Why “Well-Produced” Brands Still Fail

I think who's really dropping the ball is the networks because we wanted to watch it last night and it was like near impossible. Yeah, it was it was amazing to be kind of behind the scenes seeing the golden globe stuff going on like you know I was looking at through the lens of what is the personal branding statement all of these people are trying to make. The only thing that aloe requested is that I sit down and I hear their strategy on the aloe bags. So I will report back if I have a change in opinion on the aloe bag strategy. If you really have to explain it in person, but you're probably not messaging it well. We're in Hollywood and let me launch as a campaign with Chris Jenner. The fashion vibe was kind of aviator nation-ish so it was kind of 70 years. Brand strategy is what's the most relevant when it comes to creative ideation. The rise and fall of AI in creative industries. Your brand of your company, it has to come from the creativity of you. You can't delegate the actual creative juices to an AI bot or else you're just going to spend money and fall behind. Starbucks enters the beauty space. When I think of Starbucks, I do not think of beauty. Who's to say that Starbucks isn't going to do a well? I'm going to say they haven't done anything well for the last 10 years. These founders are creating brands to sell them. What makes makeup by Mario great is that he was Kim Kardashian's makeup artist, Elf, the team launches a sub-stack. So they called it zero distance and it's interesting because I think that the sub-stack for brands is going to become overdone. I don't care what most marketers say. You know what I mean? Because they can't say anything. They're terrified. They have to answer to people. I care what the founder or the person in charge of the brand is saying. So we'll see if they actually deliver. Welcome back to another week of art of the brand. We're coming to you from Los Angeles. Specifically Beverly Hills podcast studio in our fancy. Colombian jackets. Colombian attire just after the Golden Globes. Lots to talk about. Yeah, yesterday with the Golden Globes, it was cool. I got to be behind the barricade of the red carpet for our client Molly Sims, which was cool to kind of see the commotion and action, getting seen, all the people getting ready. You know what's being my least favorite thing about being in LA and Beverly Hills? What is this week? Is the amount of people coming up to me and saying, "Hey, are you on that podcast with Camille Moore?" And I don't know my name. So just, you know, it takes a time to get to know my name. I have feelings too. I know it's easy to hate me. I don't think people that listen to the long form every week don't know who you are. It's probably they see the short form clips and they see the villain in the clips. But I actually have a different approach to. I want to talk about the award shows because we've been ripping on the award shows for them. You need to become more relevant. And I actually have a different take now that I've kind of been here live for it and seen the behind the scenes. I think who's really dropping the ball is the networks because we wanted to watch it last night and it was like near impossible to get some kind of a stream or a way to activate. And for the majority of people, they're just seeing the clips now on social media. Like there isn't kind of an evolution of how to make the award shows like hyper-relevant so that you can tune in. I think CBS had a collab with YouTube TV and that was them trying to move into it. We were just having issues because our accounts are rooted in canvases so they wouldn't let us do it. But still, like, why? That's just regulatory nonsense that exists between countries in terms of how they regulate. Which made us so long. You'll tear the old airways and licensing. The same reason why you don't get the same commercials in different countries. No, but I understand that. But if you're moving into being on YouTube, it's actually. We never have somebody watch it then not watch it. Yes. You don't mean that that's what seems odd. Like you're just getting all this earned media value for views on outfits. But I didn't know who won. I had to search again this morning like I didn't get to see the full speech. There's a lag because we ordered 'cause we rented a house. Like an Airbnb. There's kind of a lag and that the TV's, you can kind of log into it, but they don't have cable now anymore. So you can't just turn out a TV and watch it. So you kind of got to log in through your own channels. But if you're traveling, you can't log in. There's a gap between getting people the views when they need it. It makes no sense that they can't figure it out if we're in it. Or they're not taking the time to figure it out when we're in a social first world. Yeah, it was amazing to be kind of behind the scenes seeing the golden globe stuff going on. Like, you know, I was looking at through the lens of what is the personal branding statement. All of these people are trying to make their outfits, their hair, where they're going. Like how serious it is. And are they communicating the message they want? Or are they just trying to seem popular? Like I saw a surprising lack of strategy and some people who are doing things very well. I thought it was cool as I had the Somali Sims, one of her clients, she owns a cool beauty brand called Wise YSE. And her husband is the producer of Frankenstein, which was one of the movies that was on the docket last night for an awards. They didn't win, sadly. But I was chatting with them in their room where they were getting ready at the Waldorf. And I asked them, I asked them two questions. One of them was, do you have any idea? Do you know going into this, like, based on where you're placed or where you're sitting, like, if you're going to win? Is there like any indication? He says, no, like, basically the way that the seating is set up is the front of the room is like the movie stars because they want the cameras to pick up the, like, big names, big faces. Then the kind of second portion of the room