In that time, I've worked on some really special projects that will finally see the light of day this fall, and created something I never aspired to: a brand of my own.

I’ve spent the better part of my career helping founders build brands. I never particularly envied them. It’s painful, relentless, unglamorous. I never thought an idea could take hold of me so completely that I’d volunteer for the masochism.

It started with a simple question that became a fixation. One prototype became a number I lost count of. I’ve obsessed over every detail with an uniquely talented and patient R&D team, and I can wax poetic about where we’ve landed.

A mentor once told me a product isn’t worth bringing to market until people are obsessed with it. I asked him how I’ll know and he said I’ll just know. He’s the founder of Harmless Harvest.

I only have a handful of samples on-hand right now, so I carry them with me everywhere lately. The scarcity has become an unexpected gift — there is nothing like watching someone’s eyes light up when they realize something they do every day can be that much better, thanks to your product.

The brand is called ORIST and the tagline is An oral fixation. It’s the result of an oral fixation, designed to inspire an oral fixation.

Ultimately, ORIST is a beauty brand for your mouth.

Not because it looks beautiful (it does, thanks to my talented friend Taylor Giali), but because it approaches oral care the way the best beauty brands approach beauty: with an uncompromising obsession for product, ingredients, experience, design, and brand.

I believe in seeking pleasure in the mundanity of everyday life. The products we use every single day for years should be be the ones we enjoy most and that work best.

As you may know, I usually enter the picture at go-to-market. This time, I’ve had the privilege and anxiety of building everything that comes before it. It’s been humbling, consuming, and it’s reminded me why I fell in love with consumer brands.

Brand Person will remain where I share the work behind building ORIST and client projects (I’m still consulting for now).

For “customer-facing comms”, I invite you to join the waitlist here 🥲

With pleasure,

Jess

P.S. I’m currently assembling a small group of founding investors. If you or someone you know is an angel or early-stage investor who loves exceptional consumer products, I’d love to hear from you: jess@oristbeauty.com 🤍

Happy Q4! Hope this email finds you well!

Please find the Brand Person EOM Report attached below.

— Jess

Founder & CEO

Things I saved.

Things I produced.

A very fun shoot for a very fun limited-edition DOCTOR STOLBERG launch hitting later this month 🤘

Brand strategy for a new beauty project that’s going to be GOOD when it hits…in >1 year.

Friends and family deck for Orist, my very own venture!

Nice nails in <2 minutes thanks to ’s brilliant Celisse, launching NEXT WEEK!!!

Things I consumed.

Hourglass Veil Setting Spray. My girl Sydney Utendahl put me on and I’m never looking back.

One Battle After Another in IMAX. Do it!

A lot of Tom Petty inspired by that One Battle After Another needle drop.

Sour gummy worms to cure a cold.

Things I thought about.

Staging a coup.

Personality systems are the new product systems.

This.

Some personal news.

Saw Oasis at the Rose Bowl!

Work friends turned life friends got married!

Not the kind of “why” that translates to a brand mission. The real, personal goals behind a for-profit venture. Is it a billion-dollar exit? A few million? No exit at all? Legacy? Generational wealth? Passion? Creative impulse? Proving something? All of the above? In what order? What would make it all worth it?

Over the last couple of years I’ve realized that my job can be boiled down to defining intention and aligning it with reality, in brand and in life. Whether or not people are forthcoming with me, I can usually read between the lines. That said, there’s no right or wrong answer. It just helps me determine if I’m the right fit for the project and how to approach the partnership.

If you can get real about what you actually want to achieve out of whatever it is you plan to do, it becomes clearer if and how you should approach it. of Crown Affair touched on this in a letter about breaking old patterns: “I joke about it (cue the Legally Blonde line: ‘Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands!’), but really, people who are perfectly happy just don’t start companies! Or maybe some do, but to sustain it, you often have to be proving something — to yourself, to others.”

That doesn’t mean you’ll regret doing the thing if you’re doing it in part to prove something. In her case, the founder journey has “been the vehicle for growth and abundance.” But perhaps if we were all more introspective and honest with ourselves about our intentions from the start, the journey would be a bit less challenging.

Comparison is the thief of joy but it’s also irrelevant 95% of the time — in brand and in life. You made the decision to bootstrap your brand so you can grow on your own terms, but you’re comparing your growth to a brand with millions in funding. You made the decision to move away from the city for a slower life, but you’re comparing your pace to the city hustle (me the first two years I lived in LA). Whatever it is, it’s not that you can’t do it too — it’s that you intentionally chose something different.

Unlike the “why” that becomes a brand manifesto or mission statement, your personal “why” isn’t sexy. It’s confronting and uncomfortable. But it’s essential. If you’re not convinced, you’ll learn eventually — maybe the hard way. And that’s ok.

(Brand) Personal News

• New York people — my client DOCTOR STOLBERG launched at Happier Grocery this week. Pretty impressive for a bootstrapped brand less than 3 months post-launch, if you ask me. We were planning to launch next month but both the Happier team and the girls requested it in time for Fashion Week. 1) Go get it!!!! 2) we’re still planning a bigger moment for October, so stay tuned. ✨

  

• My brilliant friend launched a tabletop collection with Portuguese ceramicist Valsa Home. I can’t wait for my striped cereal bowls to arrive, from which I will eat mostly cottage cheese and granola.

• My brilliant friend Georgie launched HOLLI, a line of celebratory wear inspired by nature’s best ideas. She poured her heart into it — from design to creative and production — and it shows. I tried on this silk-linen set at the launch party and am seriously contemplating…

• My brilliant friend (and perfect human) Helen and her team were behind the LORE launch everyone in beauty is talking about. Full credits here for all your future creative needs.

• influenced me to purchase this perfect Schoolhouse lamp. I’m a lighting freak — I can’t function if the lighting isn’t perfect — and this brings just enough light to our bathroom at night not to fuck up my circadian rhythm.

• Still Here is on fire — each collection and campaign gets sharper and smarter. I’m not cool enough for the Cool Jean or sporty enough Sport Jean, but I love and highly recommend the less trendy, more timeless Everyday Jean. I have in Classic Blue and want in Burgundy.

  

A prospective client explained their challenge on an intro call last week: they’ve created a product that people love and are ready to expand from specialty to mass retail. One problem: people have no idea why the brand exists or who it’s for.

In other words, they have product love but no brand love — and both are critical to build a profitable, sustainable business.

Without brand love, there’s no emotional resonance. Without emotional resonance, there’s less loyalty, less word-of-mouth, less organic traction — leaving them vulnerable to dupes, and paying more to acquire and retain customers.

First, I congratulated them on creating an excellent and profitable product — not easy. That said, I was even more impressed that they recognize the value of brand. A brand is worth more than its revenue for a reason. Distribution drives awareness, brand drives affinity. Meta drives transactions, brand drives love. Klaviyo drives retention, brand drives loyalty.

This brand isn’t early-stage. The problem can hide in plain sight longer than you’d think — most brands don’t even realize they’re missing “brand” until they mysteriously plateau at $100M. Product, ads, affiliate and distribution only go so far without that deeper why — especially in the ever-crowded beauty, food, and wellness categories where everyone’s using the same manufacturers and talent.

Brand is the only thing that can’t be replicated — the feeling you give your customers. This is capitalism — we create our identity through our wallet. What identity do you give to your customers? It can take shape through a tagline, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be explicitly stated to consumers — but it must resonate, and it must be evoked across product and marketing.

On the surface, Merit looks like minimalist makeup — but it’s more than that. It’s dignity for the busy yet discerning woman.

Ghia looks like a chic non-alcoholic drink, but it’s about a life well-lived above the influence.

Apple looks like design-driven tech, but it’s for the creative geniuses — the ones who think different.

DOCTOR STOLBERG looks like digestion tea, but really it’s an invitation to slow down and indulge.

Táche looks like chic plant-based milk, but it’s really about mindful consumption for people with taste (double entendre).

Lack of brand love usually stems from one of three problems — the why is missing entirely, it exists but only in a brand deck, or it doesn’t correlate enough with the product differentiation. Cookware brand Our Place’s brand positioning around community is nice, but says nothing about the product differentiation.

It’s one thing to understand that brand love is important — it’s entirely another to understand how to build it effectively. That’s where even some of the most well-meaning brand people get tripped up — they think brand is about evoking any emotion at all, while it’s really about evoking emotion that inspires purchase and loyalty. I value community, but that doesn’t influence which pan I purchase.

In an ideal world, first you establish the problem, your why and your who. Then you develop a product driven by that core foundation. And then you apply it across marketing, development, operations etc. More on that to come.

At least one key person in your brand’s orbit is OOO at any given time, and the rest are either looking forward to or recovering from vacation — including you. But real ones know winter brands are built in the summer.

