“The growth marketing agency built for the AI Era”
The growth ecosystem behind the world's best brands
A decade of experience across core consumer verticals
Top heavy, by design
Senior Leadership at Darkroom is heavily involved in stewarding client accounts toward successful outcomes.
Lucas DiPietrantonio
Chief Executive Officer
Played virtually every role scaling the hybrid software-services, vertically-integrated commerce company “disrupting the $422B advertising industry.” Personal client list includes: Olipop, Dwayne Johnson, Amazon, Sauz. Forbes 30U30
Darragh Rose
VP, Operations
Runs the machine. Darragh owns the operational infrastructure that lets Darkroom scale globally while maintaining the highest client experience standard out there. Process architect, people leader, tastemaker.
Peter Gao
SVP, Growth
Growth operator and deal maker who has cultivated partnerships with some of the biggest names in tech and media. Peter previously managed a $1B retail book of business prior to joining Darkroom and spearheading the company’s Go-To-Market. Past life: Rokt, Nielsen, Point72
Jackson Corey
Chief Product Officer
Industry defining experience designer for consumer, technology, and AI. The product mind behind Shadow, “the AI platform for marketers.” Previously Chief Creative Officer, leading brand and design campaigns that defined the portfolio: Sauz, Olipop, University of North Carolina. Forbes 30U30.
Julie Novak
Managing Director, Social Commerce
Ran platform-side strategy at the highest level before crossing over to the agency world. Julie spearheads Darkroom’s fastest growing Social Commerce vertical, including our creator ecosystem, short form content motion, and TikTok Shop portfolio. Past life: TikTok Shop, Amazon
Oren John
Partner, Creative
The Internet's Creative Director and Darkroom partner. Oren has built one of the most recognizable personal brands in advertising — and now channels that taste, reach, and cultural instinct into Darkroom's creative engine, creator ecosystem, and short-form video practice.
Will Margaritis
SVP, Strategy
One of the most experienced commerce operators in digital advertising. Will has scaled media operations across the world's largest holding companies and now brings that discipline to Darkroom's AI service delivery model. Past life: Dentsu, IPG, L'Oréal, Luxottica.
Leo Chang
Principal Designer
A tenured visual storyteller who has produced work for the world's most iconic brands in consumer. Leo brings a level of design sensibility that defines Darkroom's creative output across our growth programs. Past life: CR Studio (Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford, Harper's Bazaar), Parsons School of Design
Miguel Almeida
VP, Marketing
The main operator behind Darkroom’s go-to-market strategy. Responsible for building the agency into the leading commerce services brand of the 21st Century. A designer by trade, Miguel brings an intellectualism and craft to all Darkroom communication, events, and marketing activations.
Robyn Burgess
Managing Director, Retention Marketing
A lifecycle marketing veteran who has built retention programs from zero to eight figures. Robyn leads Darkroom's Retention Marketing division — owning the full post-purchase experience across email, SMS, and loyalty for some of the fastest-growing brands in the consumer space. Past life: Wunderkind, Experian, Columbia University
Ramy Mahfouz
SVP, Finance
Ramy bring nearly a decade of private equity discipline to Darkroom's financial operations and client portfolio growth strategy. He is the main architect behind the Flight Plan, our client financial growth map, and leads our Financial Services sister company. Past life: BPE Partners
Pedro Seca
Managing Director, Digital Products
A world-class digital operator, Pedro has homegrown Darkroom's digital product practice from the ground up — shipping high-performance web experiences and driving conversion rate optimization for some of the most impressive brands in consumer marketing. Past life: Vans
Olivier Henry
Managing Director, Marketplaces & Retail Media
Managed over $200M in marketplace ad spend before joining Darkroom to lead our Marketplaces and Retail Media division. Olivier combines deep Amazon expertise with a technical foundation that most marketplace operators can't match. Past life: CommerceIQ, Media.Monks, Caltech
Stephen Geick
SVP, Head of applied AI
Darkroom's measurement and AI thought leader. Steve has spent over a decade leading marketing organizations at some of DTC's most respected brands. An engineer at heart, he develops applied skills that feed the AI layer that makes every team at Darkroom smarter. Past life: WPromote, Metric Digital
Zach Wein
Managing Director, Paid Media
Performance marketing leader who has managed over $1B in media investment across some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Zach leads Darkroom’s Paid Media practice, combining growth strategy, channel execution, measurement, and client leadership to build media systems that drive both revenue and brand impact. Past life: Wpromote
Our thesis on the advertising industry
Today, most marketers are underprepared for the tectonic shifts that are happening across the industry.
