Tyler Milakis is the Head of Brand Marketing at Charlotte's Web, a leading producer of hemp-derived wellness products. In his role, he spearheaded a full rebrand, go-to-market launches, and performance campaigns for flagship wellness products. With over a decade of experience in DTC marketing, Tyler has helped brands sharpen their voice, expand their presence, and own their markets.

Brands with rich origin stories may struggle to evolve without alienating their loyal customer base. As consumer expectations shift and competition intensifies, companies must modernize their brand while remaining true to their core values. How can brands grow, innovate, and stay relevant without losing the essence that built their trust?

According to brand marketing leader Tyler Milakis, brand evolution starts with intention and internal alignment. He advises embedding your values across every touchpoint — from packaging to messaging — and aligning your team by hosting brand days, creating guides, and maintaining consistent communication. Rather than chasing novelty or trends, innovation should solve consumer problems and remain rooted in your brand’s purpose.

In this episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani hosts Tyler Milakis, Head of Brand Marketing at Charlotte's Web, to talk about guiding a legacy brand through evolution and innovation. Tyler explains how to convey an authentic brand story, remain culturally relevant, and maintain consistency in marketing efforts.

Jerel Blades is the Head of Growth at TUSHY, which provides best-in-class bidet attachments for toilet seats. As a growth marketer, he was the VP of Growth at GOAT Foods, where he led growth for Licorice, Pretzels, Caramels, and Chocolate. Jerel began his career as an intern in fashion brand management. 

In today’s consumer-led digital landscape, growth marketers must drive short-term performance without sacrificing long-term brand equity. As paid media becomes increasingly competitive and attribution becomes unclear, marketers must demonstrate their value while aligning with broader business objectives. How can growth teams build scalable strategies that protect and enhance brand value?

With a background in fashion branding and performance marketing, Jerel Blades maintains that curiosity, business acumen, and a deep understanding of customers are foundational traits for any high-performing growth team. He stresses the importance of aligning brand and performance KPIs, using shared tools and frameworks to promote cross-functional collaboration. Post-purchase surveys and consumer insights can also address skepticism around unfamiliar products and shape more effective, empathetic marketing campaigns. 

In this week’s episode of Chief Advertiser, Jerel Blades, Head of Growth at TUSHY, joins Samir Balwani for a discussion about building performance programs that support long-term brand strategy. Jerel explains how to create alignment between growth and brand teams, strategies for educating consumers in a high-consideration category, and the ideal characteristics of growth marketers.

Helen Christoni is the Senior Vice President of Ideal Living, where she leads the growth of AirDoctor and AquaTru, two of the nation’s leading clean air and water solutions brands. With over 20 years of experience in health and wellness, she specializes in building mission-driven brands through influencer partnerships, education, and community engagement. Helen has completed the Boston Marathon five times and three 100-mile ultramarathons.

Social commerce holds untapped potential for growth, but where can brands begin? Companies often focus on driving sales and ROI first without building a loyal community or a clear brand voice. How can businesses create an authentic social commerce strategy that balances education, relationships, and long-term growth?

According to marketing strategist and influencer-driven commerce expert Helen Christoni, social commerce begins with prioritizing community over immediate conversions. She emphasizes immersing yourself in industry conversations, defining ideal brand partners, and investing time in education before launching campaigns. Seeding products, building relationships organically, and hosting educational webinars have helped her create lasting partnerships and drive meaningful engagement.

In this week’s episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani sits down with Helen Christoni, SVP of AirDoctor and AquaTru at Ideal Living, to talk about scaling social commerce through education and community-building. Helen discusses managing rapid growth, overcoming tech challenges, and preparing for AI in commerce.

Morgan Decker is the Director of Global Marketing at Andie, a women-led DTC swimwear brand. In her role, she spearheaded initiatives that increased customer acquisition by 25% and improved retention by 18%. With over a decade of experience spanning startups to Fortune 500 companies, Morgan blends creativity with data-driven strategies to drive sustainable growth and customer engagement. She is also a Founding Member of CartStars, an e-commerce platform that streamlines online sales operations for businesses.

Marketing high-consideration, low-frequency products like swimwear presents unique challenges, especially when customer purchases are seasonal, brand loyalty is elusive, and acquisition costs are high. With long purchase cycles and limited buying triggers, how can brands stay top-of-mind and drive consistent growth in a crowded fashion landscape?

