Research, frameworks, and operating principles from two decades of growing consumer brands. Not tips. Not content. The ideas we actually run accounts on.
Marina del Rey. Photo: Alfonso Betancourt / Unsplash.
Latest research
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the difference between a business that’s small because its opportunity is limited and one that’s small because its opportunity hasn’t been unlocked, and why a company’s size tells you where it is, not where it can go.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the advantage money can’t buy: why organizations with similar resources perform so differently, from the Brewers’ 2026 sweep of the Dodgers to AI, and why what a company is becoming better at matters more than what it owns.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on decision-making in an age of information overload: why more dashboards, more reports and faster AI analysis don’t answer what to do next, and why judgment and clear ownership are what turn information into action.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the difference between patience and coasting: why braking isn't the opposite of progress, why motion isn't the same as direction, and why every growth decision, throttle or brake, should be made deliberately.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the difference between demand generation and growth capacity: why marketing often exposes problems it didn't create, why more spend can amplify the wrong constraint, and why growth is a system rather than a collection of channels.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the difference between having customers and being able to intentionally produce the next good one: why activity isn't repeatability, why reputation isn't an acquisition system, why more channels don't fix it, and why doing nothing has economics too.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on why scale has to be earned, not declared: what happens when spend outruns what a business has proven it can absorb, why capital finds the next constraint faster, and why restraint is sometimes the most aggressive growth decision.
Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the client whose record growth became the least interesting thing in the meeting, why the real constraint keeps moving, and why AI is about to make judgment the scarce resource.
For a long time, being great at media buying was enough. Voltage founder Mark R Brown on what happens when the platforms automate your competitive advantage, and what you are actually paying an agency for now.
ROAS isn't the problem. Believing it without understanding what sits underneath it is. Voltage founder Mark R Brown on how a ROAS target gets set, whose ROAS you are looking at, and the better question to ask on Monday morning.
Sometimes you have an agency problem. Sometimes you have a business problem. Voltage founder Mark R Brown on the one question to ask before you fire your agency.
The biggest breakthroughs we've created over the last twenty years almost never happened inside an advertising platform. Voltage founder Mark R Brown on fiduciary stewardship of growth budgets and solving the right problem.
The most expensive client you'll ever sign is the one you should have never signed. Voltage founder Mark R Brown on client selection, the real cost of turn, and the discipline to walk away.
Rising CPA has three causes, demand ceiling, creative fatigue, and audience exhaustion, and the fix for each is the opposite of the others. A field guide to diagnosing CPA before you act.
An 8x ROAS on view-through remarketing is not an 8x on click-only prospecting. How attribution windows inflate ROAS by up to 45 percent, and the one report that tells you which number you actually have.
AI compresses detection, reporting, and synthesis. It does not replace the differential diagnosis, judgment, and taste that decide which move is right.
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