Challenging and stewarding mission-driven brands with a creative-first approach to amplify their impact

Are you looking for a partner to amplify your impact and elevate the baseline of consumer behavior? 
If yes, read out more and let’s build a better future for the planet together.

My name is John. I am the founder and CEO of Fat Earth Media, an agency promoting products with a mission. 
I lead a diverse team of passionate and ethical marketers to help your mission-driven brand fulfil its vision.

We measure the work we do by looking at our clients’ impact. 
We have helped more than 150 brands and managed millions in ad spend.  
But what we are the most proud of are the 40k hectares of wildlife habitat protected and  the 391,000 pounds of food waste up-cycled.

Our mission is to elevate the baseline of consumer behavior, orienting consumers towards mission-driven brands.

We adopt a creative-first approach backed up by iteration and data to help you minimize waste and double-down on what works.

Don’t take our word for it, have a look at what our clients say and our case studies.

If you are a mission-driven brand, I would love to hear about your ambitions. 
Drop me a DM and let's get to know each other!

Alternatively, you can schedule a complimentary ad creative inspiration session to learn how to get the right ad creative for your brand: https://bit.ly/3Oc6knD

John Gross

Brand Marketing + Performance Marketing + Creative + DTC + eCommerce + Start-up + Growth Marketing + Brand Strategy || Ex-Unilever, Colgate, Ogilvy, Soma Water, Morgan Stanley

I earned my MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, specializing in Brand Management and Strategy, and hold a BA in Economics from Union College, where I was a NCAA varsity crew athlete. I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of creativity, strategy, and data, shaping my career around building brands that drive both emotional connection and measurable growth. Outside of work, I live in New York City’s Upper West Side with my wife, Julie, and our two daughters, Anna and Lily.

Over the past 20+ years, I’ve led global CPG brands and high-growth DTC startups, scaling businesses through brand strategy, performance marketing, and omnichannel expansion. I’ve tripled revenue for multiple startups, launched award-winning marketing campaigns, and built full-funnel growth systems that drive customer acquisition, retention, and brand loyalty. My expertise spans DTC, retail, Amazon, and marketplaces, with leadership roles at Unilever, Colgate, Ogilvy, Soma Water, Full Circle, Blix Electric Bikes, and Morgan Stanley. I also consult for emerging and established brands to help them accelerate growth.

Now, I’m focused on helping mission-driven consumer brands scale smarter and faster—whether as a fractional CMO, growth advisor, or brand strategist. I thrive on solving complex business challenges, leading high-performing teams, and shaping the future of DTC, retail, and omnichannel growth.

If you’re looking to scale your brand, optimize your marketing, or drive profitability—let’s connect.

Corey Greenhouse

A few years ago, I joined a high-growth startup that had everything going for it:
🔥 Product-market fit
📈 Blazing fast growth
💰 Healthy performance ROAS

But under the hood?
It was fragile.

Our CAC was rising.
Repeat rates weren’t where we wanted.
No one could explain what we stood for—internally or externally.

We were sprinting… but not in a direction.

Eventually, the performance engine slowed down. And we had no brand to fall back on.
No memory.
No loyalty.
No gravity.

That moment changed how I think about brand.

Since then, here’s what I tell every early-stage team:

👉 Don’t wait until performance breaks to start building brand.
👉 You don’t need a rebrand. You need a narrative.
👉 You don’t need a Super Bowl ad. You need consistency.

The best startups today get this:

💊 Care/of built a POV around personalization and self-care before their first billboard
💄 Jones Road made Bobbi Brown the brand
🧃 Caliwater wrapped its mission in every piece of content—from celebrity to desert chic
🧢 Vuori out-Nike’d Nike with brand storytelling from day one

Here’s how I think about it now:

✅ Brand is an accelerant, not a luxury
✅ It lowers CAC by pre-warming every click
✅ It boosts retention by making people care
✅ It makes performance creative convert better—because it means something

Brand isn’t just for Series C and beyond.

If you’re in growth mode and think you “can’t afford” brand…
You can’t afford not to.

#BrandMarketing #GrowthStrategy #StartupLessons #ModernMarketingOS #BrandAndPerformance #EarlyStageGrowth

When I joined Acure, we had a product people loved—but a brand no one could describe.

The formulas were clean.
The pricing was accessible.
The reviews were glowing.

But if you asked 10 consumers:
“What’s Acure all about?”
You’d get 10 different answers.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this (and other) growth-stage brands:

✅ Great products get you distribution. Great brands earn loyalty.

✅ Without a clear POV, you’ll burn money on performance just to stay flat.

✅ And no matter how good your team or product is—if the story isn’t consistent, the consumer won’t remember it.

So we went to work:

🎯 Rebuilt the brand architecture
🔬 Refocused messaging around concern-first, clinically-backed skincare
🧪 Launched zombie cell SKUs with data-forward education
🧠 Designed an editorial engine to reinforce the narrative every week
🛍️ Aligned our DTC, Amazon, and retail playbooks around one unified voice

And here’s what happened:

🚀 Branded search surged
📉 Paid CPAs dropped
🛒 Retail turns picked up in key markets
💬 Consumers started repeating back our core messaging in reviews and social

The takeaway?

Don’t mistake awareness for affinity.
Don’t mistake distribution for brand.
And don’t mistake performance for pull.

Because the only thing that compounds in the long run is brand equity.

It’s what gets you into baskets and into culture.
It’s what makes your media more efficient.
It’s what makes your consumer say: “Oh yeah, I know them. I love that brand.”

And in 2026?

That’s the only kind of marketing that matters.

#BrandBuilding #ModernMarketingOS #BrandAndPerformance #DTCStrategy #OmnichannelGrowth #CMOPlaybook

The most expensive lesson I learned in DTC?”
Waiting too long to invest in brand.

Early in my career, I treated brand like frosting. Something you add once the growth engine is working. ROAS first, brand later.

But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

If you don’t invest in brand early, your CAC becomes a tax you can’t out-optimize.

Paid performance will get you the clicks.
Brand is what earns the second one.
And the third.
And the kind of loyalty that shows up on shelf, in Amazon search, and in conversations you’ll never see.

The moment it clicked for me?

I was working with a brand doing $40M+ in top line. Performance was solid—but flatlining. We had maxed out the machine. Every channel looked tired.

We didn’t need another hack.
We needed to build brand memory.

So we slowed down, clarified the POV, tightened creative systems, made brand our multiplier — not a line item.

What happened next?

Branded search grew 60%.
Amazon velocity jumped.
Retail partners started calling us.

Not because we spent more.
Because we made the spend matter more.

I see it now in the brands I admire:

🧃 Olipop — storytelling that spans channels
💄 e.l.f. — brand voice that drives cultural velocity
🧼 Dr. Squatch — content that’s sticky, not salesy

And the classics:

📱 Nike — consistency, conviction, and edge
🍏 Apple — simple brand codes that still move markets

So if you’re in growth mode and you think brand can wait—
Trust me, it can’t.

Brand isn’t a luxury.
It’s the unlock that makes performance compounding.

And the brands that figure that out early?
They don’t just drive revenue.
They build something that lasts.

#BrandMarketing #GrowthStagePlaybook #BrandAndPerformance #ModernMarketingOS #OmnichannelGrowth #CMOPlaybook

taplio

The Battle

John Gross

Corey Greenhouse

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreCorey Greenhouse's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

John Gross

Corey Greenhouse

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Corey Greenhouse's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreCorey Greenhouse's LinkedIn Performance