Marketing Made Me Buy It

Brenden Delarua & Travis Tyler

0.0 (0)
Marketing

The most annoying dorks in marketing want to do show and tell.

Sep 9

CeraVe: Marketing Done Right

CeraVe made a Super Bowl ad about a celebrity who shares their name, then handed the rest of the brand over to influencers and told them to do whatever they wanted. In this episode of Marketing Made Me Buy It, Brenden Delarua walks Travis through the full CeraVe playbook, from the Michael Cera Super Bowl spot to the Google Trends data that proves it worked. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS This one is the "marketing done right" segment, and Brenden brought receipts. He breaks down why TV, CTV, and YouTube ads are consistently the most incremental placements you can buy, then shows what happens when a brand stops watering down creative and lets creators do the thing they are already famous for. Travis and Brenden watch four CeraVe ads together: the Super Bowl spot, a deadpan ChatGPT bit, a dance video filmed with a creator's mom, and a makeup artist who turns her own face into a CeraVe bottle. Then Brenden pulls up the search data showing the exact moment the influencer strategy started moving brand demand. If you are trying to argue for less brand safety theater and more creator freedom, this is the case study to send your team. TIMESTAMPS 00:12 - What "marketing done right" means and why this segment exists 00:35 - Why TV, CTV, and YouTube are the most incremental ads you can run 00:51 - Ad breakdown #1: the Michael Cera Super Bowl spot 01:39 - The Google Trends proof: months later, people are still searching the ad 02:04 - The category test: name one other moisturizer brand (Travis cannot) 02:17 - The strategy: find creators who already know how to go viral, then get out of the way 02:55 - Ad breakdown #2: the creator who makes the brand name harder to pronounce 03:56 - Ad breakdown #3: the deadpan ChatGPT ad, and who the butt of the joke is 05:48 - Ad breakdown #4: a dance creator films the spot with her mom 06:38 - Brenden's rant about the corporate guy who wants a truck in the background 07:12 - Ad breakdown #5: the makeup artist who becomes a CeraVe bottle 08:43 - The search-term chart that answers "won't this hurt the brand?" 09:24 - Sponsor segment: why the goal post always moves, and what Stella does about it 10:55 - Travis writes a Stella jingle on the spot ABOUT THE CO-HOSTS Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelarua Travis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. On Marketing Made Me Buy It, he's the one asking the questions, digging into the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually get people to buy. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tyler FEATURED BRAND CeraVe, the skincare brand at the center of this episode's marketing breakdown. Shop CeraVe: cerave.com ENJOYED THIS EPISODE? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.
Sep 2

What's New in DTC Marketing? | MMMBI Podcast

Everyone is pumping out 100 AI-generated ads a week, cost per click is falling, and conversion rate is at an all-time low. In this episode of Marketing Made Me Buy It, Brenden Delarua explains why the creative is not actually the problem, and why the advertisers who win the AI slop era will be the ones who fix the signal they send back to Meta. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS Travis asks what is actually working in DTC right now. Brenden's answer is not a creative trend, it is a plumbing problem. He walks through what happens when the barrier to entry hits the floor: brands flood the auction with AI-generated creative, clicks get cheaper, and conversion rate craters. Meanwhile every account in the auction is optimizing toward the same purchase event, a signal that knows nothing about margin and nothing about incrementality. From there Brenden lays out the fix in three steps. Stop passing back revenue and start passing back profit, so Meta prioritizes your higher-margin SKUs. Then go one further and pass back only the conversions Meta actually caused, so the machine learning is chasing incremental profit instead of purchases that were going to happen anyway. His position on the creative itself is refreshingly blunt: he does not want an opinion on it. Launch it, measure it, and if the AI slop genuinely is not driving incremental profit, Meta will stop serving it on its own. Also featured: a size 14 power play, a suit that may or may not be a 57, and an agency war story about an ad that was never supposed to be uploaded. TIMESTAMPS 00:12 - What is actually working in DTC right now 00:21 - The size 14 power play 00:47 - The rise of AI slop: prompt it, upload it, repeat 01:03 - Barrier to entry on the floor, 100 ads a week 01:21 - Cheaper clicks, all-time-low conversion rate 01:46 - Why finite auction space makes this everyone's problem 02:14 - How the purchase signal actually gets back to Meta 02:38 - The flaw: the purchase event ignores margin and incrementality 03:04 - A brief interruption about the suit 03:24 - Fix #1: the winners will compete on signal, not creative volume 03:43 - Fix #2: pass back profit instead of revenue so Meta chases margin 04:13 - Fix #3: pass back only what Meta caused, incremental profit 04:55 - "Are AI ads working?" depends entirely on how you define working 05:06 - Why Brenden refuses to have an opinion on creative, plus one agency story 05:41 - The self-cleaning oven: bad ads die on their own when the signal is right 05:55 - Sponsor segment: why the goal post always moves, and what Stella does about it 07:26 - Travis writes a Stella jingle on the spot ABOUT THE CO-HOSTS Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelarua Travis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. On Marketing Made Me Buy It, he's the one asking the questions, digging into the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually get people to buy. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tyler ENJOYED THIS EPISODE? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.
Aug 26