are the TV stars, which always pisses them off because in many ways, they're as relevant if they're on, like, big TV shows right now. But they're pushed kind of back. And then behind them are the spouses and partners of the people who are at the front of the room and influencers. So apparently the room is so packed now, like, people don't even get plus ones because they're trying to bring so many influencers into the golden globe so that they can make it obviously more relevant because of, like, the dying of the eyeballs and who has more relevancy. But to me, it's just so interesting that they're taking such a focus to get more eyeballs on the event. But they're not getting the event more eyeballs. The live event element. Like, there's probably a lot of utility and getting multiple views over the next three to four days while it's live. So it gives them time to curate, to produce UGCE, to talk about what they saw. So it kind of extends the lifespan of the coverage of the golden globes by having that there, I think. Yeah, totally. And I'm moving on. So we actually also, I'm sure you guys also, we shot some podcasts this week at ALO HQ. What movies are from, I've got some explaining to do. Oh, no, it's from, I love Lucy. Yeah, yeah, you've got some explaining. Oh, see, you've got some explaining to do. That's how I felt when we were there. But it was funny, one of our good friends who's high up in PR made it happen. And it's funny today is I actually, the only thing that ALO requested is that I sit down and I hear their strategy on the ALO bags. So I will report back if I have a change in opinion on the ALO bag strategy. Which is interesting. For context, we kind of did a piece on the ALO bag and discussed what I thought was a hit or a miss. And I think we labeled it a bit of a miss. And we've taken some constructive feedback attempts with ALO. So walking in there, we felt like, you know, we were going to get judged. But what's interesting is that they want to explain it to you so you can understand it. And the kind of, what I take from that is well, if you really have to explain it in person, but you're probably not messaging it well. Yeah, but I actually, what I think is more cool is that the content that we're creating brands want to at least provide, they're not writing it, they're not writing it off, right? They want to take the opportunity to sit down. They're about your opinion. Yeah, which I thought was hilarious. I also thought too, though, that OK, so two things. One, they have their bags and glass cases like near the elevator. One of the bags is actually pretty nice. Like if they gifted it to me, I wouldn't be mad. It was like a big bag for laptops. Would my opinion change if I got the large suede bag maybe? Don't get it. But the thing that I actually thought was the most interesting was seeing the ALO HQ in person, because they've used ALO HQ as such a strong marketing strategy to kind of catapult the brand, to have cool brand status. Because like the day after we were there, Hailey Bieber was doing a yoga class there. These, they bring in these big names because they have these high-end facilities that they don't charge for. And I thought it was interesting from a world-building perspective. It made perfect sense why ALO was cool. Because in the lobby, it's all dogs. Everyone brings their dogs to work. Everyone's literally in ALO pajamas all day. They had like IVs that were in the lobby. There was very much a brand to the HQ that was consistent with like the models and the feel that the brand puts out, which I thought was interesting. Well, what I thought was a bit of a miss is that brand is the first time I've seen that type of out. That feeling from ALO, like I don't get it in their store. I find their store is like cluttered with too much stuff. Like kind of almost trying to compete skew for skew with Lou Lemmon or something else. So I don't get that feeling when I go into the ALO store. You're not wrong. And you're also not-- They should capture that because I like this. They should've made more like a Ritziah stories, where there was this like coolness feel to the stores. Not these like massive, we have way too many skews. But I also think to the problem with it is the retail strategy of how they rolled out in Canada, like what the locations they picked, because they took over really big footprints for the locations that are in Toronto and the ones that we've gone through in the malls. Because the one in Aspen is pretty cool. I went in the one in Rodeo and I just-- Oh, you went in the one too? Feel like the headquarters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's a disconnecting kind of the brand messaging. They're spending money to make their headquarters feel like Google. Yeah. But it's not at the kind of on the ground where the consumers are. I'm not getting that feeling. So it's usually that disconnect can be a problem. Well, the disconnect is a problem. And I think that that's what it-- has my opinion changed on ALO, the way that we've talked about it, no. But do I see the potentiality for ALO to be not only what it was for, but to continue in that vein, absolutely, because there is a consistency at the HQ. Like the people that worked there were super fit, were good looking. They were living this kind of health and wellness. Like the HQ was very much a Google HQ to health and wellness fitness. Like that parallel existed. But I agree with you, it's changing and how it's rolling out, which is going to hurt the brand. Because if the coolness that exists doesn't exist at the in-store level, then it will be a scaling problem. Very true. OK. We're going to get into our topics. But we also shot a lot of really good episodes this week. High level, what's your favorite episodes so that our listeners can get excited for tuning into those? Because those will be guest episodes. Well, I just had a personal bond with Jason, the founder of TheraGun. Oh my god, I love that episode. I think it's been being a founder who needs to tell the story a bit more because he has so much depth of experience and so much to share with the world. And