I used to run US marketing for a global ecommerce marketplace. Being that I cut my teeth on performance marketing, I thought brand marketing was evil. I was fighting the Cold War: brand marketing was Ivan Drago and performance marketing was Rocky Balboa. The Soviets were the bad guys, and the performance marketers were going to save the world from the communist brand bloc. The stakes were high, as one year, the brand team rallied the company behind a major brand investment that included the company’s first TV commercial and a massive branding facelift. It was a multi-million dollar investment and a huge bet on the company’s future.

After 11 years of running marketing and design teams for ecommerce print-on-demand marketplaces and seeing lots of success, I took on a role as CEO of a fledgling competitor. I thought I knew everything about how to make this specific type of company grow. I had the playbook. I had the pedigree. I had the experience. I was confident that all I needed to do was replicate what worked for me in the past and I’d be able to save a sinking ship. I was wrong.