Have you noticed the headlines keep swinging? One week, founder-led content is the key to authenticity. The next, the founder-led era is declared done. If you're on LinkedIn, you'll know the hot takes were relentless.
The data from The Business of Fashion's "The End of The Founder-Led Era" showed that founder-led marketing isn't a primary purchase driver for consumers, and that's no surprise to us. The report showed that only 13% of consumers say the founder is a key reason they buy. From the brands we work with, founder content consistently drives the highest engagement on social media. But engagement and conversion are different jobs, and conflating them is where most of the confusion starts.
The more useful question isn't whether founder-led content works. It's what role the founder's voice should play as the brand grows, and how that role needs to evolve.
The Founder as Brand DNA
In the early stages of business, the founder is the brand. They're the reason it exists, the face that people trust and the voice that makes the brand feel real. It's one of the most powerful assets an early-stage brand has. The problem is that it often comes without an intentional strategy attached.
There's enormous pressure to be everywhere and stay visible at all costs, and when that pressure drives the content plan, founder content begins to drift. The origin story gets repeated on loop and posts chase whatever's trending. The founder ends up performing a version of themselves rather than expressing who they really are and what the brand they created stands for.
The founder content that builds real equity tends to reveal how the founder thinks, not just what they sell. An opinion on where the industry is heading, or the decision they almost got wrong. That kind of content compounds over time because it gives people a reason to trust the brand before they ever buy from it.
Building a Brand Bigger Than One Person
For brands building toward something larger, there comes a point where the brand needs an identity that exists beyond the founder, built on a story and strategy that any voice can carry. That's where employee-generated content (EGC) has genuinely delivered over the last few years. With more voices from brands, more ways of bringing the brand to life, more proof that the brand is bigger than one person.
EGC earns its place when employees reflect the brand's point of view by sharing real expertise, showing how the brand operates, giving customers proof of what the brand claims to be.
Entertainment and humor have their place here too, particularly for brands whose primary audience is Gen Z. The challenge is finding the trending formats that feel most connected to the brand. We've all seen countless pieces of content of office tours, teams packing orders and the same trending office pranks. The North Star should be finding the version of a trend that feels like it could only come from you.
But Not Every Founder Belongs on Camera
Not every founder loves the spotlight, and that's completely fine. Written content like a letter to their brand community through a carousel, or even their voice over on b-roll are perfect avenues to get their presence across. What matters is that the founder's perspective comes through clearly, rather than the format it comes in.
The Ultimate Evolution
Scaling a brand eventually requires founder content to evolve into something bigger than one person's presence. The same rigour that scaling brands bring to operations, finance and hiring has to extend to how the brand tells its story, through content systems that preserve the founder's original vision and voice while giving the brand room to grow independently. That's the real evolution. The founder's voice isn’t something to grow out of, but rather the anchor around which a lasting system is built around.
If you haven't read the BOF article yet, >> you can find it here << it's worth taking the time. And Beauty Matter's >> response here << is another interesting article that pushed the conversation further.
Author: Effie Asafu-Adjaye
Effie Asafu-Adjaye is the Founder of Beautiful Sparks. Beautiful Sparks helps beauty, fashion and lifestyle brands become known, loved and remembered through sharp positioning, strategic storytelling, and campaigns that connect with the right customers. Read more about Effie here. Linkedin.
