So far, this blog has been mostly about observation. I've looked at the coffee shop line, the Trader Joe's cart, the delivery app, the way brands choose who to speak to. And across all those posts, a pattern emerged — one I also saw over more than seven years working in sales, business development and branding in Brazil.
The pattern is this: companies tend to treat cost, sales and brand as three separate subjects, handled by three separate teams, with three separate goals. Operations cuts expenses, sales chases volume, marketing takes care of the image. And, almost always, the most expensive problems live precisely in the space between them.
My thesis is simple: marketing only delivers real results when it looks at all three at the same time. In this piece, I share three cases that led me to that conclusion — and what they say about the American market.
Three questions, one conversation
I like to think of these fronts as three questions every company needs to answer, ideally together: where am I losing money, where does my revenue come from, and why do customers choose me.
| Front | The question | A real case |
|---|---|---|
| Efficiency and management | Where is the company losing money without noticing? | Moving draft beer keg exchanges from biweekly to weekly, cutting losses from expired product |
| Sales and revenue | What offer makes sense for each type of customer? | 43% partner adoption and 20% more volume in a region with low market share |
| Brand and digital marketing | Why does a customer choose this brand over another? | Partner marketing budget that had been sitting idle going to 70%–80% utilization in three months |
None of these cases is purely about logistics, purely about sales or purely about brand. Each one started in one area and was only solved when someone cross-referenced information from another.
Marketing is also about cutting waste
Few people associate marketing with logistics, but I do. Product that expires on the shelf is a lost sale. Training that can't keep up with demand means customers poorly served. A supplier contract no one has reviewed in years is margin going down the drain.
At the brewery, the problem was simple to describe and expensive to live with: draft beer had a shelf life of just a few days, and kegs were exchanged every 15 days. Crossing those two pieces of information was enough to see that part of the product would expire at the point of sale. We moved the exchange to weekly, and the method kept being used after I left.
Before that, at a multinational customer service company, the training team couldn't keep up with hiring because it only ran two shifts. I reorganized the class schedules, we opened a third shift and started delivering 50% more classes, without adding to the structure.
The lesson for anyone managing marketing is that operational efficiency is also customer experience. Expired product, slow service and a poorly negotiated contract all reach the consumer as a bad brand, no matter how good the campaign is.
Selling is building relationships
Much of my career was spent on the street, negotiating face to face. Along Ponta Negra Beach, in Natal, the brewery had a low market share and a higher price than the popular brands. Instead of fighting over discounts, I spoke with about 60 beach bar owners and we put together a proposal designed for them: a minimum monthly purchase, branded equipment and better terms for those who followed the suggested retail price. We reached a 43% adoption rate and 20% more volume sold in the region.
Later, at a delivery super app, the negotiation changed form but not logic. I joined the partnerships team at a difficult moment, when its strategies weren't delivering results. Partners' marketing budgets were sitting idle: very little made it off the page. Within three months, we were using between 70% and 80% of the budget on campaigns that delivered returns, and the launch closed with GMV about 35% above target.
The point I'd like to leave here is that good selling starts with diagnosis, not with the offer. A discount solves the quarter; a proposal designed around the customer's real need solves the relationship.
Brand is what remains when the campaign ends
The third front is the one that shows up most on this blog. I worked as a brand manager at the delivery app, building partnerships with large food and beverage companies, and later at a branding consultancy with more than 1,800 projects to its name. In both places, I learned that a brand isn't a logo or a color palette. It's the promise a company makes and keeps every day.
Trader Joe's, once again, is my favorite example. It barely relies on paid advertising, because its own customers spread the word for free. And that starts on the inside: well-paid, well-treated employees provide better service, and well-served customers become fans. A strong brand on the outside almost always starts with a strong employer brand on the inside.
That's why, when I think about branding, I also think about social responsibility: diversity on the team, fair labor practices and an honest relationship with the surrounding community. Not as campaign talk, but as part of what the brand really is. Day to day, that translates into clear positioning, behavior-based segmentation, digital campaigns with measured goals and communication the audience recognizes as genuine.
What this means for the American market
The American market is the most competitive one I've ever set foot in, and the numbers show that marketing management keeps gaining weight here. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of advertising, promotions and marketing managers will grow 6% between 2024 and 2034, faster than the average for all occupations, with about 36,400 openings each year.
And there's a figure that, to me, says even more. According to the U.S. government's Office of Advocacy for small businesses, 99.9% of the country's businesses are small, and together they account for 43.5% of GDP and employ 62.3 million people. That's more than 36 million companies. Most of them don't have a structured marketing department — they have an owner doing everything at once.
This is where integrating cost, sales and brand stops being a luxury. Large companies can have a team for each front and still suffer from silos. Small and mid-sized businesses don't have that option: either someone looks at all three together, or no one does.
The outsider's view
Perhaps the most valuable contribution to this conversation doesn't come from any of the three fronts, but from the view of someone who comes from outside. People who grew up in a market with fewer resources learn to solve problems with creativity, negotiation and attention to detail. And someone arriving in a new country sees what, for those who've been here for years, has already faded into the background: the line no one questions, the process that's always been done that way, the customer no one chose to serve.
That view has fueled every post on this blog. And the conclusion it always leads me to is the same: the brands that grow aren't the ones that do more things, they're the ones that best connect what they already do.
And at your company: do cost, sales and brand talk to each other — or does each one have its own goal?