Product vs. Performance: How Modern Brands Really Scale with Ari Murray and Stefani O'Sullivan (From Marketingland 2025) | Ep. 369

0:00Ari Murray:Proving your marketing ROI shouldn't be a guessing game, but when results are hard to track, it's difficult to know if your marketing strategy is working. Meet CallRail. In a few clicks, you can connect every conversation to the exact campaign that started it, so you can focus on what works and drive better marketing outcomes, all in one platform. Try it free today at callrail.com slash prove it. What is up, Marketing Bestie Daniel here. Today I'm bringing you a special episode, and this one's straight from Marketingland Festival 2025. Yes, we recorded it for you. You're about to hear an amazing conversation between Ari Murray, my wife, also the Chief Digital Officer at Sultanstone, and Stephanie, Head of Growth at Stodd.

0:46Ari Murray:In this talk, they break down how product-led and marketing-led brands really grow, how to build a growth org that stays close to product, how to think about new channels like CTV, out-of-home, and retail media, and the first move they'd make if they were launching a brand today. It's a very tactical, fun episode, and it is also full of nuggets. Let's get into it. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen.

1:35Ari Murray:Get ready to turn the f*** up. Hi, Marketing Land. It's us from the past, Steph. So good to see you. Love your background, love your sweater. And we have a really important day for you today. When I say it's us from the past, it's currently July 8th. I have to tell you that because I'm nine months pregnant and I just wanted you to know. So we are pre-recording and we are going to be with you day of at Marketing Land. We wouldn't miss it. Daniel wants us to wear Halloween costumes, but we're not those type of girls. We will see what happens. But so happy to be together. And I have so much to do and to teach you, but really it's all going to be about Steph today.

2:17Ari Murray:And I'm so excited to just learn about your experience and to show you guys why we're in growth land. Steph is a G and she really, really, really knows how to grow. And she works at Stodd, which is one of my favorite brands ever. I want everyone to know that I'm wearing a Stodd sweater, purchase full price. I have two of these. This is my solid purse. It's really important to me. It's the Tommy. I used it on my 30th birthday and I think they go well together. I'm not leaving my house today, so this is a prop, but Steph just really knows what she's doing. She sells the best stuff. She's formerly of Savage X Fenty, Motor Operandi, Chanel.

2:54Ari Murray:Have you ever heard of it? And we're having the best day ever, but Steph, thank you for being here. And I just can't wait for everyone to get to know you.

3:03Stefani O'Sullivan:Thank you for having me. You gatekeep Daniel wanting us to be in outfits.

3:10Ari Murray:Yeah, he's crazy. Every year there's a theme and I do support this year's theme and I hope everyone in costume knows we respect you fully for your choices and we love that it's October 30th. We love that so much, but in July it just seems hard to commit to. Yeah, it's hot. We'll see. Yeah, so lots of questions. Let's talk growth. So at Stodd, the product leads marketing. It's the key to the strategy. But at Savage X Fenty, marketing was more associated as driving the company's growth. How do those dynamics shape your growth strategies in each role? So like a product-led growth or a marketing-led growth?

3:47Stefani O'Sullivan:Yeah, I kind of came to this product versus marketing-led growth philosophy or theme or something more recently, as I was kind of reflecting on previous roles that I've had, I think that at Stodd, the product is the hero. And so our relentless focus was all built around the product. So growth became about building demand around very intentional product stories and driving urgency around or through exclusive products, newness, collabs, but letting the product really lead all of that storytelling. Whereas at Savage and a lot of other D2C-led businesses, marketing and growth performance marketing were the main levers that were pulled to unlock scale.

4:45So the strategy was more about funnel velocity and conversion rate optimization

4:53Stefani O'Sullivan:and like real time conversion monitoring to guide kind of where to push and pull. I think that both kind of shaped me in different ways. My philosophy now and what I hope to kind of bring into the future is the blend of both, the blend of like really strong product and product intuition with a healthy, profitable performance marketing flywheel. But ultimately, they each require kind of different pacing, lever prioritization, business prioritization, investments. And it kind of just depends on what the company or with what their philosophy is and culture is around growth.

5:38Ari Murray:Do you think that when you think of a product-led company or a marketing-led company? Do you think that it matters if the marketing-led company has this celebrity figure? Does that play into it? Or is it agnostic and it's just if you're data, data, data, more product, product, product?

5:55Stefani O'Sullivan:I think it's more that. I think the celebrity piece, you can be a celebrity brand and be still product-driven. I feel like Rode is a good example of that. Everyone's obsessed with Rode right now. I feel like it's the most tired example, but like they're really a product led brand, but led by a celebrity. Um, and then there are product led brands that are, you know, no shade to VCs, but VC backed and really just like growth, growth, growth, performance, performance, performance. And so I think it just depends on the values around product and customer and why the brand was founded and maybe what our kind of ultimate maybe exit plan looks like.