CMO tenure has been progressively decreasing to all-time lows for the past 10 years. Inflation, tariffs, and ballooning consumer credit are squeezing both brands and the people buying from them. We look at over 500 consumer marketing P&Ls annually. Margin is tight. Budget is tighter. Profit is hard to come by.
On the cost side, both supply chain and workforce have been globalized for some time; AI is readily abundant, waiting for teams to implement technology at scale. From our perspective, operating expenses for consumer businesses cannot go lower. And in fact, they very well may go up for the unassuming operator unwilling to innovate. Naturally, businesses always look to marketing spend. But there's no slack there either. CPMs continue to rise while social advertising consumption trends down since its 2022 peaks. We expect this to continue as humans desire less time on devices. Worse of all, we know most marketing teams are unsure where is best to spend their next dollar.
What we've found over the last decade is that most advertising programs are not positioned to deliver or track profit for advertisers. And so we think the next twelve to twenty-four months are crucial. The old playbooks no longer work. And yet everybody is slow to implement the changes that are essential to compete in the age of AI.
At Darkroom, we focus exclusively on commerce and the consumer marketing ecosystem. This thesis will speak to that market, but the macro trends apply broadly across other markets to tl. We hope this helps you understand where the puck is going and how to best position yourself for success.
1950-2000
The Madison Avenue Era
Before, things were simpler.
The golden age of advertising revolved around singular creative campaigns distributed via newspapers, magazines, billboards, radio, television, and direct mail. Advertising was an art form. Agencies honed their focus on creative as the main instrument to drive sales and market share.
Most creative ideas were loosely rooted in data—and that was fine. Slow distribution, uncertain attribution, and gut-driven decisions were defining features of the era. Once a campaign launched, it was difficult to determine what worked. Marketers evaluated performance based on overall media spend rather than channel-by-channel attribution.
This allowed advertisers to trust their instincts and swing for the fences. Brands became known for big ideas.
Performance was simple: did overall sales go up?
2020-2024
The Dark Attribution Era
The DTC Era's collapse created chaos.
Measurement broke. The clean, deterministic attribution that marketers relied on disappeared overnight. Most brands retreated—back to traditional brand marketing, top-of-funnel awareness plays, and hope.
At the same time, an explosion of new channels fragmented the landscape. Retail media networks. Connected TV. Reddit ads. The Empire State Building. The more acronyms your agency could recite, the more confused everyone got.
Since 2020, Shopify store numbers have grown by over 200%. The platform now supports an estimated 5.5 million merchants worldwide, up from 1.75 million in 2020. Competition intensified. Commoditization became inevitable for most product categories. The old efficiency of "run Facebook ads, optimize ROAS" no longer worked.
Agencies, big and small, failed clients. A lack of data infrastructure, creative know-how, and efficient operating processes was prevalent across the board.
Marketers forgot the advertising fundamentals that made brands great. And they didn't yet have the tools to navigate what came next.
The Darkroom Position
We believe that all marketing is performance marketing. There is no "brand marketing" versus "DTC marketing" versus "retail marketing." There is only marketing tied to financial outcomes deployed across channels. If it doesn't drive measurable results, it doesn't matter.
Omnichannel is the only way. Brands must be agnostic. Show up wherever your market shops and wherever you can command demand. The frictionless buying experience and rise of marketplaces means customers expect you everywhere.
Creative is the biggest leverage opportunity. Still the main driver of sales. Still why people care. Still the magic and hallmark of good advertising. In a world where AI commoditizes execution, creative craft becomes the ultimate differentiator.
Superior AI technology. We are building the infrastructure for how marketing teams will operate. Agents, sub-agents, unified data layers. This is not incremental —it's foundational.
Scarce human elite expertise. Our portfolio is considered the most creative body of work in the growth marketing ecosystem. That's not an accident. It's the result of assembling people who have done this at the highest level —and giving them the technology to multiply their impact.
The Path Forward
The companies that win in the AI Era will:
1. Master interconnected ecosystems — not just channels, but the full-funnel platforms where discovery, consideration, and purchase happen together.
2. Treat creative as omnipresent infrastructure — flowing through every touchpoint, optimized for incrementally across the portfolio.
3. Measure what matters — unified visibility into performance across all sales channels, optimizing for profit, not proxies.
4. Build technology-first operations — AI agents as core infrastructure, global talent for specialized execution, human expertise for strategy and judgment.
5. Invest in elite human capital—because when everyone has access to the same AI, the humans who know how to use it become the moat.
The next two to four years will separate the companies that adapted from those that didn't. We know where the puck is going. We've built Darkroom to get there first.
This is our thesis. This is how we see the world. And this is why we're building what we're building.
