Operators. Not consultants.
BrightCircle is a fractional marketing department for founder-led DTC brands. We install a fractional Director of Marketing in your business, backed by a creative and media execution engine, and run the core marketing system end-to-end.
For most brands, we replace the core agency stack — strategy, creative, paid media, email, reporting, and the operating rhythm that ties it all together. If you already have partners you trust, we run them inside one plan instead of forcing a rebuild.
what you get
A senior, fractional Director of Marketing runs your account, owns the plan, and makes the calls. Behind them, a full execution engine delivers the work. One team. One plan. One operating rhythm.
your fractional director of marketing
Senior operator judgment inside your business every week. Owns the strategy, the plan, the operating cadence, and the relationship.
the execution engine
Creative, paid media, email, landing pages, analytics, and project coordination. The functions you would otherwise hire one by one, already assembled and operating as one team.
the operating system
The diagnostic that tells us what to fix and in what order. The 12-part scorecard. The weekly cadence that turns reports into decisions. The connective tissue most stacks are missing.
You get the senior judgment of an in-house marketing leader, the execution capacity of a small department, and the cost structure of a fractional model.
inside the execution engine
Under the fractional Director of Marketing, the work is organized into three connected engines. Each one handles a defined slice of the system. None of them operates in isolation.
the demand engine
Meta, Google, paid media strategy, creative testing, and offer iteration. The work that keeps acquisition from depending on one tired angle or one lucky campaign.
the conversion engine
Landing pages, PDP direction, email direction, and the post-click experience. Where most agencies stop and where most growth leaks happen.
the intelligence engine
Customer research, performance reporting, Brand Canon updates, and the weekly operating rhythm. The signal layer that tells the team what to do next.
the source of truth
Most brands don't have a single source of truth for who the customer is, what they care about, which claims matter, and how the brand should show up across creative, landing pages, email, and paid media. We build and maintain that source of truth inside the Brand Canon. It becomes the operating document for your marketing system.
customer segments
Who buys, why they buy, what they believe, and what gets in the way.
positioning and claims
The messages, proof points, and offers that should show up consistently across the funnel.
creative guardrails
What to test, what to avoid, what's worked, and what new angles deserve budget.
growth roadmap
The next segments, offers, pages, and campaigns most likely to unlock growth.
how scale actually happens
Most brands try to scale by pushing the same message into more spend. That eventually breaks. TAM Stacking is the name we use for a growth pattern Sean developed while scaling consumer brands: identify new buyer pockets, build specific messaging for each one, and stack them into a broader acquisition system over time.
The Brand Canon is where the segments live. TAM Stacking is how we add the next one without losing the core customer.
who this is for
Built for founder-led DTC brands doing roughly $5M–$25M in revenue, with a strong product, meaningful paid acquisition spend, and a marketing system that has outgrown founder management.
01
You have product-market fit, but growth feels harder than it should.
02
You have agencies or freelancers, but no one truly owns the whole system.
03
You're not ready to hire a full senior marketing department, but you need more than another channel specialist.
You're translating strategy into briefs. Chasing vendors. Connecting performance data to creative. Trying to figure out whether the issue is the ads, the offer, the website, the PDP, the customer, or the positioning.
That's not a marketing system. That's a founder-managed collection of vendors.
Most brands at this stage already have the pieces. Ads. Creative. Email. Analytics. Contractors. Agencies. What they don't have is one senior team owning the whole system.
That matters because marketing only compounds when the parts work together.
the loop
When nobody owns the loop, every part gets weaker.
BrightCircle owns the loop.
We step into the missing marketing leadership seat with our own execution team behind us.
We can run the core DTC marketing function end-to-end. If you don't have a Meta agency, an email agency, or a creative shop, we can run that work directly. If you already have specialists who are working, we manage them inside one plan instead of replacing them. Your call.
we do directly
We do the core work directly because it has to stay integrated.
Strategy. Customer research. Creative direction. Paid media. Email. Reporting. Weekly operating cadence.
we manage
We manage specialists when the work calls for a deeper lane.
Web development. Photography. Video production. PR. Influencer programs. Amazon. Retail and wholesale. Advanced lifecycle work.
We're not trying to replace every specialist. We're replacing the founder as the person who has to make every specialist work together.
You won't hear "that's not our responsibility, we only do ads." You won't hear "we did our part, the email agency dropped the ball." If something breaks in the marketing system, we diagnose it, name it clearly, and drive the next move. We can't control every variable in your business. We can take responsibility for the marketing plan, the work, the coordination, and the operating rhythm that keeps it moving.
Most brands at this stage don't need to keep placing disconnected bets. One bet on ads. One bet on photography. One bet on retention. They need one operating system that makes those bets work together.
You get the senior judgment of an in-house marketing leader, the execution capacity of a small department, and the cost structure of a fractional model.
the origin of the playbook
BrightCircle is built on the operating system Sean ran as CMO of Vari, helping scale the brand past $300M, then refined as CRO at OP2 Labs, where the repositioning he led doubled revenue in 18 months.
Today, Sean and Haley Thomas are applying that same playbook across Louisville Brands: tightening positioning, building creative systems, improving paid media direction, and creating the operating rhythm most founder-led brands are missing.