6:39Ari Murray:I like that. I think the road example to me also, it's product and celebrity, but they also were very careful with inventory in the beginning. It was very hard to get it. You had to set your alarm. It was always somehow restocked Wednesdays at 9am. And I think that you can be all those things. You can be backed, you can have a celebrity, You can have a product priority and have data, but also like you can create your own demand by withholding the product. So it's all, it's all part of it. We can talk about this. I'm still on my first question, guys. This is what happens when I talk to Steph. But what are the trade-offs between the two models to you?

7:20Ari Murray:And which one do you think is more scalable over time? So product or marketing?

7:24Stefani O'Sullivan:Yeah. I think that my own now philosophy that I'll continue to carry on in my career is that product-led models build deeper equity and loyalty and organic demand. And with that said, if your focus, if you want to be a product-led business and your focus isn't on the product customer and customer feedback, manufacturing, production, efficiency, and like speed to market within reason, you're kind of maybe like at a little bit of a mismatch there. I also think in a product-led business, there has to be an element and a culture of product test and learn to help find scale and find products that really hit and become big winners if you're doing that without performance marketing.

8:16Stefani O'Sullivan:I think that a marketing-led, growth-led business drives and can drive faster growth, but without a strong product resonance or product loyalty or brand loyalty. from what I've seen in the market and from the brands that I've talked to that have kind of fallen down this path, it risks a lot of customer churn, rising tax, the relentless kind of media optimizations of it all. And I think that over time, a scalable, healthy, profitable business and model blends both. It lets product guide your focus and your narrative and also your point of differentiation while using performance and media and digital marketing to help amplify and sell at scale.

9:14I like that.

9:15Ari Murray:I also think what you said about having like an ability to experiment with product and a patience and probably even like a margin of error where you know if you are selling the same SKUs of deodorant and then you release a new flavor every time that's like in a product led company if there's always a new flavor twice a month and if one flavor is crazy but it could be crazy good or crazy bad if you have the model and the cash flow and the ability to let yourself fail versus i think too even in a product led company in a market led company too there's a lot of pressure if you overbuy inventory or if you miscalculate.

9:56Ari Murray:And I think either model, you get into those issues, but in a part of the company, like there's a certain trust and know-how and you have to be able to like stomach it, which is not easy.

10:09Stefani O'Sullivan:It's not. And I think that I agree a hundred percent. And I think that the kind of what I'm getting at around the organic demand piece and even the celebrity piece that you were talking about before with organic demand and product loyalty or even brand loyalty you have something to fall you'll always have something to fall back on right like it's not an it's not you're not going to drop yourself off a cliff if um your new collection doesn't hit but all these other extensions iterations collapse whatever it is hit and so you have this great baseline in some growth businesses I've seen or businesses that are really reliant on like one single lever to drive like fuzzy poppy growth, you lock that really great baseline to fall back onto.

11:03Stefani O'Sullivan:And so you end up with a business that looks like this instead of like this. The floor is not level. No. Yeah.

11:12Ari Murray:I've also in a celebrity brand too, you're at the mercy of if something changes for them. And I've been there where the celebrity decides they want to be less active or they get canceled or whatever. The canceled one's really hard. I'd love to meet a growth marketer that can overcome that one. I have not. How do you structure your growth org to stay close to product without losing speed and the ability to experiment? I think it's cultural.

11:43Stefani O'Sullivan:I think that if the baseline agreement and the common ground between every team or department in a business is that we love our product and then inherently because you love your product, you love the customer that loves your product. I'm kind of like, how can you go wrong? I think the further you, the further removed you are from what you're selling doesn't help you. At least I haven't seen that it has. I think that the closer you are to what you're selling, the richness in storytelling comes through, the relentless focus on fit or, you know, whatever product you're selling, the relentless focus on perfection of that product and tapping into what the customer loves about that product is a shared common goal.

12:42Ari Murray:And if that's the culture, then the product team wants to hear from marketing, wants to show marketing, know marketing is going to be excited. They know you're going to ask for a GWP and then they're going to make your dreams come true. And then you're all going to freak. I think that that culture of it's not separate departments, but an engine. Yeah. It's hard to have accountability almost. Well, yeah. Cause a product makes a foundation that no one likes. So you can sell it once and then it's, it all has to be together. They need you and you need them. And I feel like we sometimes all can get siloed into our own niche or expertise, but.

13:23Yeah.

13:23Stefani O'Sullivan:And then you go down the path of, why are cax$27 higher than we projected them to be? Well, this collection isn't selling. This isn't what our customers wanted. We didn't listen. And that's how to blame. That's just, we have this shared goal around this one thing that we're all going to champion because it's how we grow the business whole to me. Obviously, if you're not like a product-led business and you're selling something different or you're selling technology, all of this will vary within reason and what you're selling. um but but yeah I think that it's cultural it has to come from the very top do you think it's gross responsibility to be involved in this and how do you best get involved like on a tactical level I actually I think this is actually a really exciting question I'm glad that you asked this because I've been in growth performance whatever you want to call it for about a decade I've started in growth before it was even called growth.