Listen, it’s 3pm on a Thursday and I’m writing this while catching up on Love Island in my big comfy chair. I might go get a pedicure soon. Q3 is the calm, Q4 is the storm. But while calm is a great time to recharge, it’s also a great time to strategize.

If you’re a founder, you might be struggling to maintain momentum right now. If you’re launching a brand this fall — I know several founders who are and I can’t wait — don’t worry about lack of momentum. You’re not going to get that right now. Just focus on putting one foot in front of the other every day towards launch.

If you’re an early stage brand and haven’t even started thinking about holiday, you’re late — but that’s ok. The best time to start is yesterday, the second best time is today.

If you’re a self-employed Brand Person, you might feel anxious about what I’m now coining as client crickets. Embrace the quiet to set yourself up for success in September. Brands are about to realize they’re late — be ready.

That said, slump season is more than just an opportunity to set yourself up for Q4 — it’s an opportunity to set yourself up for long-term success. If you haven’t had time to flesh out or revisit your vision, your mission, your why — no matter who you are or what you do — now’s the time. Treat it like the new year without all the noise.

Personally, I’m taking advantage of this time (before I head out in August. Send Lisbon, Comporta, San Sebastián and Biarritz recs) to get my shit together for me and my clients — processes, priorities, etc. I finally watched that Notion tutorial I put off for months and now I get the hype. I’m finally working on my personal brand strategy, the thing I always prioritize for clients but ironically not myself. And instead of starting to fundraise for my consumer brand (so many brands 🥵) at the worst time of year to do that, I’m taking the opportunity to focus 100% of my energy on product — again, a thing I always encourage clients to prioritize and yet have to remind myself to do the same.

Don’t complain about not having time if you don’t take advantage of it when you have it. There’s a difference between recharging and checking out — if you love what you do, there’s no such thing as the latter.

After a decade in brand world, I’ve experienced all the ups and downs of attempting to build legacy brands from scratch. The through line? Patience — having or lacking it.

Don’t get me wrong, a sense of urgency is also critical. When exercised strategically, it drives the momentum you need to penetrate the market and achieve your goals, whether those goals are self-imposed or investor-imposed — but urgency is too often exercised as a result of anxiety.

It’s raising millions before proof-of-concept, hoarding creative assets only to use 1% of them, launching 5 SKUs with the budget and bandwidth to support only one of them. We’ve been conditioned, especially in the last decade, to believe that being first and fastest is the way to win. But that approach breeds weak brands and erodes strong ones — resulting in dilution, down rounds, bankruptcies, fire sales and failed IPOs.

Instead, I encourage you to grow as slowly as possible. While that could be perceived as lazy, it’s actually the hardest, smartest and most methodical approach.

Take my client DOCTOR STOLBERG, for example. Several years ago, founder created a medicinal tea to heal her own digestion. When she opened her practice, she served it to her patients who loved it and requested she bag it up and sell it to them. She did just that for three years, thoroughly proving out the concept and building a cult customer base before investing in any real branding and marketing.

I reference this as an extreme example that hopefully inspires you to take a beat if you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel. Does the path your brand is on feel right (based on insights and intuition)? Do you really have product-market fit? What’s the worst thing that can happen if you slow down? What’s the best thing that can happen?

Patience is critical in and of itself — but I’ve also found that it directly correlates to a few other key skills required in brand-building:

• Resilience. You might not finds success with your brand until the second or third iteration — or a different concept entirely. I’ve seen founders start over after raising tens of millions.

• Intuition. That gut feeling that’s telling you to go back to the drawing board or see something through. Listen to it, even if it requires accepting delays or short-term setbacks.

• Consistency. That brand messaging you feel like you’ve repeated until you’re sick? Most of your target market has never heard it and even your customers probably can’t recall it — keep repeating. That test you quit after a month because it wasn’t driving results yet, instead of seeing it through and iterating? Come on.

It takes years to build impactful traction with your target market, even in the best case scenarios. And it takes months to build impactful traction with any marketing initiative — yes, even paid ads and influencer. There are no shortcuts to building a brand with staying power.

Show me one, and I’ll happily debate you.

While some may find that depressing, I find it exciting. When we stop optimizing for billion-dollar exits, we might actually create the next generation of legacy brands.

Regardless of the impending recession, the playbook of the last decade stopped working a while ago — and that’s a good thing. It was unsustainable and frankly, boring. Reckless funding and “growth marketing” rendered interesting brands boring and broke.

You can’t have an interesting brand without an interesting product, and you can’t have an interesting product without an interesting perspective — rooted in curiosity, integrity and a love for problem-solving before ego and money (before, not without!).

Some mindset-starters:

1. Let instinct drive. Data and KPIs support intuition, not the other way around.

2. Do the opposite. As my friend and talented designer Taylor Giali loves to say, “just look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite.”

3. Live a little. I say this with love: if your only inspiration is Pinterest and Instagram, get a life!

4. Be patient. There’s nothing wrong with a cash grab — that’s capitalism, baby. But to quote one of my favorite clichés, “things of quality have no fear of time.” Whether you’re building from scratch, rebranding or revisiting your strategy, remember — Nike wasn’t built in a day. That’s not to say we shouldn’t take advantage of all the technology and resources available to us that Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman didn’t have in the 1960s, but there’s a fine line between working smarter and working without integrity.

On that note, some brands on my radar that manage to be both culturally compelling and commercially viable:

• DOCTOR STOLBERG — I’m biased as this is my client but…medicinal-grade tea developed by very cool/passionate acupuncturist , who really knows her audience (they’re her patients!) and has already developed a cult customer base with the hero product ahead of launch? Plus me on marketing and Taylor Giali on creative? Launching next week 👀

• Rose Delights — On every art director’s Are.na board and one of the only cannabis brands that’s still relevant for a reason — they obsess over both product and creative, successfully elevating edibles from kinda sketchy to covetable amongst the most discerning consumers.

• Moussse — When I saw how expensive this launch looked, I immediately googled how much they raised — turns out just $350K through a government loan (before you get excited, it’s based in Geneva). It’s a tight, focused launch: one product at a time, solving for “city skin” with both formula and creative vision. Feels super smart and considered.

• BRAVO SIERRA — My beloved alma mater recently rebranded and it’s firing on all cylinders — packaging, fragrance, efficacy. Word is, there are some very cool partnerships in the works.

• Violet Grey — The renaissance we need. Please Cassandra, save us from Sephora.

• Perfumer H — A friend insisted I visit their London shop last year and wow, founder and perfumer Lyn Harris is in a league of her own. Salt, Smoke, Steam, Saddle?! Plus she gave BoF one of my favorite quotes when asked if she was afraid of opening a Shanghai store during a China downturn: “I don’t fear anything, really.”

• Dehánche — Reimagining the belt — literally and figuratively — as not just utility, but accessory, shapewear and even ready-to-wear. It’s sculptural, sensual and unexpected yet wearable. I want it all, but I can only justify one…for now 😈

• Monastery — For the cartons and color system alone. I haven’t even tried the products (acne-prone Sofie Pavitt girl here), but I’ve only heard great things. If packaging could convert me, this would be it.

• — I started with her pore-clogging ingredient checker and now I use her products almost exclusively and sleep peacefully knowing none of them will break me out. A masterclass in building trust with your audience.

• Paro — I’ve been a fan (and advisor) for a while, but recently got to taste-test some unreleased products they’re working on and haven’t stopped thinking about them since — breakthrough flavors for a very fun category. Paro continues to be one of the most thoughtful, quality-driven brands in the food space and I can’t wait for more people to experience it.

• Dries Van Noten Beauty — A master of the Object of Desire. Every detail — from the sculptural packaging to the unexpected scent pairings — feels indulgent and completely original. Proof that beauty can be artful and sellable.

• — Death to skincare as ritual. Lazy Boss is the new Girl Boss, and , formerly co-founder of Sundae School, is building one of the most exciting beauty brands in the pipeline. Its purpose is sharp, resonant, irreverent and refreshingly honest — explored in depth on her brilliant new Substack ahead of launch later this year.

• Mine — No further commentary at this time!

x Jess

P.S. If you’re interested in working together, I might have bandwidth soon. I’m also launching a one-off strategy call offering — stay-tuned.

Anyway, I posted the Note and moved on because my Notes tend to get 7 likes at best. This one went viral (virality is relative).

I thought, ‘I wouldn’t be a data-driven Brand Person if I didn’t leverage that insight to inform my next Substack letter — and I wouldn’t be a community-led brand-builder if that letter didn’t include thoughts from my BrandStack friends.’

First, I’ll rant on my perspective a bit more. We’re living in a creator economy and Substack is for people. To an extent, that applies to all organic social. We’ve managed to weasel our way into the algorithms, but I would argue that it’s an uphill battle for 95% of brands. Before you freak out, I’m not suggesting brands shouldn’t be on social media at all. I’m a brand marketer — I live for a good campaign.

