“The market will tell you your hero — you can’t decide it.”
How do you build a brand after you've seen the inside of 30 others?
Connor Rolain and Cody Plofker sit down with Ari Murray, Chief Digital Officer at Salt & Stone, who spent four and a half years as Chief Growth Officer at Sharma Brands before going in-house. They dig into what it takes to lead growth for a single brand after years of running it for dozens at once.
You’ll learn when to hire an agency versus build in-house, and why the answer changes as a brand matures. Ari shares how Salt & Stone approaches acquisition without discounting, why discovery sets are central to their DTC funnel, and how she thinks about first-order AOV in a scent-driven category where customers can't smell the product before they buy.
They also discuss session growth as a daily obsession, the real cost of dabbling in new channels without enough commitment, and why the line between brand and performance is too often drawn in the wrong place.
Chapters
00:00:00 Non-negotiable for Crafting Copy
00:04:02 Agency vs In-House
00:12:14 First Six Months at Salt & Stone
00:15:04 How to Manage Agencies
00:24:25 When to Use an Agency
00:37:28 Acquisition Offers and Funnels
00:40:42 First Order AOV Trick
00:43:00 How to Use Sampling
00:49:50 Media Mix by Category
00:54:04 Channel Mix and Paid Social
00:57:08 Session Growth as a KPI
01:05:41 Performance vs Brand
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E104: Ari Murray’s Marketing Playbook: From Brand to Agency and Back
Operators Titans E014: Why Every Shark Wanted In, But The Woobles Walked Away