This is not a consultant's framework. It is an operator's playbook for replacing scattered marketing activity with one accountable growth system.
Vari
Helped scale a consumer brand to $300M+.
Frog Fuel / OP2 Labs
Helped grow the brand to $30M.
Louisville Brands
Current multi-brand DTC growth system in motion.
the team
Sean Scogin · founder
Sean brings the senior growth playbook: positioning, channel strategy, creative direction, offer strategy, and the judgment that comes from scaling real consumer brands.
Haley Thomas · VP of strategy
Haley turns that strategy into motion: creative pipeline, partner coordination, execution rhythm, reporting, and the weekly operating discipline most founder-led brands are missing.
Together, BrightCircle gives brands what they usually cannot hire in one person: senior marketing leadership and the system to make it execute every week.
The math on each.
scenario 01
Senior thinking. No execution. The CMO advises. You still hire the agencies, the creatives, the freelancers, and the analyst. You still manage the whole thing. The founder is still the operator.
scenario 02
A real Director runs $13K–$15K+/mo all-in once you add benefits. They can think, but they can't execute alone. They still need the same creative, media, email, and analytics support. By the time you've built the team to back them, you can easily reach $54K/mo in year one.
scenario 03
The most common option. Each agency might be competent. None of them owns the system. You become the glue.
the alternative
One senior team. One operating plan. One cadence across the core marketing function. We can replace your agencies entirely or manage the ones you already trust.
Not cheaper than a freelancer. Much cheaper than building the department yourself.
Every engagement has a defined scope. The operating rhythm usually looks like this.
We monitor paid media daily, but we don't mistake constant tinkering for strategy. Some agencies make frequent tactical changes because the account is their entire job. Our job is the whole marketing system. We watch performance daily, make changes when the data supports it, and use channel feedback to improve the inputs around it: creative, offer, landing page, audience, messaging.
New ads aren't random hooks in a spreadsheet. They're tied to segments, objections, use cases, product truths, and performance patterns.
Flows, campaigns, offers, and segmentation are part of the growth system. Not a separate channel sitting in a corner.
PDPs, landing pages, and conversion leaks get worked on weekly, not quarterly. Most agencies stop at the click. We work on what happens after it: the page, the offer, the post-purchase, the message a customer needs to believe before buying.
You get a weekly brief. What changed, what we learned, what we're doing next, what needs your approval.
If the work calls for deep retention, web development, photography, video, PR, or influencer execution, we source and manage the right partner. You approve cost before anything happens.
A partner one-pager. A landing page for a launch. A trade show asset. A packaging update. The kind of work that doesn't fit cleanly inside one agency scope but still needs to get done. When it fits the agreed roadmap and scope, our team handles it. When it needs a specialist, we brief and manage the right person. Either way, you're not stuck finding a freelancer, briefing them cold, and hoping the work comes back usable.
Most stalled brands aren't missing one magic tactic. They're missing several pieces of the foundation. We score and operate against twelve.
layer one
layer two
layer three
The point isn't a prettier strategy deck. The point is to know what's actually limiting growth, fix it in the right order, and keep the system improving every week.
See the Full Playbook →case 01 — OP2 Labs
When Sean joined OP2 Labs as Chief Revenue Officer, the company had the same problem most growth-stage brands have. Strong product. Loyal customers. Active ads. Some email. Decent creative. A value prop that wasn't sharp enough.
The answer wasn't "make better ads." The answer was to rebuild the system underneath the ads.
We clarified the customer. Sharpened the positioning. Improved the photography. Rebuilt the website message. Improved the creative inputs. Kept paid media running while the foundation improved.
Same product. Same category. Better operating system.
Read the full case study →case 02 — Louisville Brands
We support Louisville Brands across three of their CPG brands: Louisville Jerky Co., Gym Snack, and Pumps.
In the first 90 days of our engagement, the accounts saw movement across acquisition and conversion metrics:
why brands hire us
That matters because DTC growth problems are rarely isolated. A creative problem may be a positioning problem. A media problem may be an offer problem. A retention problem may start with the wrong customer being acquired in the first place.
BrightCircle exists to see the whole system, make the calls, and keep the work moving.
The Foundation Sprint is the first 30 days of work. We score your marketing system, build Brand Canon V1, identify the growth constraints most likely holding back the next stage, and turn the diagnosis into a 90-day operating plan. If we keep working together, that plan becomes the starting point for the retainer. If not, you keep the work.
what you get at the end
Either way, you leave with a clearer view of what's actually limiting growth.
foundation sprint
30 days · diagnostic, customer research, Brand Canon V1, 90-day operating plan · paid up front
operating retainer
Quoted after the Sprint · 6-mo minimum
If your only problem is Meta and you already know it, hire a great Meta agency. If you want strategy on a deck and you'll handle execution yourself, hire a fractional CMO. If your foundation is strong and your channels are running, you don't need us.
This works when the problem is bigger than one channel. When the founder is the bottleneck. When growth has stalled and switching agencies hasn't fixed it.
talk to us
A 30-minute call. We'll talk through where the business is, what's working, where growth feels stuck, and whether the Foundation Sprint is the right next step. The team reads every submission and replies within one business day.