That said, as I’ve written about before, the role of brand accounts has changed in this creator/influencer economy. The bar on quality brand content is higher than ever, and consumers discover brands through influencers more than ever. An influential client of mine was concerned about not having enough content to keep up with the brand account after launch. We’re producing a launch shoot, but beyond that we’re focusing our limited resources on initiatives to amplify the brand through people — her personal socials, partnerships with Substack writers, strategic gifting, affiliate, events, founder-led retail sampling. That’s not to say Instagram isn’t important for the brand — it is, and all of these initiatives will provide content. But truthfully, she’s always going to drive more reach and engagement through her personal socials. The brand accounts’ role then becomes more of a destination to spark intrigue after discovering the brand through the founder or an influencer, before visiting the site. Why waste precious resources scrambling to keep up with an arbitrary posting cadence if most people won’t even see it in their feed?

This logic applies even more on Substack because the platform is driven by editorial. You can argue that there’s an opportunity for brands to take this approach — but branded content will never be as authentic as real editorial content because consumer goods brands don’t have the luxury of operating like a media company or publication — it’s a completely different business model. Even Substack writers who run on affiliate are selling a point of view through curation, and people trust them for their taste and style. That simply doesn’t translate to a brand.

My goal isn’t to discourage brands from investing in Substack — it’s to provide clarity and encourage brands to invest in the right way, through partnerships (and founder Substack when it makes sense). There’s such a wealth of opportunity to drive impact through Substack partnerships — gifting, sponsored letters and chats, affiliate, events, the works.

I could go on, but several of the best Brand-Substack People contributed their perspective for this letter, and they have thoughts that round out the argument well — so without further ado:

, Brand Consultant, writer

“I sit at an interesting intersection in that on the one hand I am an avid Substack writer and reader, but on the other, I consult on brands’ content strategies, which most recently includes Substack. So many brands are confused by this platform — do they make substacks of their own? Do they force their somewhat timid founder to start generating additional content for the sake of brand awareness and potential sales?

I see the appeal of hopping on a new platform early on, and I certainly think brands need to be paying more attention to Substack, but I don’t think a newsletter of their own is the way to do it, 95% of the time. However, if there is a particularly compelling angle that brings value to their readers (aside from compiling links), I could get behind it. Or, if the founder is a genuinely interesting person who likes writing (read: will be consistent) and merely sprinkles mentions of their brand here and there to maintain its relevance and positive association, then we’ve got something.

Which brings me to my main point - most brands should be paying close attention to Substack, forging relationships with writers who are genuine fans of their products, and enabling them to do cool things for their subscribers (newsletter sponsorship, partnering on events) with their resources.

I think where most brands fail is when they forget to think like the consumer. And when they forget that writing consistently takes a LOT of effort, and it’s not something a random intern should just half ass.”

, U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Strategy Director, Writer

“This feels like the second coming of brands launching blogs in the 2010s to chase the fashion blogger wave. Now it’s Substack. Same impulse, different format. A trend hits, and brands spin up sprawling editorial projects to prove they, too, can be interesting. But interesting to who?

Most of them are already struggling to keep their existing channels sharp. Substack isn’t just another comms channel. It’s a commitment. High-lift, high-expectation. You need a real editorial engine, a compelling reason to exist, and a consistent voice people actually want to hear from. Without that, it’s not thought leadership, it’s a branded diary no one asked for.

This all stems from the belief that every brand should be a media brand. Sure, in theory. But media for what purpose? Commerce? Culture? Community? Unless the brand has a clear POV and cultural value to offer: whether as a patron, translator, or participant—it just becomes noise.

And let’s be real: most brands aren’t as captivating as they think. The Gossip Girl approach only works if there’s built-in intrigue or an air of exclusivity. Otherwise, who’s really asking for constant behind-the-scenes content?

My take: if you’re not anchoring the Substack in a founder, a core brand truth, or a distinctive voice treated like actual talent (read: credited and paid accordingly), then don’t do it. People can smell filler content from a mile away—and there are better ways to show up in culture.”

, Brand Partnerships & Events, Writer

“Unless a brand has a really clear way to add value in a newsletter that’s native to Substack, they shouldn’t launch one. The Real Real is one that I’m curious about, because their site is clunky to navigate and TRR ‘tips’ and new drops could be an interesting way in. I also think the resale market is interesting in general, especially with the rise in vintage sales online. Otherwise, maybe Tory Burch does it well?

I’ve spent A LOT of time consuming Substack content in the past year and a half, trying to understand the platform and what seems to be resonating most. I’m wildly curious about it, both as a Substack creator but also someone who leads influencer and amplification strategy in house at a brand (Rothy’s).

My philosophy has always been that a compliment or narrative about yourself ALWAYS sounds more interesting coming from someone else, so brands are better off investing in relationship building with Substackers/creators/tastemakers who are storytelling well and captivating audience attention.”

Clare Moore, Influencer Consultant, Writer

“I think Substack is a great place to build community, but it of course has to be thoughtful. In January I wrote about how founders are turning into creators because of Substack, and when it is done right, I appreciate seeing a layer peeled back from these founders and getting an insight into their creativity outside of just product design and advertising for their own campaigns.

Outside of the founder POV, I think there’s still a huge opportunity for brands to partner with creators on the platform outside of just general sponsorship. Creators have built a loyal community with their subscribers. The conversations in the Notes sections are so valuable to for brands. People are sharing recommendations from the most comfortable shoes to wear on their wedding day to the best red light mask to invest in. I haven’t seen brands activate in this way, but think it would be valuable to partner with Substack writers to lead focus groups on behalf of the brand, and in turn the sponsored posts are catered to what their audience is already interested in.”

*Editor’s note — the focus group thing is a great idea.

Lauren Kleinman, Dreamday Founder, The Quality Edit Co-Founder, Writer

“Most brands still see Substack as a newsletter tool, but the real opportunity is to use it like long-form earned media. It's a place to shape cultural relevance and build narrative equity. Melanie Masarin’s Night Shade reads more like a founder’s memoir than a marketing channel, and that intimacy drives real loyalty. You’re not just buying Ghia, you’re buying into her worldview. Same with Dianna Cohen from Crown Affair. The best use cases feel like ongoing founder documentaries. They're not faceless. They're tied to real personalities with original opinions. And from someone who can spot ChatGPT from a mile away, in a sea of polish, realness is a growth lever.

At The Quality Edit (a publication I co-founded), we recently launched our own Substack as a natural extension of the brand. Part editorial digest, part founder POV, part cultural commentary. It gives us space to go deeper on consumer trends and storytelling, and to experiment freely without the pressure of algorithms or affiliate clicks.

At Dreamday, we're even starting to pitch Substack editors like we do traditional media, because their voices carry weight. These aren’t just newsletters; they're tastemaking platforms with real influence.

We’re in an era where the founder is the brand, and Substack lets you own that narrative without waiting for coverage. The Canopy team has leaned into this by sharing behind-the-scenes content that builds trust and dimension. Done right, Substack isn’t about performance marketing. It’s about brand reputation. It’s what gets you invited into the room or the dinner–whether that’s a buyer at Nordstrom, an investor, or a journalist sniffing out the next big thing. Vulnerability, originality, and a strong POV go a long way.”

Kate Citron, Marketing Consultant, Writer

“The platform’s content guidelines explicitly state, ‘Substack is intended for high quality editorial content, not conventional email marketing.’ What this means for your brand: You need a writer to create your Substack content. This is likely not your marketing manager (no, not even as a ‘stretch assignment,’ unless they have experience writing quality long-form content). The platform isn’t meant for brands, so marketers need to respect that the space is for writers above all — and then hire one who can write great editorial pieces for your brand.”

Subscribe now

The other day, a client asked me how much they should budget for a top-of-funnel initiative that they expect will barely break even but is critical for brand affinity. Instead of giving a fluffy answer like, “it’s important to invest in your brand and community,” I simply told her to reference the annual marketing budget as a % of revenue and talked her through top-of-funnel KPIs to frame and measure success. That isn’t groundbreaking, but alas.

Before growth marketers get all excited, I’m not implying that every marketing initiative should be conversion-driven — far from it. It’s about having a fundamental understanding of both the business and brand, economics and culture, P&L and vision — because every great brand artfully balances both.

There’s so much hype around splashy brand activations and, on the other end of the spectrum, hyper-efficient data-driven marketing. I get it, those are the LinkedIn posts that drive engagement. But as much as I love a good campaign, pretty products, affiliate marketing, optimized retention flows, etc., that’s not how you build a brand. You build a brand through cultural relevance and emotional connection.

