mindsets needed to make the shift from short-term "laser" campaigns to long-term "chandelier" strategies.
High-CPM Isn’t Always a Red Flag (25:09)
Tool loyalty in AI: Shift frequently as products change (Rob: ChatGPT → Gemini → Claude; Peter: Gemini → Perplexity → Claude) (25:49–26:44)
Webinars Can Still Work: Data from marketing mix modeling surprised Peter by revealing the underestimated impact of webinars. (27:37–28:01)
Guest Plug:
Peter’s book, Depth of Message, is due next year. Find him on LinkedIn and subscribe to his Substack for more research and case studies.