Experienced DTC marketer Morgan Decker focuses on brand positioning, generational loyalty, and cross-functional alignment. She emphasizes understanding and controlling consumers’ purchasing triggers and targeting future buyers through mobile app advertising. Morgan also prioritizes data sharing with product teams to inform inventory and creative strategies while operating within a lean and agile marketing structure. 

In the latest episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani sits down with Morgan Decker, Director of Global Marketing at Andie, to talk about navigating the fashion marketing landscape. Morgan discusses how to manage purchase latency, the importance of marketing–product collaboration, and her approach to testing emerging AI platforms.

Rick Cesari is the Chief Marketing Officer at Direct Branding, a marketing agency specializing in direct-to-consumer strategies and video marketing to help consumer brands scale and drive measurable sales growth. A pioneer in direct response advertising since the early 1990s, Rick has played a pivotal role in building iconic brands such as Juiceman, Sonicare, The George Foreman Grill, OxiClean, and GoPro, contributing to several companies achieving over a billion dollars in sales. He is also the author of multiple marketing books, including Buy Now and Video Persuasion, which offer insights into leveraging video to boost customer engagement and conversions.

How do you take a product no one’s heard of and turn it into a household name? In a crowded marketplace, cutting through the noise requires more than flashy ads or clever slogans. What if the key to building billion-dollar brands lies in the power of education and storytelling?

According to Rick Cesari, a pioneer in direct response television marketing, educating consumers is essential to driving product adoption. He highlights the importance of communicating clear, relatable benefits rather than overwhelming audiences with technical features. By focusing on how a product solves a problem, brands can connect emotionally with buyers and inspire action. This approach not only differentiates products but also builds long-term trust and loyalty. Throughout his career, Rick has proven this formula across multiple iconic brands.

In this episode of the Response Drivers podcast, host Rick Rappe sits down with Rick Cesari, Chief Marketing Officer at Direct Branding, to discuss using DRTV to build billion-dollar brands. They explore how to transform product features into benefits, why educating consumers boosts sales, and the role of storytelling in direct response campaigns. Rick also shares insights on adapting direct response principles to today’s digital platforms.

Shaan Arora is the Co-founder and CEO of Alia, an e-commerce pop-up alternative for Shopify brands. He founded the company to help brands convey their stories and value to online shoppers. In 2023, Shaan was recognized on BostInno's 25 Under 25 list.

Pop-ups are everywhere in e-commerce, but they often feel intrusive, ineffective, or poorly optimized for customer engagement. It can be challenging to capture useful customer data while maintaining a seamless user experience. How can businesses design pop-ups that collect valuable insights and drive higher opt-ins and conversions?

With a specialty in customer engagement strategies and zero-party data collection, young entrepreneur Shaan Arora advises using micro-commitment techniques, such as starting pop-ups with a simple poll question to increase participation. Brands can leverage three key strategies to design effective pop-ups, including implementing a five-second delay before displaying the pop-up, using a full-screen format to boost visibility, and offering a mystery discount to incentivize sign-ups. By combining these tactics with zero-party data collection like A/B testing and customer segmentation, you can enhance personalization and conversion rates.

In the latest episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani interviews Shaan Arora, Co-founder and CEO of Alia, about building high-performing e-commerce pop-ups. Shaan explains how to improve email flows, increase opt-in rates, and leverage data insights to guide product strategy.

Kareem Elgendy is the CEO of Veiled, a modest fashion brand for women. He has grown Veiled into an eight-figure brand, achieving over 70% year-over-year growth through data-driven strategies and analytics. Before Veiled, Kareem was the Head of Marketing at Baked Boutique and the Director of Quality Assurance at Frank Seta & Associates.

Many e-commerce brands stagnate when scaling their marketing efforts, only to realize that the problem isn’t their ads; it’s their product catalog. When top-performing items go out of stock or merchandising isn’t aligned with audience demand, conversion rates plummet, and ad performance tanks. How can brands align inventory and analytics to drive consistent, profitable growth?

Performance marketing and merchandising analytics expert Kareem Elgendy recommends aligning product availability with your marketing strategy. This entails tracking the number of units sold per day for in-stock items and using that data to optimize product assortment by style, color, and size. Kareem has developed a forecasting framework to guide inventory decisions based on past performance, urging brands to align those insights with dynamic ad campaigns to boost ROI. Additionally, maintaining centralized collaboration across merchandising, analytics, and design teams enables faster, more accurate adjustments.