The recipe is part instinct, part strategy. The strategy is rooted in things like target market and product-market fit, which I hashed out in a previous letter. The instinct is your vision and intuitive understanding of your target market. Beyond that, you need a brand platform that is rooted in product but much bigger than it. Nike’s Just Do It, Crown Affair’s Take Your Time, Ghia’s Above the Influence, Apple’s Think Different. It’s a mentality, an identity, a lifestyle, all rooted in their product’s unique selling points. Without that, there’s no potential to influence culture while selling product. And if that list sounds cliché, it’s only because they’ve been referenced to that point.

That said, a tagline is just that unless you execute on it thoroughly, boldly and thoughtfully. Putting it in your Instagram bio isn’t going to move the needle. You must consistently build a world around it through not only product but merch, experiences, partnerships, content, etc. As much as people love to hate on Poppi’s over-the-top marketing, they built a bright and bubbly universe around healthy soda that earned them a $2B acquisition. That’s on brand and business.

And you don’t even need a big budget. While I was at Ghia, we launched beautiful glassware in partnership with an influential designer, nationwide restaurant aperitivo hours and compelling campaigns, all on an early-stage startup budget. At the same time, our founder’s personal brand grounded and humanized everything. If you’re a founder who represents the people you’re targeting and you’re not putting yourself out there, you’re leaving so much potential on the table.

There are a lot of shiny-product brands (I love men, but they’re usually male-founded and led) hyping how efficient their spend is and how they’re the ‘fastest-growing whatever’ that can’t be replicated. They appear brand-first because their product or packaging is premium. And then everyone is like “wow, they’re so good at brand!” But take a look at their organic social, and you’ll find hidden like counts and awkward attempts at storytelling. That popup they hyped up so much? Virtually no one attended. Why? Because while people might love their product, they don’t love their brand. And unless that product is some super-complex patented innovation, it’s not a moat. The first dupe that comes around with a slightly better price point, distribution or more efficient marketing funnel will knock them out.

On the flip side, there are plenty of brands that burn cash on ineffective splashy brand marketing. Maybe they’re targeting the wrong audience, or optimizing for virality regardless of product relevance or brand strategy. Remember, ultimately you’re selling a physical product, not content and experiences. Just because something is cool and drives buzz doesn’t mean it drives business. It doesn’t even mean that it strengthens the brand (there’s a difference between building hype and building a forever brand, but that’s its own Substack letter).

If you have a strong brand, there will be signs beyond CAC and revenue. Your organic channels will be buzzing, your popups will drive lines around the block, your dream tastemakers and influencers will go out of their way to attend your events. But more importantly, your team and community will resonate with what you stand for beyond your product — that’s forever-brand material.

The best brand marketers get it. The best growth marketers get it. The best marketers get it 🫡

For better or worse, if you don’t have an influencer-led brand (Rhode, SKIMS, Rare, REFY, The Absorption Company, etc.), then you better have a super sharp, influencer-led marketing strategy (Salt & Stone, Merit, Dieux, Graza, Crown Affair) if you want serious funding, distribution and/or growth.

That means a combination of the founder becoming an influencer/creator, influencer equity or rev-share, aggressive seeding (we’re talking >500 gifted/month), affiliate, and aspirational owned social that attracts the influencers you seek. And the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. If a brand asks me to help them with just one of those initiatives but doesn’t want to invest in the rest, it’s likely in neither of our best interests to proceed. Without an audience, you’re a tree falling in the forest — and you can’t just post or buy your way to an audience anymore.

That said, creative strategy is what separates great brands from good brands. But now that a majority of gen alpha, gen-z and millennial consumers discover brands through influencers, its role has evolved in three key ways.

Influencer curation matters even more.

Last year, Vogue Business published a popular research piece in partnership with youth culture agency Archrival called “Gen-Z Broke the Marketing Funnel.” It showed that a majority of consumers surveyed discover brands on social media, but the report noted that “influencers are still important.” Influencer is not a place. Influencer is social media, and I bet an overwhelming majority of those surveyed discover brands through influencers on social media.

Your Instagram grid is no longer the first impression of your brand — your influencers are. Beyond optimizing for general target market and engagement rate, it’s more important than ever to curate your influencer partners, whether gifted or paid, with the same meticulousness you would an Instagram grid in 2015. And while that may sound limiting, trust me — there are a lot more influencers out there than you may think. Don’t compromise.

Packaging and product must work even harder.

What would you change if you knew that aside from influencers, your product is the first impression of your brand both on social and in retail? Does it drive desirability and is it clear enough without the context of your owned channels?

More than ever, we must design packaging and product to stand out and stand alone both in influencer content and on-shelf. Gone are the days when our brand accounts, emails and PDPs did all the heavy lifting.

Owned social is for influencers, first and foremost.

This is a hotter take, but influencers are your most important direct audience on owned social, not consumers. Consumers discover brands through influencers, and influencers discover brands directly. I cringe at how often I see brands that clearly spend significant time and energy on owned social for marginal results, cheapen their brand to drive empty engagement through short-lived trends, or promote flash sales on organic social in the hopes of driving revenue. Your owned social should be the most creatively aspirational impression of your brand, one your target influencers will be proud to align with.

If you’re the 1% of brands with a brilliant creative strategy, your owned social can be your best growth asset. If you’re the 99%, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can still content-pillar and post-cadence your way to growth. Your time and money is likely better spent on influencer and community. Take jewelry brand Dorsey, for example — they have a beautiful, mostly static grid that they update occasionally, and are hyper-focused on affiliate marketing. And they’re crushing it.

“But Jess, owned social is free! Influencer is too expensive!” No, owned social is not free. If you’re doing owned social right, it’s one the most time and human resource-consuming marketing outputs. And no, influencer doesn’t have to be too expensive. Gifting and affiliate marketing are two of the most ROI-positive tactics in marketing right now. And not to mention, when you’re investing strategically in influencer — social proof, trust, awareness — you’ll notice a sustained lift on brand and growth KPIs. If not, there’s probably a deeper issue.

If you’re a founder or leader who needs help with any or all of the above, let’s chat — jessicaneggert at gmail dot com. I have some bandwidth for consulting or advising, and I love this stuff more than anything except for my dog Gracie.

After spending years working with brands from pre-launch to $100M+ omnichannel growth, through flourishes and failures (and now exploring building my own, a thing I swore I’d never do), I firmly believe it’s all pretty simple. Not easy, but simple. No matter if DTC lives or dies, AI takes over, Meta crashes, CAC spikes and a recession hits, these core brand-building tenets will always persevere.

Brand strategy

It’s the foundation for everything, from pre-launch to product-market fit to exit. Sure, some unicorn brands have stumbled into success. But establishing a thorough brand strategy, when done right, makes it a lot easier and more likely to get there. This usually manifests in a big deck that includes everything from vision, mission, voice and personas to pricing, sales, etc. — but it all boils down to positioning.

What white space does your brand fill in the market, why should that white space be filled and how? The latter is where a lot of well-intentioned strategies go wrong. Just because a white space exists doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. What do consumers actually want, what do they need? Often times it’s not the answer you wish it was.

A great brand story won’t achieve product-market fit without a solid strategy. That said, it’s never too late to go back to the drawing board — you just need to have the awareness to do that instead of banging your head against a wall with inefficient marketing.

Product-market fit

It’s essential, and it’s the result of a solid brand strategy. Without it, the rest won’t work. If you believe you have a solid brand strategy but are struggling to find product-market fit, think again. Maybe the white space wasn’t as white as you thought, or it didn’t need to be filled, or it needs to be filled in a different way.

This is hard to come to terms with, but critical to confront with an unbiased and fresh perspective. Is your product not as convenient or delightful to use as you think? Does your distribution cheapen your brand perception, or make you inaccessible compared to competitors? These are just a few of many hard questions you must ask yourself. When in doubt, a customer survey or third-party market research are a couple of ways to arrive at this answer.

*It’s essential to consider your long-term growth goals and potential when establishing brand strategy. Native’s “why” is clean ingredients, which allowed them to successfully expand from deodorant to body care. Elements like vision, mission, purpose and tagline should be broad and aspirational enough to to expand while being grounded in product enough to stay focused.

Unit economics

Gone are the days of growth at all costs now, profitability later. We’ve learned the hard way (see every single non-tech, VC-backed brand of last ten years). I’m no CFO, but I’ve learned first-hand that when it comes to building an enduring brand, it’s either a volume or margins game.

For example, if you’re a beauty brand that doesn’t have >70% margins, you need insane volume (see margins-driven brand Merit vs volume-driven brand Versed, both founded by Katherine Power with opposite strategies). If the unit economics don’t work now, don’t expect them to work later. Economies of scale only go so far, this isn’t tech.

Sales strategy

Sales and brand marketing are innately connected. It’s the essential and delicate balance between accessibility, growth and brand equity that can make or break you.

