Gousto’s ‘demand pool’ framework for modelling brand spending

Needing to build future headroom for user growth as it reached maturity, meal delivery startup Gousto went back to the fundamental principles of advertising effectiveness to educate the organisation and model the outcome.

Start up

Gousto is an interesting brand in part because of its (close to) ideal startup story. Focused on user and revenue growth from the outset, the company began to gain traction in the market and revenues grew consistently up until around 2016.

It had done so with a young marketing team totally geared toward performance marketing – including flyering and door to door, not just direct response advertising. Other than a logo, it was spending “absolutely nothing” on brand marketing, Gousto CMO, Tom Wallis, told the IPA’s EffWorks Global conference (London, October 2022).

But what had worked well until...

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