About

I came up through performance. That's why I argue for brand.

I'm Gabriel Gruter. I come from the performance side of media, where I ran new-business pitches and multi-market planning across retail, travel and health. Now I write about the other half of the job: the brand equity performance budgets crowd out first.

I write about one idea from three angles, a model I call the Brand Trilemma. Every brand splits a finite budget across three corners, Equity, Activation and Identity. Brands starve the corner that compounds.

NowAccount Director, WeDiscover. Client lead across fashion retail, homewares and travel.

BasedLondon, UK.

BeforeTwo years at Brainlabs (Associate Director), three at Mindshare / GroupM before that. All of it in performance media.

FounderClover Boutique, a DTC homeware brand run through Covid. 5,000 units sold in its first six months.

TeamLine-manages across every level, junior executives through to account directors.

VerticalsPet care, fashion retail, homewares, travel, travel insurance, FMCG, finance software and automotive services.

MarketsUK, EMEA and APAC.

BudgetsMedia spends from £10,000 to £1,000,000 a month.

CredentialsIPA Commercials & Foundation certificates. BSc Digital Design, Electronic & Computer Engineering, Brunel.

SpeakingUK Paid Media Summit, 2026.

ElsewhereOne of the paid-media practitioners quoted in PPC Live's What it takes to be a PPC expert in 2025 and beyond, arguing that reading an account is a matter of judgement as well as metrics.

LanguagesEnglish, Swiss-German, German, Portuguese.

Where I stand

This site takes no sponsored posts, no vendor money, and runs no affiliate links. I still work in performance for a living, and I think it's a brilliant, necessary discipline. The other half is what this site argues for.

I designed and built this site myself, brand and code. If you want to see the working, the playbook lays out every decision and why.