Example (from a real-life scenario) — you’ve built a thriving prestige DTC beauty brand for millennials+ and it’s time to partner with a strategic retailer. You have a choice between Sephora and Ulta. Sephora is clearly a better brand fit, but you choose Ulta because you’re afraid that their e-commerce leaning will cannibalize your DTC business. Fast-forward a year later and you’re cheapening your brand to compete with the more masstige Gen Z brands that are thriving at Ulta.

Another example — you’re considering which indies to partner with at launch. This should be treated as a brand marketing play with some revenue upside, not vice versa. Where you distribute determines how your brand is perceived and who it reaches. If that doesn’t align with your brand strategy, it won’t work.

Marketing strategy

Saved the best for last. If all of the above clicks, this is so fun. If not, it’s incredibly draining and demoralizing. I’m so over the growth vs brand marketing conversation. The worst thing that ever happened to brand-building is becoming addicted to measuring the immediate bottom-funnel return on every single dollar spent — literally a race to the bottom.

It’s easier than ever to start a brand and harder than ever to build an enduring brand. That said, if you have a solid foundation, it all boils down to profitable awareness and engagement. What I mean by that is — assuming you have a solid brand strategy, product-market fit and distribution, all you have to do is remain top-of-mind and relevant to your target market in the most efficient way possible to achieve your goals while maintaining a healthy P&L — whether it’s Influencer, DR, AI, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, retail, experiential, brand partnerships, etc. Not easy, but simple.

More than a big budget, this requires creativity, confidence, analytical thinking and a keen understanding of product-led marketing. It doesn’t matter how creative and engaging your campaign is if it doesn’t effectively market the product (it drives me crazy when beauty brands market like fashion brands at the cost of the product).

Your job is to drive emotional resonance that relates back to your product — and often times you have just seconds to do it. That’s why sensory marketing is so hot right now — it’s the quickest and most intuitive way to make consumers feel something in a dizzying digital landscape. That said, brands must balance dopamine-inducing campaigns with a deeper emotionally resonant platform to endure over time.

People love to say she’s a TikTok influencer who got lucky. They miss the point — one of the strongest superpowers a founder can have is creative vision, and her’s won over Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry without any music — just a moodboard.

The other key superpower of a great founder is a knack for finding the right collaborators to bring it to life. Addison’s crew includes Charli XCX, Arca, Rosalía, Petra Collins, and Mel Ottenberg, who all recognized the brand’s potential. Charli said she was impressed by Rae’s instinct from the moment she met her, when she “burst into the room in Ugg boots and hot pants after parking her pink Tesla in the driveway and exclaimed, ‘Boys are stupid!’ Wait, we should write a song about that!’”

A brand vision is nothing without application across every touchpoint — product, creative, copy, merch, customer experience, content, ads, events, distribution…even hiring, in my opinion. That’s another thing about Rae that impresses Charli — everything she does relates back to the world she’s building. “‘every item of clothing she wears, everything she says in a red-carpet interview, everything she tweets.’” It’s this 360 approach that made it possible for her to completely re-brand in what feels like record time.

Here’s a fun exercise: What would your brand’s car be, and what would be in it? Addison’s is “as chaotic and ultra-femme as her persona. There are Chanel lipsticks and full-size bottles of Ex Nihilo perfumes in the compartment beneath the touch screen. Her back seat has at least one tutu, a wig, an embellished bra she found on Etsy, and a copy of Vanity Fair’s October 1992 issue, featuring a naked Madonna hanging off a pink pool floatie on the cover.”

That said, her transformation didn’t actually happen overnight. Her first attempt at music a couple of years ago flopped. “‘It almost wasn’t even about the song. It was [about] me doing it,’” she said. We all talk about product-market fit, but what about brand-product fit? If your brand identity doesn’t align with your product, it won’t hit. She hadn’t yet built her personal brand enough for people to believe it. Fast-forward a couple of years of strategic brand-building, and her music is topping charts.

And finally, a brand vision must be coupled with a simple yet powerful brand mission to bring it to life effectively. Addison’s is perfect: “All she can hope is that everything she does next will make people feel free and get them to dance.” If your mission isn’t that simple and doesn’t fit in one sentence, I encourage you to revisit it.

It’s only a matter of time before she actually launches a brand.

• Rhode’s peptide lip shape campaign looks like a SKIMS campaign. So far it seems to do a better job of selling the outfits than the actual product. But I’m sure all the effective it-girl UGC is coming!

• Content is not a brand story. Speaking of Skims, brand-builder wrote a case study on how Skims can develop its brand to continue to grow and endure. “Back in the day, Nike grew because it introduced a new running product, but also because it became associated with the emotion of, and around, running. Product is king, but brands with enduring power combine their innovative product with an emotion in culture. Despite the brands massive cultural presence, Skims doesn’t reflect an articulated emotion.” She lays out a few interesting ideas, including marketing Skims as an operating system.

• Affiliate platform ShopMy just raised a $77.5 million Series B. The round was led by Bessemer and Bain and included several influencers who have benefitted from the platform. Premium affiliate really feels like the new primary growth strategy for beauty, fashion and wellness brands.

• Would you buy A.P.C. olive oil? Or have you? The french clothing brand just released its third batch, which is no longer surprising as consumer categories continue to converge. I also realized that A.P.C. stands for Atelier de Production et de Création (production and creation workshop), a broad brand platform to build on. L Catterton acquired a majority stake in March 2023 with the goal of quickly growing the brand from $100M to $300M annual revenue.

• This new water filtration brand wants to be the modern Berkey. I wish it looked less DTC-millennial. Just give me a Berkey that works 😭

• On that note, the millennial brand is officially dead.

P.S. I finally watched Conclave last night and I think it might be my favorite movie of the year? Anyone else? “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith.” So good.

Talking about brand marketing feels silly at a time like this — but then again, brand marketing is the reason why the grassroots initiative Altadena Girls managed to go from nonexistent to viral in less than a week, helping restore normalcy for thousands of teen girls impacted by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires ❤️

There’s a recipe behind their literal overnight success — the tens of thousands of followers, amplification and donations from Paris Hilton, Ariana Grande, Charli XCX, and Sofia Coppola, just to name a few. Their main concern right now is fielding the viral donation and volunteer demand.

Niche target market

While most organizations and initiatives are focused on everyone impacted by the fires, Altadena Girls cuts through the noise by focusing on teen girls, a group that’s not only niche and emotionally powerful, but also lends well to virality. Both teen girls and women make up the most influential social media users. Supporters Paris Hilton, Ariana Granda, Sofia Coppola, Selena Gomez, Charli XCX etc. resonate deeply with the cause — they know what it’s like to be a teen girl (so confusing sometimes), and their success has largely hinged on them.

Niche initiatives are the ones I’ve been seeing circulated the most on social media, like the list of underfunded GoFundMe pages and the Pasadena Humane Society’s emergency response. That said, there are so many incredible people and organizations doing amazing work — here’s a running list of volunteer opportunities if you’re in LA.

Authenticity

The best way to know your customer is to be your customer. Like Emily Weiss with Glossier, Avery knows exactly what this group wants and needs because she is them (while Avery’s family’s home wasn’t impacted, her school and many of her friend’s homes were). The idea was born out of a group chat with her friends (consumer research), and the account is run almost like TikTok — creator-led (Avery), lofi, trending sounds, is always on. Each post garners thousands of likes, which perpetuates their spot in the algorithm, driving more reach and support. One of my favorite things about the account is that the word “below” is spelled wrong in the bio.

Influencer support

The second best thing you can do for your brand is invest in influencer marketing. The best thing you can do for your brand is deliver something that resonates with influencers organically.

An old boss of mine who founded Harmless Harvest told me that when the brand launched, they didn’t do any gifting or paid partnerships — influencers like the Kardashians bought and promoted it on their own. That’s exactly what’s happening with Altadena Girls — they built an excellent initiative, and the influencers came. They’re getting multimillion-dollar influencer marketing for free. That’s not the full story — Avery’s dad reached out to a Hollywood-connected friend to help them get it off the ground — but anyone can find a connection. It’s what you do with that connection that matters.

Exceptional product

Product and customer experience is the foundation of any success story. And because Avery knows her audience and really cares, she delivers excellence: a curation of quality items customers actually want and need, cool stylists to help them shop and feel good, and thoughtful touches like the mirror that says “that looks really good on you,” reminiscent of the iconic Glossier “you look good” mirrors.

I ❤️ Altadena Girls and I ❤️ LA.

• Yes TikTok is banned but it’s not actually going away Sunday. Biden doesn’t plan to enforce the law ahead of Trump’s inauguration. There’s hope yet (though I hate to admit I’d be relieved to have one less platform to focus on for a sec).

