Cover Brand: Growing Tusks
Most marketing teams are still trying to choose sides: brand or performance, creativity or data, vibes or dashboards.
That’s adorable. And wildly inefficient.
On this episode of Cover Brand, Ethan sat down with Casey Hill of Do What Works to unpack how demand actually gets created, why SEO is still misunderstood, and how A/B testing at massive scale reveals what marketers think works versus what actually does.
We dig into why common forms of social proof often backfire, how attribution models oversimplify human behavior, and why buyers don’t experience marketing in funnels—they experience it like real people with context, memory, and skepticism.
This is a shop-talk episode for anyone who’s tired of chasing short-term wins that quietly erode long-term growth.
Main Topics
Why brand and performance aren’t opposites (they’re roommates)
How DoWhatWorks analyzes thousands of real A/B tests across major brands
What SEO really does (and doesn’t do) for demand creation
Why common social proof elements (logo bars, star ratings, badges) often lose tests
The danger of cheap signals vs. costly, credible proof
Attribution models vs. how humans actually decide
Why removing “best practices” sometimes improves conversion
How personalization and relevance beat generic “impressive” branding
Examples & Case Studies Discussed
Jotform — removing third-party review badges improved performance
Dropbox — logo bars tested and removed despite “impressive” clients
Clay — logo bars linked to detailed case studies performed better
Spotify — full homepage rebrand testing
Sage — industry- and company-size-based homepage personalization
Hotels.com — experimentation and trust signal optimization
At-scale testing references: Nike, Disney, Netflix, NFL, MLB
Resources & References
DoWhatWorks (Casey’s company & testing platform): https://www.dowhatworks.io
DoWhatWorks Insights & Research: https://www.dowhatworks.io/blog
DoWhatWorks Newsletter (Substack): https://dowhatworks.substack.com
Casey Hill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyhill
Wayback Machine (Web Archive) — historical website versions: https://web.archive.org
Review & Social Proof Platforms Referenced:
G2 — https://www.g2.com
Capterra — https://www.capterra.com
Trustpilot — https://www.trustpilot.com
Book Referenced: Influence by Robert Cialdini
Cover Brand Spotify Playlist (cover songs mentioned on the show):
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6h4QzTqrtn9DIAPvdn1iCI?si=tr1zrnnBSaqif-xmEIpaZQ
You don’t optimize your way into being remembered.
You build memory—and then performance finally has something to stand on.