Levi's Jeans: Marketing Done Right

FIFA told Levi's to cover the logo on its own stadium. Levi's covered it with a white sheet, called the shape an Instagram logo, and out-earned the brands that paid millions to be official sponsors. In this episode of Marketing Made Me Buy It, Travis walks Brenden through the whole thing. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS This is the "marketing done right" segment, and this time Travis is the one presenting. He starts with the setup: FIFA's Clean Stadium policy, which requires every non-sponsor logo in a World Cup venue to be covered up. Great for FIFA's official partners. Less great if you just paid a fortune to put your name on the building. Levi's Stadium got the order. Instead of treating it as a loss, the Levi's social team made the censorship itself the campaign, leaning on the fact that the covered logo is still unmistakably the Levi's logo. Travis pulls up the numbers that followed: impressions, brand mentions, engagement lift, share of voice against Adidas, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's, an analyst note on the stock, and a merch drop built on a trending TikTok audio. The takeaway Brenden lands on is the part worth stealing: creativity comes from the box. Rules do not kill good ideas, they give you something to find the loophole in. Every brand eventually gets handed a constraint that looks like a catastrophe, and somebody in the room has to be the one who says what if this is the campaign. TIMESTAMPS 00:12 - Marketing done right: today's brand is Levi's 00:24 - Setting the stage: the World Cup, and a quick FIFA explainer 00:35 - A brief history lesson on FIFA's former president 01:02 - Where the Clean Stadium policy came from 01:24 - The rule: cover every logo that isn't an official FIFA sponsor 01:45 - The obvious problem when you paid for naming rights 02:02 - Brenden derails the presentation over a last name 02:14 - The policy comes for Levi's Stadium in San Francisco 02:39 - Problem or opportunity? The white sheet goes up 02:50 - The twist: turning the censored logo into an Instagram logo 02:59 - The results: impressions, brand mentions, and engagement lift 03:13 - Beating Adidas, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's on share of voice 03:31 - The analyst note: when a social win shows up in the stock coverage 03:39 - The merch drop: the "nobody's gonna know" logo tee 03:55 - The lesson: lean into being censored and spin it 04:25 - Brenden's take: creativity comes from having a box to work in 04:42 - Why the logo still reads as Levi's even under a sheet 04:57 - Wait, whose presentation is this? 05:08 - Sponsor segment: why the goal post always moves, and what Stella does about it 06:39 - Travis writes a Stella jingle on the spot ABOUT THE CO-HOSTS Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelarua Travis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. On Marketing Made Me Buy It, he's the one asking the questions, digging into the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually get people to buy. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tyler FEATURED BRAND Levi's, the denim brand at the center of this episode's marketing breakdown. Shop Levi's: levi.com ENJOYED THIS EPISODE? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.
Aug 19

