How BrandButter Scaled to $1M/Month in 18 Months by Becoming an Internal Growth Engine

About BrandButter

BrandButter is a radical creative marketing agency that serves high-risk, high-growth industries, think iGaming, adult, and crypto and anything that touches entertainment. But it wasn’t always an agency. It began as an internal experiment.

Centro.team, a global holding company operating across multiple high-risk verticals, approached us to help them build something new, an in-house marketing arm that could not only support their portfolio companies, but also operate as a standalone, revenue-generating business.

What followed was a masterclass in agency creation, positioning, and scale.

The Challenge

Centro.team needed a centralized marketing solution across its growing portfolio. The current setup relied on fragmented internal marketing talent across companies, freelancers, external agencies, and inconsistent results. They wanted:

• A reliable internal agency that could handle paid media, creative, and growth strategy for their portfolio companies

• A way to turn marketing from a cost center into a profit-generating asset

• The ability to take on external clients in entertainment and high-risk markets, casino, adult, crypto, to unlock new revenue streams

• A business that could be scaled independently within the Centro ecosystem

What We Did

This was the perfect use case for our Portfolio Growth Partner tier. Over an 18-month engagement, we built BrandButter from scratch into a 7-figure/month agency.

Here’s how:

• Defined the positioning and service lines based on Centro’s ecosystem, bold creative, media buying, and high-risk market expertise

• Built a cross-functional internal team, including paid media buyers, brand strategists, designers, project managers, and sales

• Created SOPs, org charts, and internal training systems to enable scalability and reduce dependency on any single operator

• Launched the BrandButter brand publicly, with a distinct identity separate from Centro, enabling it to pitch and close external accounts

• Closed flagship accounts in iGaming, adult, and fintech, including enterprise retainers ranging from $50K to $500K/month

• Implemented enterprise sales training, including deck development, deal structuring, and outbound targeting

The Results

In just 18 months, BrandButter grew from an internal project to a fully operational agency generating $1,000,000+/month in revenue.

It now operates as both:

• A centralized growth engine for Centro’s portfolio companies

• An external agency winning multi-six-figure deals from leading global brands in high-risk industries

More importantly, BrandButter became an asset. Its systems, team, and deal flow are now leveraged by Centro for both portfolio support and equity-based dealmaking.

This is marketing as infrastructure,
This is how holding companies build their own engines.

“This was never about just hiring an agency. It was about building one. Damiano helped us architect a business that drives growth across our entire ecosystem, and one that wins in the open market.”
— Executive Team, Centro.team

🚀 Want to Build Your Own Growth Engine?

If you’re a fund, holding company, or family office looking to consolidate marketing and build a scalable asset, let’s talk.