14:26Stefani O'Sullivan:Like before it was sex, before it was like the sexy thing, people were like, whatever you're doing over there, that's not cute. And so I think growth and performance has evolved so much over the last decade. And at first and still currently, some growth leaders and growth roles are so tightly wound to media. And then some roles are far more expansive and really lead revenue generation and kind of growth thought leadership for a business. And then there's obviously so much in between. I really value the idea that a growth leader and growth team should be involved in all things business expansion, whether that's a new market, a new channel, a new media channel, or a new sales channel, a new product extension or product category, when and where to launch something.

15:25Stefani O'Sullivan:Do I think they should be involved in the design process? No. Do I think that they should be giving feedback on designs? Probably not. But I do think that they should be involved as a thought partner and thought leader of how this is going to end up in market and what they're seeing and how this will all kind of fit together. I think that they have a really like critical point of view because your growth team, depending on the scope of the growth team, they'll probably have a really great insight into the fluctuations in customer spending and customer engagement because social and paid channels are just, you've got so much rich information from what's going on in the market from those channels.

16:06Stefani O'Sullivan:And so I'm really, really excited about companies by companies that are expanding their view of how to engage in value growth leadership in a more holistic strategic arm that's responsible for like a scaled profitable business versus pigeonholing growth into one idea of a part of marketing yeah I love that and for me

16:34Ari Murray:I'm obviously not on the brand side anymore. I do miss it, if you can tell by my love of all your products. But I run an agency and lead a big team of media buyers and of creatives. And I don't even like to call my media buyers media buyers. I consider them – you start as a growth specialist and then you're a growth manager. Because I'm trying to teach that if you get an ad, even at the actual fundamental level of the job, if you get an ad and you read the ad copy and it's assigned to you in a sauna and you're about to stand it up and you think it's bullshit and you think it's going to tank out and you can't just accept mismatched ad copy to an ad to a landing page destination that you didn't choose and stand it up and then say oh they gave it to me and the creative handed me this like everyone who sets anything live is responsible for their point of view on what they're working on and you don't have to know everything about video animation to know if something feels off or to know if it doesn't match the patterns of what's working or isn't a test that's for diversity and so in any role you can like take your role at face value and you can be a media person or you can be a growth marketer that's more in the data which is great to know but the way you describe your growth team and your level of responsibility across the org of how things get to you before they get to you is how I think all growth teams should run at any level, at any type of business where you have as much say as you allow yourself to have.

18:11Ari Murray:And you have to challenge what you're handed. And you don't want to stand up anything or get a product dropped in your lap for Q4 to move that you don't believe in or at least never said. Yeah.

18:22Stefani O'Sullivan:You can stay in your lane and be an expert and still have the mindset of a business owner.

18:31Ari Murray:That's the punchline for sure.

18:33Stefani O'Sullivan:Yeah.

18:35Ari Murray:When expanding into new platforms like CTV, retail media, out of home, what signals do you look for that let you know it's worth it? I know there's different levels of measurement on each of these.

18:47Stefani O'Sullivan:yeah so I was thinking about this last night actually because I was torn on how to answer this because there's the obvious answer of incrementality brand lift study all that good stuff which I can talk about but also I went to a dinner maybe two years ago three years ago and the CEO of avocado mattress was there I just got a pillow last week for my hospital bag

19:14Ari Murray:Oh my God. Do you like it? Yeah. It's the pillows I have on my bed, but I decided it sticks me out to bring it to the hospital. So I'm getting a new one. That's amazing.

19:23Stefani O'Sullivan:It's a great brand. He was telling me about when they launched Avocado Mattress. He only invested in out-of-home and upper funnel media. he did not do any performance marketing at all whatsoever at least for the first couple of years from what he told me he wanted a physical adjacency to other brands whether that's out of home and you're near you're in a great area or you there's other billboards with other great brands that you want to be adjacent to similarly on television um and he didn't want to live and die by the performance marketing cycle. This was kind of probably post, this was post COVID.

20:09Stefani O'Sullivan:And so I think there was also a lot of just fatigue around performance marketing and how much money we're spending. But so I've been, I think about that all the time and I remember that experience and I was kind of intimidated by that thought process, but I also think it feels really fresh and exciting if you have the right funding and you can lean into that in a big way. Outside of that, incrementality signals like lift and brand search, brand search studies, brand lift studies when you can afford them if you're spending enough in those specific channels. Any organic direct traffic signals are great.

20:50Stefani O'Sullivan:Awareness studies, things like that. Outside of that, I'm also really interested in retail expansion strategy. And then if you have a wholesale team or wholesale retailers that you work with, what doors are really performing, outwardly performing, so that that can give us indicators where we might have a really strong, engaged community, but we aren't physically showing up as a brand. And that might unlock an interesting opportunity for targeting out of home or CTV or something a little bit more upper funnel.