We've all seen how the former era of the polished campaign has given way to rawer, more unfiltered content that audiences have responded to. Brands are beginning to open the doors to the inner workings of their brand and teams. This means taking customers along for the ride for both the ups and downs behind the scenes and at times turning internal blunders into brand-love.

What's been fascinating to watch is what happens when a brand navigates something difficult in public. The connection that forms in those unscripted moments is a different quality to anything traditional marketing campaigns can create.

You've closed the round. The capital is there, and there's finally real runway to build something bigger. The product has always been strong, and so has the brand history. Yet the brand feels like it's working harder than it needs to for every new customer it wins.

Most founders eventually land on the same realization, that the identity that got them here was built for a different moment. It's not that it's wrong. It's just dated. A brand built for the year you started is rarely built for the year you're trying to win.

When the year gets busy, the day-to-day pulls us from meeting to meeting, and before long we're going through the motions without stopping to find time to be more curious, and ask better questions of the teams we work with. As you meet with teams this week, internally or externally, here are some questions you may not have asked in a while, designed to surface sharper insights and make sure your paid media spend is working as hard as it should be.

Consider this a starting point for richer conversations over the next month.

Beauty brand founders preparing for launch have been living and breathing their brand for months or even years. They know exactly how their beauty brand identity should feel, and have a clear picture of the kind of person who'll fall in love with their range.

But the gap between knowing something deeply, and being able to say it out loud, is where a lot of pre-launch founders stall. Some founders don't have all the right words to articulate their brand, whereas others have far too many words and struggle to drill down to simply articulate what they mean. So how do you take what's in your head, and bring it to life as a cosmetic brand identity that captivates the market? It starts with one conversation.

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.

Brand leaders are facing a similar problem. The channels that built their brands are getting more expensive and less predictable. Meta's rising CPMs, increased competition, and the pressure to find sustainable growth without endlessly increasing spend keeps leaders up at night. That tension is driving more teams to explore YouTube, not just as an awareness play, but as a full-funnel growth channel.

The challenge we see is that some brands are spending on YouTube, but few are using it strategically. Most indie brands are still approaching the platform through creative strategies and automated campaign structures that aren't designed to play into the platform's specific strengths, and they're missing what makes YouTube fundamentally different from other channels in the first place.

If you find yourself planning another discount promo just to hit revenue targets, keep reading on.

The pattern we see with some brands: discount offer, new collection launch, repeat. Most already know that when discounts become your default growth lever, customers start waiting for sales instead of seeking you out year-round. But sometimes the quick win is hard to resist. If it's time to break the cycle, the answer lies in brand moments that build equity over time.

The day-to-day of leading a brand has a way of filling every available hour. Between product launches, campaign deadlines, and the constant pull of urgent tasks, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Getting clear on what matters most starts with knowing where you actually are.

Strategic planning doesn't mean having all the answers. It means creating space to ask better questions and being honest about what you find. Here are some of our favorite strategic questions to help you see where you stand.

Every year, beauty and lifestyle brands commit to leaning more into storytelling. The intention is there and the desire is real, but often teams don’t know where to start. Sometimes when something feels unfamiliar, we default to what we know. And so often brands end up is the race to stay current, and everyone’s feeds begin to blur. We see the same trends, hooks, formats, and trending songs, with all of this alongside the rest of social feeds that ticks the box for mandatory content for your latest launch and how to use your best seller.

Core product content and trends will always remain key. But the content that actually differentiates you are the stories only your brand can tell. The brands that do this well go beyond posting about their products, and create regular narratives that reflects both their identity and their customers' reality.

At Cosmoprof Asia in Hong Kong, we joined Hismile and NielsenIQ to explore a question many brand leaders are trying to answer right now, which is how to build a genuine connection with Gen Z.

Gen Z’s purchasing power is rising, and their expectations will play an increasingly significant role in shaping how brands show up in the world. Some brands like Hismile have already cracked the code, while many others are thinking carefully about how to attract Gen Z without alienating their core customer base.

Here are our key perspectives shared during the panel discussion.