• Glossy published a member-exclusive research roundup of the top marketing strategies in 2024. TLDR Marketers favor Instagram for influencing purchase behavior while their use of TikTok is down (makes sense, the algorithm doesn’t want us there and it’s about to get banned), still images and carousels get more engagement than Reels (I’ve been saying this!), and Walmart is catching up to Amazon in retail media spend.

• 831Stories is trying to be the A24 of romantic fiction. All of the books share the same branding (not sure how I feel about that) and they just launched a membership program (smart). My friend just told me last night that she’s going to RomantasyBookCon — 831 has an opportunity to yassify this or start their own.

• Influencers are suing Capital One for stealing their affiliate dollars. Can we please cancel coupon + discount affiliate marketing? It doesn’t work, the attribution makes no sense, it’s lame and boring and I’m done with it.

• Apparently limiting your IG Story to just one frame can triple engagement. Rachel Karten tried it and it worked for her. Creative tastemaker (hi Ali ❤️) added that she experiences the same thing, and it’s been a game changer.

• No one wakes up wondering what your brand will post today: From a Q+A with McDonald’s Senior Marketing Director: “Usually we try to post 3 times a week max. The magic is more in the community management, and the question is always: do we have something to say or do we have to say something. If it's the latter, stay quiet - no one wakes wondering what will McDonald's post today.”

• This Substack series is Into the Gloss for food. Writer of Plant Based started a series called Into the Fridge, where she dives into the fridges and diets of tastemakers, influencers, founders and wellness girlies. It’s brilliant. Food, bev, wellness, beauty brands that are founder-forward should totally sponsor.

• Is AI the next Meta for DTC brands? Sustainable cashmere brand NAADAM’s founder thinks so. That said, he acknowledged that the fundamentals of brand-building will never change: “At its core, a great brand will always rely on two things: an exceptional product and authentic storytelling.”

Sending love to everyone in LA and everywhere 🫂

I focused on trends that crystallized this year and how they’ll influence the year ahead. I could go on and on, but I had to cut myself off so I can actually enjoy these few days of “winter break.” These are top-of-mind and felt most impactful to me, from social and influencer to creative, culture and funding across consumer goods categories.

P.S. I just visited North Carolina for Christmas and it reminded me how much of a brand bubble we live in. Kendra Scott is likely going to do $750M+ this year, from bootstrapped beginnings and appropriately valued at $1B (more on funding trends below). My boyfriend’s niece and her friends are obsessed with Summer Fridays. They all know about Rhode (“the brand with the phone case lip gloss?”) but none of them have it.

Social became almost synonymous with brand

Social has become increasingly more central to brand building for a decade, but 2024 was the year people finally started saying “social is brand” out loud, and teams started explicitly hiring brand leadership roles that were majority social-focused. A recruiter recently reached out to me about a “VP of Brand” role for a beauty brand that is 90% social. Recruiter Kelly Gordon recently shared her first-hand insights on this trend:

That’s not to say that the rest of the marketing mix isn’t just as important — I’m a big believer in doing cool things to fuel social. But any initiative that isn’t amplified strategically on social leaves critical awareness/engagement on the table, which is another way of saying that social is the face of your brand marketing strategy.

At the same time, it’s become increasingly difficult for brands to drive awareness and engagement on organic owned social. That’s why strategy will be more important that ever in 2025, from creator and brand partnerships to feed-stopping creative.

Influencer became almost synonymous with growth

Don’t get me wrong, paid social still has a chokehold on plenty of brands. But this was the first year it felt like influencer took precedence for both DTC and retail-driven brands across categories (the former focused on affiliate, the latter on awareness). I’ve chatted with a few early-stage founders recently who are prioritizing influencer at the cost of owned social — I think that’s the move if you don’t have the right creative talent and your budget/resources are super limited.

Anecdotally, on the DTC side, leading brands like Dorsey and Phlur run on influencer (affiliate, whitelisting, influencer ads). On the retail side, leading brands like Bloom and Graza have proven that influencer (awareness) can be a primary driver of velocity.

Even on owned social, creator partnerships should be approached as amplification opportunities. In a people > brands world, even partners with a small following will drive more awareness and engagement than a brand with a small following — always prioritize amplification in your content budget.

Brands started taking retail marketing seriously

Digitally native omnichannel startup brands started taking retail — and as a result retail marketing — seriously, carving out real budget, strategy and roles focused on driving velocity.

Off the top of my head I can think of several brands that have or are looking to hire shopper/trade marketing managers to help execute ambitious 360 strategies involving merchandising, paid media, demos, POS and “old-school” tactics that have a halo effect on retail velocity like street sampling, localized OOH and experiential.

Fractional became the new freelance

Before you @ me with a lecture on the difference between freelance, fractional and consulting, what I mean is that more talent (and brands) went freelance thanks to the rise of the “fractional” leadership. As a result, startups like Veep and Fractional Jobs are popping up to solve for recruitment, while agencies like Creative People grew their contract divisions and platforms like MarketerHire saw exponential growth (fun-fact, I launched their newsletter years ago). I expect a lot more fractional startups to pop up in 2025.

Fragrance boomed

The fragrance space went from exciting to incredibly overwhelming in less than a year. At this point, you’d be hard-pressed to find a beauty brand, influencer or celebrity that hasn’t at least dabbled in fragrance in 2024, whether through perfume or further emphasis on scented product.

Body care brand Soft Services, previously intentionally fragrance-free, launched two limited-edition scented products, both allegedly bestsellers. Bolstered by You, Glossier’s two new fragrances also allegedly did really well. Merit aimed to cut through the noise for their fragrance launch with a campaign driven by their community’s perspectives instead of the traditional romantic campaign (while I respect the approach, I’m not sure how impactful I believe it was).

Saturation always raises the bar. I’m excited to watch this space in 2025 as brands are challenged to be even more thoughtful and strategic in their approach. That said, I can totally see a Rhode fragrance doing really well regardless of the approach.

Beauty M&A busted

We started the year thinking Glossier, Rare Beauty, and/or Makeup by Mario were going to get acquired, and none of the above happened. Puck’s Rachel Strugatz explained this one flawlessly, so I’ll just copy-paste here:

The inactivity indicates less about the brands than the overall market, itself. Makeup by Mario, Glossier, Rare, etcetera are all attractive assets with mostly strong financials, which would have sold for 10 figures several years ago. But the pullback by strategics, and oversaturation in one category (Rare, Makeup by Mario, Merit, and Kosas, after all, are all makeup companies) has submerged all boats.

There’s also the issue of valuation misalignment. Two recent exits, in particular, seriously distorted the market. In 2023, Unilever bought K18 and e.l.f. acquired Naturium at 25-30x EBITDA multiples, which seemed inflated then and preposterous now. But those numbers played on the economic erogenous zones of founders and bankers and long-suffering investors, all of whom hoped to keep the party going in 2024—only to find themselves entering a new macroeconomic climate that priced in inflation, uncertainty, and doubt.

As for what lies ahead in the new year:

I’m still holding out for 2025. Generally, the market seems more optimistic since the election, and there’s hope that interest rates will continue to tumble. Still, sellers will need to get over their delusions of grand valuations and meet potential buyers halfway.

Protein boomed

CHOMPS is the fastest growing food brand, full stop (I heard they’re spending $300K+ per-regional OOH campaign alone). Khloe Kardashian will launch a protein popcorn brand in 2025. While the space is hot, it doesn’t feel nearly as saturated as fragrance yet, and with the pendulum swing of diet culture I expect this space to keep booming well into the new year.

Plant-based busted

It feels like the realization that plant-based alternatives aren’t necessarily healthier reached critical mass this year. That said, brands that deliver generally superior products will continue to thrive, plant-based or not.

Bootstrapped boomed

Loose definition of “boomed”, but brands are increasingly bootstrapping or building with >$1M in funding as profitability becomes more important and both sides realize that VC doesn’t apply to CPG the same way it applies to tech. I believe the shift is a necessary correction (regardless of interest rates) and will continue to drive sharper strategy as brands no longer have the luxury of burning cash, funded or not.

I loved this BoF piece on growing bootstrapped beauty brands. TLDR:

“[Customer] acquisition is expensive for every brand, including big ones. But it’s the retention that gets you into the green side of the profit and loss statement,” she said. The slow and steady pace has worked for Curie: at the end of 2023, Walmart cold-messaged the brand; it’s now carried in 4,300 stores across the US, and revenue is eight figures. Rodial is in the process of completing registration processes to allow it launch in India, and is eyeing Latin America and Australia.

Despite the slower pace, Hatzistefanis said developing self-reliance had been worth it. “The minute you get easy money, you start spending it easily,” she said. “The danger is that you grow too fast and add too many retailers, and with them one minute you’re in, the next you’re out. The bus [eventually] stops.”

VC…is still figuring it out

As a result, CPG-focused VC funds will continue to navigate a go-forward strategy in 2025. A few of my investor friends are considering operations roles or transitioning to tech funds for career insurance. Some are more optimist.

