In this episode of The Future of Consumer Marketing, host Andres Figueira interviews Gilbert Corrales, CEO and Co-Founder of Leaf. Leaf has evolved from a music marketing platform that became the number one music app in Latin America to a performance marketing agency specializing in direct-to-consumer retail brands. Starting with the challenge of helping musicians own their audience relationships in an increasingly commoditized digital music landscape, Gilbert and his team discovered that the same attention-based marketing frameworks applied across industries. Now Leaf helps fast-growing e-commerce companies optimize their digital marketing strategies while building technology products that solve conversion tracking and campaign optimization challenges at scale.

Topics Discussed:

• Transitioning from music industry marketing to e-commerce performance marketing

• Building marketplace dynamics and solving chicken-and-egg problems in two-sided markets

• Evolving from pure services to product-led growth with technology solutions

• Strategic hiring and team expansion in specialized verticals

• Leveraging AI tools while maintaining human expertise and agency

• Creating “unreasonable hospitality” as a competitive advantage in service businesses

Lessons For Consumer Marketers:

Focus on Unit Economics Before Strategy Execution

Leaf’s approach starts with deep-diving into client unit economics and KPI understanding before crafting any marketing strategy. Gilbert emphasizes that knowing whether you’re optimizing for lifetime value versus first-purchase CAC fundamentally changes how you approach campaign structure, creative testing, and channel allocation. This foundational understanding drives every tactical decision.

Evolve Your ICP Annually, Not Quarterly

Gilbert shared how Leaf conducts annual ICP evaluations, deliberately moving upmarket by choosing to work with higher-value clients even if it means saying no to existing relationships. This disciplined approach to client selection prevents the “heating cost of saying yes” – where serving too broad an audience dilutes your expertise and operational efficiency.

Treat Service Delivery as Hospitality, Not Just Execution

Drawing inspiration from “Unreasonable Hospitality,” Gilbert positions Leaf as a hospitality business first. The focus is on making clients feel peace of mind rather than just delivering tactical outcomes. This means doing things that don’t scale – going beyond contracted deliverables to solve adjacent problems, which drives word-of-mouth growth and organic expansion.

Use AI to Augment Senior Expertise, Not Replace Junior Tasks

Rather than using AI to eliminate entry-level roles, Leaf deploys AI tools with senior team members who have domain expertise to guide and validate outputs. Gilbert emphasizes that AI requires someone who understands the underlying mechanics of what they’re asking for – you can’t successfully prompt for SDR activities if you’ve never done SDR work yourself.

Build Technology Solutions from Your Own Operational Pain Points

Leaf’s new product, Leaf Signal, emerged from their own frustration with conversion tracking breaking after website updates. By building a managed conversion tracking service that monitors and fixes issues in real-time, they’ve created a product that billion-dollar businesses now adopt – demonstrating how operational challenges can become scalable technology solutions.

Hire Through Curiosity-Driven Market Research

Gilbert’s hiring approach involves researching aspirational companies in target verticals, then reaching out to people in relevant roles to learn about the market rather than immediately recruiting. This curiosity-driven approach builds relationships, provides market intelligence, and often naturally leads to identifying potential hires who are already engaged with your vision.