Brenden Buys A True Classic T-Shirt

Brenden has spent years chasing something every guy secretly searches for: the perfect black t-shirt. In this episode of Marketing Made Me Buy It, Travis turns the mic on his co-host and traces exactly how a rabbit hole of UGC-style reviews, a head-to-head fit-off, and a wall of retargeting (580 ads live, to be exact) turned a $35 t-shirt into a customer for life — and a $150 cart. What This Episode Covers It starts with a universal male rite of passage: the endless search for "the perfect shirt." Brenden walks Travis through the growing corner of the internet dedicated to grading plain tees on cost, fit, and quality — and how that content funnels straight into three or four repeat-contender brands, True Classic chief among them. From there, the two break down True Classic's actual growth playbook: UGC ads designed to look organic, a landing page engineered to push a $35 single into a $150 ten-pack, and a post-purchase survey built to mine attribution data. It closes with a live, unscripted try-on of Uniqlo, Bronson, Buck Mason, and True Classic — sizing chaos included — to settle which shirt actually wins. Timestamps 01:47 – The trend: content creators grading plain tees on cost, fit, and quality02:16 – "Gatekeeping my favorite t-shirts" — UGC reviews and prices break down03:39 – The main contenders emerge: True Classic, Bronson, Buck Mason, Uniqlo03:51 – True Classic's real edge: hiring UGC creators to make ads that look organic04:43 – The retargeting wall: 580 True Classic ads live at once04:54 – "This made me go down a rabbit hole" — the moment marketing worked05:03 – Landing page breakdown: $35 for one shirt vs. $15 a shirt in a 10-pack05:40 – The AOV trick: how cart value jumps from $35 to $15006:02 – AOV, CAC, and ROAS explained (plus a B2B-to-D2C jab at Travis)06:18 – Why True Classic's post-purchase survey is smarter than it looks06:48 – Sizing chaos: how Brenden ends up an XXL in a Bronson shirt07:25 – The live try-on begins: Uniqlo, Bronson, Buck Mason, and True Classic09:19 – True Classic goes on: "fits like a glove"09:58 – Brenden explains how marketing actually made him buy it10:15 – The verdict: True Classic beats them all, most true to sizeAbout the Co-Hosts Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer — and in this episode, he's the one under the microscope, breaking down which tactics actually got him to convert. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelaruaLearn more about Stella: stellaheystella.comTravis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. This episode, he's the one asking the questions, pulling apart the ads and offers that got his co-host to buy. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tylerFeatured Brand True Classic — the DTC t-shirt brand at the center of this episode's marketing breakdown. Shop True Classic: trueclassictees.comEnjoyed This Episode? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.
Aug 12

Travis Buys a Kids Ride Shotgun Bike Seat

Travis spent over $500 on a bike seat for his one-year-old — and in this episode, Brenden finally gets to ask him why. In this installment of Marketing Made Me Buy It, the tables turn: co-host Travis is the one under the microscope, walking Brenden through exactly how a viral TikTok, relentless retargeting, and a Father's Day splurge turned him into a Kids Ride Shotgun customer. What This Episode Covers New parenthood can be isolating, and this episode starts there: Travis opens up about the postpartum burnout that had him craving a way to move and do something active with his son again. That craving led him to a viral TikTok of a dad mountain biking with his toddler, straight into a wall of Instagram retargeting ads, and eventually into a head-to-head research process against a bigger, more "recommended" brand. Brenden unpacks the purchase decision step by step — the emotional trigger, the ad formats, the brand-trust factor, and the unboxing experience that made Travis an advocate — a real example of how DTC marketing and retargeting turn a scroll into a sale. Timestamps 00:00 – Cold open: welcome to Marketing Made Me Buy It00:12 – Travis sets up the segment: an unexpected $500 purchase00:24 – The real trigger: new-dad burnout and wanting to move again00:51 – The viral TikTok that started it all: a dad mountain biking with his toddler01:21 – The moment it clicks: "I want to do stuff like this with my kid"01:56 – Discovering there's a product for this: bike seats built for kids as young as 9 months02:12 – The brand behind it: Kids Ride Shotgun02:17 – Retargeting kicks in: cool bike seats all over Instagram02:38 – Father's Day gives him the excuse to buy03:00 – Reality check: it's a $500 purchase03:03 – Research mode: turning to Reddit for real user opinions03:32 – The showdown: Kids Ride Shotgun vs. Thule03:56 – Why brand trust — and the name itself — tipped the scale04:02 – Unboxing: the QR code that made installation painless04:22 – The payoff: the first ride with his son, Lucas04:36 – "That is what marketing made me buy"04:52 – Sponsor segment: Stella's causal growth engine, explained06:23 – The unplanned Stella jingle About the Co-Hosts Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer — and in this episode, he's the one asking the questions. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelaruaLearn more about Stella: stellaheystella.comTravis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. This episode, he's the one in the hot seat, breaking down his own path from viral TikTok to $500 purchase. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tyler Featured Brand Kids Ride Shotgun — the frame-mounted mountain bike seat at the center of this episode's marketing breakdown. Shop Kids Ride Shotgun: kidsrideshotgun.com Enjoyed This Episode? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.
Aug 12