Remember Kim Kardashian’s fund SKKY? She’s no longer managing it — they set out to raise $1B but only secured $121M. Leading early-stage consumer fund G9 Ventures just published a statement around “betting on the basics” and “playing the long game.” Of their 45+ cross-category investments, successful exits include SPANX (private equity) and On (IPO).

I’m curious to see how this plays out in 2025. Is there a future for CPG in VC, albeit more conservative? We’ll stay tuned.

Creative went hifi

While lofi didn’t go anywhere, hifi creative made a big comeback this year as brands fought for owned engagement. Notable examples include feed-stopping photography from creatives like Casey Zhang and Nicole Miller-Wong. On the video front, brands are going long-form with hit series like Alexis Bittar’s award-winning Margaeaux & Jules, and leveraging AI to create moments they could never pull off IRL.

Cultural rebellion went ironic

I ripped this articulation from @eugbrandstrat, who does a brilliant job breaking down culture through brands on TikTok. I recommend watching all of his videos, but this one is about how earnestly rebellious brands like Harley Davidson are out (“boomers doing cosplay”) and ironically rebellious brands like Liquid Death are in. Why? As he brilliantly articulates, consumers are “rebelling against meaning itself.” He mentions examples like Nutter Butter’s social and Vacation’s chaotic packaging. The trend became more ubiquitous this year but there’s still arbitrage left — he predicts it will continue to grow for the next 6-12 months. This aligns with the strategy for one of my new clients and I’m already having fun with it — more to come!

AI took hold

I’d be remiss not to mention AI beyond animated content. A year ago everyone I knew was like “idk about this” and now they’re like “Lol ChatGPT developed an entire marketing strategy for me.” On a serious note, further adoption of AI for both consumer-facing and BTS work will continue to accelerate the pace and scale of our work as marketers, for better or worse. My hope is that we continue to leverage AI to bolster our work vs do it for us.

I asked Claude.ai what it’s best at when it comes to brand marketing…the list doesn’t fit in a screenshot but here’s a preview:

If you made it this far, I predict 2025 will be your year. Join me in signing off until then.

P.S. I have ~10 hours/week free right for fractional/consulting work. To give you an idea of the range of work I do for clients, I’m currently supporting GTM for a really fun re-brand + nationwide retail rollout as Fractional Brand Director, and recently developed an elevated yet scrappy experiential marketing program for an early-stage brand. If you’re curious about working together or just want to connect, I’d love to chat. Hit me up here or here.

Enter the Brand Person Gift Guide, annotated with why I recommend, how I discovered, and the marketing lessons within (gets repetitive, which is unintentional but powerful. You’ll notice that I didn’t discover or convert to a single one of these through a paid social ad).

Subscribe now

Under $50

Bois de Balincourt Candle by Maison Louis Marie:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: The only giftworthy candle under $50. Universally appealing scent, universally applicable aesthetic. I vaguely remember discovering this brand years ago at a shop in New York, and now it’s at Sephora and seems to be a bestseller on Amazon — all bootstrapped over the past decade.

• Lesson(s): The intersection of accessibility and luxury = $, you don’t need VC money if you have time and a strong brand strategy, and indie retail distribution can be a powerful brand marketing strategy.

Great read on the brand’s bootstrapped journey from underground indies to Sephora.

Colorful Standard Socks:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Simply the perfect sock, half the price of Comme Si. Hugs the feet just right, not too thick or too thin, can be dressed up or down, comes in a bunch of fun colors. Discovered these a while back through Laura Reilly’s Magasin.

• Lesson(s): Accessible 👏 luxury 👏. Also Substack is one of the most powerful affiliate marketing platforms right now.

Algae Cooking Club Infused Oil Duo:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: A taste of Eleven Madison Park to elevate all their lazy meals — plus it’s sustainable. I believe I first discovered this brand through LinkedIn and was reinforced through influencers on social.

• Lesson(s): Sustainable products must lead with quality and convenience to succeed, an unfortunate testament to the ROI of posting on LinkedIn, and invest in influencer marketing.

Paro Tarka and Kitchari:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: The lazy meal itself, made giftworthy. These South Asian pantry staples are so good and so easy to make, it hardly counts as cooking. Discovered when it was just an idea in my friend Umaimah’s brilliant mind, and it’s been so inspiring to watch her bring it from concept to pantries nationwide while advising along the way. Join the Paro Party<3

• Lesson(s): Mission-driven brands must fill a real consumer need to make an impact, and follow ur dreams.

Ghia Totem Glasses:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Beautiful yet non-fussy glassware to elevate every sip. I was leading brand marketing when we launched these, but otherwise I imagine I would’ve discovered them through a ~tastemaker~ on social or Substack. Two years later, and it’s still some of the smartest brand merch out there. The gift set I linked comes with a bottle of Le Fizz to fill their glass with<3

• Lesson(s): If you’re going to create brand merch, it should be useful and uniquely on-brand, influencer 👏 marketing 👏, and also Substack affiliate.

Everyday Oil:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: One of the few self-care products that actually feels worthy of being called a “ritual.” They were very generous with product donation when I was spearheading events for GEM, and I know that converted at least several die-hard customers, including our founder.

• Lesson(s): Customers feel the love (or lack thereof) you invest in your product, and product donation for events can be quite impactful (was a big pillar of our strategy at Ghia).

Under $100

GAP “Vintage” Sweatsuit:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: GAP is so back. I have these sets in two colors and would like someone to gift me the rest. Ridiculously affordable, perfectly cut, softest fleece-lined interior — unfortunately I live in these. I believe I discovered these through a Google search for sweats, and the brand’s revived relevance/knowing Zac Posen is at the helm pushed me over the edge.

• Lesson(s): The right creative director has the power to completely revive a brand. And don’t sleep on SEO/SEM.

“What’s the product and what’s the storytelling? How do we sell it? How do we become part of the conversation and grow the company and attract new customers and bring back old friends? It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” — Zac Posen

Subway Portraits:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: A visual ode to New York’s Subway conductors. For anyone who loves and/or misses New York (me). Admittedly discovered through a TikTok creator’s gift guide.

• Lesson(s): Nostalgia and identity are powerful levers. And there’s something for everyone, thus every brand, on TikTok…while it lasts.

UGG Tasman Clogs:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: I wear these more than I should and — to my surprise — I always get compliments. The best part is that they come with removable UGGplush™-lined socks. Discovered last year through The Strategist.

• Lesson(s): One thoughtful detail can be your product differentiator, and affiliate press works with top-tier publications.

Under $250

Bathing Culture Cosmic Rainbow Towel Set:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Not only are these the coziest but the design sparks so much joy and is so differentiated. I discovered them via Chloe Fineman’s Arch Digest tour.

• Lesson(s): Aim to spark joy. Again, affiliate press works if you can get placed in top-tier publications, especially for lifestyle/fashion/beauty brands.

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness.” — Don Draper

Kleman Boots:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: My boyfriend has been waiting for the right moment to drop $600+ on Paraboots, but I might gift him this nearly identical pair for >$200 instead. Discovered through a TikTok creator whose taste I admire and reinforced by the SSENSE sale.

• Lesson(s): Sometimes price point is a strong enough differentiator in itself, influencer 👏, TikTok 👏, distribution strategy is brand marketing 👏.

Completedworks Like Peas in a Pod Earrings:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Perfectly imperfect statement earring. Expensive for cubic zirconia and gold vermeil, but can’t find this design anywhere else. Discovered via a couple of tastemakers on social and a friend whose style I admire. I’ve actually never interacted with this brand directly except to browse their (beautifully merchandised) site.

• Lesson(s): Design can justify a price point, and influencer 👏 marketing 👏 — which btw, can just be a strategic gifting or affiliate program depending on your price point and budget.

The brand’s recent Merit collab is brilliant. Good read on that.

Perfumer H Salt Eau de Parfum:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: A friend insisted I visit one of their shops on my trip to London and Paris a couple of months ago, and wow — just the most thoughtful, beautiful fragrance experience. She wears Ink which is also incredible, but Salt is the one for me.

• Lesson(s): Focus on product and experience, and the word-of-mouth will come.

Great read on the brand’s brick-and-mortar strategy.

Under $500

Material Kitchen Knives + Stand:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Sharp as hell and sparks joy every time I use mine in the sage color, purchased through a limited-edition collab with Beverly Nguyen.

• Lesson(s): Limited-edition collaborations are a great way to test new product development and acquire new customers.

Alex Mill Rowan V-Neck Sweater:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: 100% actual quality cashmere, not cropped but not-not cropped, feels like real luxury while being relatively accessibly priced. Discovered through Google search, reinforced by Leandra Medine, purchased on Black Friday — full price.

• Lesson(s): Accessible 👏 luxury 👏, influencer 👏, the power of product and brand marketing to rise above the race to the bottom.

