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.

At some point, every brand reaches the moment where the story that launched it no longer carries the weight of where it’s heading. The early narrative was perfect for the first chapter. But growth changes the customer and the expectations. When the original story becomes too small, the signals start to surface.

Inside the business, this tension becomes hard to ignore. Growing a brand requires an enormous amount of energy, and in seasons of expansion, teams are solving problems in real time while keeping everything moving. Brand teams feel the pull toward deeper strategic work they talk about it, bookmark it, plan for it. But the pace of delivery takes priority, to keep delivering product launches and campaigns. And the kind of strategic work that would reset the narrative asks for time ad space, the very things the day-to-day rarely allows.

As the brand matures, the gap grows clearer. Leaders begin to see the patterns that show the strategy needs to evolve:

Some brands rarely test new marketing channels when things are going well. They wait until something breaks. When costs rise, conversions drop, or revenue slows, then they're open to diversifying.

Smart brands treat media diversification like R&D. Some budget goes toward 'business as usual' channels that are working, and the rest goes toward finding the next growth lever, building the next growth lane before they desperately need it. Right now, one of the strongest untapped opportunities is YouTube. It's a genuine white space to reach new audiences, while competition remains relatively limited and attention is still priced accessibly.

There’s no single formula that works for every brand. Allocations depend on business model, team structure, lifecycle stage, and strategic priorities. As a general rule, marketing budgets average around 10–20% of revenue across industries, with beauty, wellness, and personal care brands typically spending toward the higher end of that range.

As you plan for the year ahead, here are a few guiding principles to help shape a budget that reflects both best practice and your brand’s unique growth goals.

Community is no longer a “nice to have” for brands, it's becoming a growth engine. In a market where product features can be copied and ads get more expensive every quarter, what can’t be replicated overnight is a thriving, loyal community. More brands are moving beyond transaction into relationship, turning buyers into advocates and advocates into evangelists.

The business case for brand community is undeniable, McKinsey shows brands with strong communities hitting 4%+ conversion rates while their social engagement rates often exceed 2% when retail brands average around 0.63% engagement on Instagram. Just like nurturing any meaningful relationship, successful brand communities require multiple ways of showing care and creating connection. This is where Gary Chapman's 5 Love Languages framework becomes surprisingly relevant for community strategy.