Ibotta is known as a cashback app. It's also a white-label promotions platform for the largest retailer in the world.

For marketers at consumer companies standing up an enterprise or platform business alongside the one that made them.

Sara Wallace is Head of Brand Marketing at Ibotta, which runs both the consumer cashback app and the Ibotta Performance Network. Five months into the role, after building executive marketing and global AI go-to-market strategy at Google Cloud, she's working the problem of building B2B awareness for a company whose recognition lives almost entirely on the consumer side. We get into why she treats the two audiences as genuinely separate rather than migrating one into the other, the one channel where that split breaks down, how she handles AI thought leadership under legal and compliance constraints, and why she argues brand is the engine that makes performance marketing work rather than a luxury line item. She also walks through Ibotta's annual State of Spend findings, including a decline in grocery list-making as shoppers plan loosely and let promotions fill the gaps.

• Why Ibotta doesn't try to convert cashback users into a B2B audience, and where the two narratives still collide (social media)
• What Google Cloud taught her about selling to CIOs and CTOs: show how you support the work their org is already doing instead of proving you're the smartest in the room
• Why public AI messaging stays stunted at most companies — legal exposure, and stories that aren't fully baked yet
• How to make the case for brand investment when leadership is pushing for immediate ROI

• 00:00 — Cold open: brand building feels like a luxury, and why it isn't
• 00:45 — Intro: most companies die from brand confusion, not obscurity
• 02:33 — Two distinct audiences, not one rebrand
• 03:32 — Building awareness for the Ibotta Performance Network
• 05:01 — Google Cloud lessons: talking to technical buyers like people
• 05:46 — Rebuilding momentum under a new CRO after the CMO left
• 06:33 — Talking about AI inside legal and compliance limits
• 07:55 — Founder-led content and the CEO-hosted podcast
• 08:46 — Enterprise marketing lessons: Walmart, Uber, DoorDash
• 10:51 — Differentiating against Amazon DSP, Google Ads, and Meta
• 11:37 — Denver as a hiring market outside Silicon Valley
• 12:36 — What she hires for: ownership, fail-fast, decision-making
• 13:23 — State of Spend: fewer lists, more promotion-driven baskets, private label
• 15:28 — Brand as the engine for performance marketing
• 16:44 — Brands she admires: Nike and Shopify
• 17:52 — The overlooked story: Ibotta as a technology company
• 18:47 — Lightning round
• 19:29 — Jason's top three takeaways and the 10-minute action

Guest
Sara Wallace — Head of Brand Marketing, Ibotta
Website
LinkedIn

Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton.

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