“I think Black Friday is a race to the bottom.” — Mickey Drexler, CEO of Alex Mill

Sophie Buhai Ball Drop Earrings:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: The perfect every day earring. Discovered a while back via Magasin I believe?

• Lesson(s): If you’re in the business of nice-to-haves, it’s important to deliver a couple of hero must-haves within that umbrella. Also, Substack 👏 affiliate 👏.

Yona Kohen Necklace:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: Made-to-order beaded jewelry they can’t make themselves. I thought I’d wear mine once in a blue moon, but now I joke that I’d need a new personality if I lost it bc I wear it so much. Discovered a few years back at my all-time favorite Sorbara’s, FKA Chickee’s.

• Lesson(s): Your indie/specialty retail distribution strategy can be a powerful brand marketing channel.

Régime des Fleurs x Chloë Sevigny Little Flower:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: I admittedly don’t have this yet, but I can’t stop thinking about it after testing it at Assembly — and because it’s a collab with Chloe Sevigny, I wouldn’t even have to smell it to know that I like it.

• Lesson(s): Influencer collaborations can be a powerful strategy for digital-first fragrance brands to overcome the challenge of selling scent online.

“Who wouldn't want to smell like the coolest girl in the world?” — Beauty Papers

MoccaMaster:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: I don’t drink coffee anymore but I’m attracted to the design, and my boyfriend who’s a coffee snob just purchased one after years of obsessive pour-overs. He doesn’t remember exactly how he first discovered, but has been influenced by coffee shops and his holy bible, Wirecutter.

• Lesson(s): Even b2b distribution is brand marketing, and again, affiliate press works with top-tier publications.

$500+

Dorsey Riviera Necklace:

• Why I recommend and how I discovered: A timelessly classic piece at a fraction of the price of mined diamonds. Can’t remember exactly how I discovered, but it was definitely some form of influencer marketing. The founder is so bullish on influencer marketing that the brand hardly does organic social, and I just discovered that they offer a whopping 20% commission on ShopMy. She and her team have built an eight-figure business with just $1M total in funding.

• Lesson(s): Price point can be one of your biggest differentiators. Affiliate 👏 influencer 👏, especially for lifestyle/fashion/beauty, and again — you don’t need VC if you have time and the right brand strategy.

Great read on Dorsey’s strategy.

The question in this context was really whether “cool” or “elevated” (read: expensive) branding matters. But it’s not the right question. The right question is how to approach brand-building strategically vs egotistically.

Brand isn’t about being cool. Brand is about knowing your target market (which many brands get wrong) and delivering products and experiences that drive the desire, trust, and love to acquire and retain them without relying too heavily on transactional (read: unsustainable) growth marketing.

If you’re building a premium brand for coffee snobs, being “elevated” is important. If you’re building a gen-z streetwear brand (god I sound old), being “cool” is important. If you’re building a healthy meal solution for families, being “wholesome” is important. It sounds simple but it’s true that a lot of “coastal elite” brands limit their TAM by only catering to their own echo chamber. I firmly believe that not every brand should aspire to mass-scale, but if you’re taking on VC money you usually don’t have the luxury of being too niche (less and less brands are/should take VC, but that’s a topic for another day).

That said, even the most strategic branding and brand marketing won’t make up for bad product-market fit. It’s easy to blame low engagement and inefficient marketing on brand, but if your product doesn’t satisfy market needs, you need to go back to the drawing board (let’s normalize that).

So yes, “people care about brand” lol, and brand is everything — aesthetic, packaging, price, product quality, product experience, customer service, social media, visuals, messaging, distribution, activations, emails, site, team, values, and yes, even paid ads — that impacts the desire, trust, and love to grow sustainably. My friend would not have sold their brand without “brand.”

Hope this roundup has product-market fit:

• I spent last night at one of ’s events and it was therapy. Met and re-connected with some great people and bonded over consulting, building without VC, re-shaping our career identities, late-stage capitalism, etc. Highly recommend getting in touch with Jason to get involved or even just subscribing to his newsletter if you’re in ~the space~.

• “The recent debacle at Nike (of all companies) reveals what happens when performance marketers, with a passion for ROI and a mistaken belief that you can build brand and sell product within the same execution, take control of even the biggest brand.” On why there’s no such thing as “performance-brand” marketing.

• Flamingo Estate is getting into body care with a Manuka honey-based cream. The positioning isn’t fragrance-forward but mentions that it’s “delicately scented with the essential oils of Australian Wattle Flower and Carrot Seed.” Knowing the brand it’s going to smell good, and ultimately fragrance and design will be the success driver unless the formula works magic (I’m intrigued, but at $50 for 2.5oz I’m going to hope I can get it for free). pointed out in that they drew inspiration from Rhode for the campaign — that’s because the founder’s creative agency Chandelier actually does a lot of Rhode’s campaigns.

• David Protein launched. I’m a bit underwhelmed by the site — the UX is difficult to digest and the brand doesn’t feel as aspirational as they teased it to be. They probably worked with an agency on branding and then struggled to apply it beyond packaging and core messaging (it looks like the full-time team spans product, growth, sales and finance and it shows). That said it’s definitely an opportune moment for this product and Peter is a proven founder, so if it holds up to its promise it will likely do well.

• Saie hosted a masterclass at the iconic Schindler-designed Manola Court to launch their lip liner and gloss combo. Not sure how it all connects thematically, but I love how their creative team has elevated the brand through differentiated activations recently (they’re not the only beauty brand doing masterclasses right now, but theirs feel most impactful from a brand perspective). And the Soft Serve Parlour was perfection. And their foundation is actually the best.

• A former Aesop exec is launching a brand with a hero $46 deodorant, confirming my hunch that brands like Aesop and Salt & Stone have elevated deodorant from hygiene to beauty through fragrance and design. Looks like they’re taking it a step further by leaning into armpit-forward creative, something deodorant brands have always painstakingly avoided #freethepit.

• Also on that note, BRAVO SIERRA (where I started my CPG career) is about to make its current masstige line exclusive to Amazon and re-launch DTC with a premium line. The founder heading it up is a former L’Oréal exec, Glossier consultant and one of the smartest people I know, and the brand’s hero natural deodorant was a category-pioneer for efficacy, fragrance, and design. Keeping my eyes on this one!

• There’s too much fragrance news to cover, but most notably Glossier is hoping to triple the You-effect with two new perfumes launching next month (the nose behind it all is Frank Voelkl, who also developed Le Labo’s Santal 33).

• This Gia Coppola-directed series for Mejuri feels so refreshing — real friends, “real life,” engaging, beautifully shot, captures product so well and authentically. I hope it gets the eyeballs it deserves.

• Why are all our favorite shoppy shop brands always on sale at Whole Foods? Because retailers price them too high (we’re all just chasing better margins).

• I learned last week that Doên doesn’t even pay for their organic UGC. That’s the power of brand equity and a high-value gifting program!

• I’m late to comment on the Goop layoffs, but cutting travel and wellness makes sense in their effort to become profitable. Having a multi-category lifestyle brand sounds nice in theory, but it’s really difficult to win in all categories let alone one, and wellness is such a headache with all the supplement regulations. Beauty has the best margins and it sounds like is their best-performing category. But the launch campaign for their lip gloss doesn’t feel like Goop (read: like Gwyneth), which tells me they’re losing their way trying to compete with younger, trendier brands. Sad! I think they could kill it in beauty if they stayed true to their DNA. I know Goop Kitchen is doing very well though (and is actually operated separately by DOM Food Group).

• Curation is in demand and supply, from Substack roundups to generative AI.

• Courage Bagels-inspired Apollo Bagels is opening in my old neighborhood (Williamsburg), which up until I left two years ago had literally everything but good bagels. They’re building a brand that could be ripe for CPG...

• TikTok is Gen-Z’s Google — while it lasts, that is.

— Jess

I’ve spent the past several years building and executing ~innovative~ brand strategies at ~disruptive~ startup brands like BRAVO SIERRA (first hire pre-launch), Ghia and GEM (Brand Director at each). Along the way I’ve had the privilege of being mentored by colleagues from Glossier, L’Oréal, Goop, etc. and collaborated with some of the most talented creatives and agencies. Before that journey I spent the first few years of my career at millennial newsrooms Mashable and Mic, cranking content and building our distribution beyond the Facebook overlord.

As someone who’s been in the trenches at several VC-backed consumer goods brands from pre-launch to omnichannel distribution, I see white space.

Enter Brand Person. A newsletter by someone who gets brands for people who get brands. Expect takes and analyses on the latest in brand world through a relatable and applicable lens.

— Jess

P.S. If you’re ever within a one-mile radius of the Los Feliz area, let’s get coffee! I’m also available for freelance projects and consulting → click/tap to learn more and connect.