Join Samir Balwani in today’s episode of Chief Advertiser as he interviews Kareem Elgendy, CEO of Veiled, about data-driven product strategies for marketing. Kareem talks about the pitfalls of running out of top-selling products, how to diagnose advertising campaign issues, and how to optimize your inventory to promote top-selling products.

Michael Kaminsky is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Recast, a marketing measurement platform that helps brands optimize their ad spend. As a trained econometrician, he led the marketing science team at Harry’s, where he developed data-driven strategies to enhance customer acquisition and retention. Michael also held analytics positions at Case Commons and Analysis Group.

Marketers often struggle to measure tangible results from their advertising strategies. As brands scale and expand across multiple channels, traditional attribution models like last-click fall short, leading to inaccurate ROI estimates and poor budget decisions. How can marketing leaders measure what works to make informed, data-driven decisions at scale?

According to marketing measurement expert Michael Kaminsky, brands can measure marketing performance by adopting a causal, experiment-backed approach to media mix modeling (MMM). Each MMM should uncover incrementality, the true causal impact of media spend. Michael recommends starting with simple triangulation using first-touch, last-touch, and post-checkout surveys, then layering in lift tests to validate assumptions. These assumptions should be validated consistently using experimentation to align MMMs with real-world results. 

In today’s episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani hosts Michael Kaminsky, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Recast, to discuss employing media mix modeling to measure marketing performance. Michael talks about performing incrementality testing, utilizing first-touch, last-touch, and post-checkout survey data for attribution, and the difference between causal and inferred MMM.

Louis Monoyudis is the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Bokksu, a company delivering authentic Japanese snacks and home goods worldwide. He is also a judge at Effie Worldwide, where he evaluates top-performing marketing campaigns for the Commerce and Shopper Effie Awards. As a brand strategist, designer, and DTC e-commerce executive, Louis has worked for brands like Sprite, Morgan Stanley, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and LĒVO.

Many DTC-only brands start strong by building a loyal early customer base but eventually hit a wall when trying to scale. High customer acquisition costs and limited exposure outside a single channel restrict long-term growth. How can these brands evolve beyond the limitations of DTC to compete with omnichannel brands?

According to luxury brand marketer and omnichannel growth specialist Louis Monoyudis, native DTC brands can expand into wholesale, retail, and marketplace channels through authentic storytelling and narrative. Growth arises from meeting customers where they already shop — whether it’s Amazon, TikTok Shop, or physical retailers — and brands must adapt their messaging, pricing, and logistics accordingly. Louis emphasizes the importance of aligning marketing with operations and using performance data, surveys, and AI-generated creative campaign testing to guide expansion with less risk.

Join Samir Balwani in today’s Chief Advertiser episode as he welcomes Louis Monoyudis, the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Bokksu, to discuss expanding into omnichannel retail. Louis explains how to structure performance metrics like MER, how to facilitate communication between CFOs and CMOs, and how to leverage AI effectively.

Olivia Morley is the Founder and Content Consultant at FusionFront Media, which offers consulting and freelance services in advertising, media, and entertainment. She also co-hosts the Agency Business and Screen & Sponsor: The New Era of Filmmaking podcasts, which explores the collaboration between brands and the entertainment world. Before founding FusionFront Media, Olivia was a Senior Reporter at Adweek, where she reported on agencies, advertising, marketing, and media trends.

For brands looking to break through the noise, traditional advertising no longer guarantees cultural relevance. As consumers grow savvier, product placements and celebrity endorsements aren’t enough to build lasting emotional connections. How can brands tap into storytelling through authentic, culturally resonant, and creatively engaging mediums?

According to journalist-turned-podcast host and media strategist Olivia Morley, brands are evolving their marketing strategies by delving into film production. Companies are partnering with filmmakers, funding independent films, and even launching studios to create emotionally compelling content that transcends standard ad forms. By empowering directors and producers to lead with stories rather than products, brands can earn cultural relevance organically.

In today’s episode of Chief Advertiser, Samir Balwani talks with Olivia Morley, the Founder and Content Consultant at FusionFront Media, about the intersection of film and brand marketing. Olivia shares the rewards of producing brand-funded indie films, the evolution of brand integrations, and how to develop film partnerships.