Brenden Buys A TUSHY

Brenden swore bidets were gross, until a wall of retargeting ads, a Jackass star's podcast confession, and one very persuasive peach changed his mind. In this episode of Marketing Made Me Buy It, host Travis sits down with Brenden Delarua to reverse-engineer exactly how TUSHY's ad campaign turned a lifelong single-ply skeptic into a customer. What This Episode Covers Every purchase has a marketing trigger, and this episode digs into Brenden's. From a decade of "caked on" toilet paper habits to a celebrity endorsement that cracked his resistance, Travis maps the full customer journey: the objection, the ad formats that broke through, the social proof that sealed it, and the moment his wife bought him a TUSHY bidet for Christmas. Along the way, they break down TUSHY's use of humor, UGC-style demos, and retargeting to turn a taboo product into a word-of-mouth brand — a case study anyone in D2C marketing or performance advertising can pull lessons from. Timestamps 00:53 – Brenden's origin story: a lifetime of toilet paper and the "Nutella on shag carpet" analogy03:19 – Brenden discovers TUSHY, the brand behind the bidet03:46 – Ad breakdown #1: TUSHY's apple-and-peanut-butter demo04:29 – Live re-creation: Brenden runs the peach test on camera05:56 – Ad breakdown #2: the "poo particles" retargeting ad06:13 – The social proof stat that stuck: 1 million butts (and counting)06:57 – IRL proof: TUSHY billboards and trucks spotted in NYC's Times Square07:26 – The Christmas gift that sealed the deal08:00 – Life after TUSHY: why Brenden's never going back08:33 – Why a "poop business" gets away with marketing no B2B SaaS company could09:08 – Sponsor segment: Stella's causal growth engine, explained10:26 – Wrap-up and how to try Stella for free About the Co-Hosts Brenden Delarua is co-founder of Stella | Growth Intelligence, a causal growth engine built for D2C and performance marketing teams. With 11+ years managing D2C ad campaigns, he's spent his career on the media-buying side of the exact kind of marketing this podcast exists to reverse-engineer. Connect with Brenden on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendendelaruaTravis is a LinkedIn content strategist with 10+ years of B2B SaaS social and content experience, including scaling LinkedIn 17x at Motion and hosting a 100K+ download podcast at PandaDoc. On Marketing Made Me Buy It, he's the one asking the questions, digging into the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually get people to buy. Connect with Travis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/travis-scott-tylerFeatured Brand TUSHY — the modern bidet brand at the center of this episode's marketing breakdown. Shop TUSHY: hellotushy.com Enjoyed This Episode? Subscribe to Marketing Made Me Buy It so you never miss a breakdown of the ads, hooks, and campaigns that actually convert, and leave a review to help more marketers find the show. Want to see what's driving your own incremental revenue? Start free at stellaheystella.com.

6 Episodes

The most annoying dorks in marketing want to do show and tell.

Creator

Brenden Delarua & Travis Tyler
Years Active

2026
Episodes

6
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© 2026 Marketing Made Me Buy It
Show Website

Marketing Made Me Buy It