I hadn't really been exposed to him that much prior to-- Oh, yeah. --prior to the podcast. And to me, it just seems like a giant resource not being used to-- the brand is doing very well. But I think it's done very well because of how much she invested in the 10-year-- And it's wife. Yeah. Well, wife, too. We went for dinner with them afterwards. And his wife, Amanda Henry, also was so involved in the building of the brand. And they haven't leveraged her at all whatsoever. I really loved that episode. I loved him. I think it's awesome when you experience a brand and it's as good or better than what you figured, right? It really had all of those elements of a good brand. So you kind of spoke to the founder's journey. Like you care about something. You invest your life into making it at great sacrifice. It doesn't happen in six months. You know what happens? And I think he called it his nine years. Yeah, it was nine years ago. You invest so much on this journey. And then it pays off. And then you build something. It's an amazing. But then all of a sudden, these kind of-- the founder's journey then always encounters this friction with kind of business people coming-- Yeah. Right? Who are now being counters? Who don't care about, you know, the passion. I'm not saying this happening there. But I'm just saying, there's always a founder's journey. You make it. You hit the success. And then you're kind of like, now the corporation has its own energy going in a direction. And what does the founder do? And when they care so much about helping humans, fascinating progress. Oh, my God, it was. And we also shot Chris McMillan, who was like the godfather of hair. Did you? He shot-- he shot-- he did my hair. I got the Rachel. We also shot-- My haircut was done by Giuseppe. He's an amazing barber. And that person-- On rodeo. Oh, we shot Molly Sims, who that was a great episode. It was super-- all the feels, all the emotions. We shot Sir John, which was a great-- story of super famous makeup artist. And then after this episode, we got Simbiotica. And Ryan Roth, who's the son of Peter Thomas Roth. We got a lot of really good episodes this week. Look out for those. Let us kick it off. So let's start with, we're in Hollywood. And Lemmy launches a campaign with Chris Jenner. And it was interesting. Because when it first dropped, we saw it right away. And my initial reaction was, hmm, that's interesting. But I wasn't as sold as you were right away. And I do think that that's worth reinforcing because Philip actually really has-- he really is an admin. Like, he sees things early. So you really actually got it right away. And I wanted to break down why you liked it. And then I've got some points to add to it. I think for context, it depends on your-- you have campaigns sometimes that you want to hit instantaneously. But like, good wines, good movies, good brands, good campaigns, take a while to digest. There's layers. Yeah. You know, like an onion shrek would say. You kind of feel some more things. And so I really enjoy when you can look at something and there's kind of the obvious message. But you can see some stacking. That's the new term everywhere now. But I kind of call it brand stacking in front of the messaging content stack thing. But the aesthetics of that ad just was interesting to me when I first watched it. Because I could see they had a bunch of things they were doing. They were speaking back to kind of the de-Cathlon days of Bruce Jenner. Yeah. Right? So there's a little tongue and cheek. There's some interesting stuff there. The fashion vibe was kind of aviator nation-ish. So it was kind of-- 70 years. And then she just seemed interesting. Like, I was paying attention to what she said. So I thought-- Empire building. There was also the element of-- we have the Olympics. But there's also like the Patriot Games, which is like another big headline. So there was a lot of different themes. And to your point, what's interesting is I had done a deep dive after that creative. And I went on Lemmy's page. And I realized that they've actually been investing in these like storyline creatives. There's a few others. And the one right before is Kim. And she's a lawyer. And they're in the court. And they're in Lemmy court. And they're fighting as if they're on their reality TV show. And what's good about what they're doing is they're tying a creative concept to the authenticity of the brand, right? Like, it's authentic for them to have Chris tied to being an Olympic Catholic athlete talking about building an empire. Like, when there's those layers to it, it makes it more than just like throwing money at a creative concept. It speaks to the underlying storyline of what people are looking for when they're buying that product. Like, you don't see Lemmy. And you don't say that's Corny Cardassian's brand. So tying to that authenticity is what allows it to break through on the internet, so that it's not just another high end creative. Because ultimately, they have a lot of money to spend. And I think it becomes complicated for brand owners to navigate what can I learn from this if they have so much money. But what they're doing that's right is well done storytelling. That particular ad focusing on creatine, I think creatine for the plus 40 crowd is a huge market. No way, even for young people. Even for young people. But it just means for the plus 40 crowd. It's a huge market. But you're now seeing people talk more about it. So I think it didn't quite do enough on the kind of educate or focus on creatine. But definitely, they're on to something. And I think people over a certain age would have watched that ad for the full of it. Because she just looked vibrant, healthy, and entertaining surrounded by an interesting background. But talking about something really relevant to her market. I think you brought up a great point. And in that, it's absolutely not relevant for their brand. Like, their brand is not focused on, it's not like a Peter O'Tea brand. It's not like, it's not founded by someone that's at the forefront of thought leadership and education. Their brand focusing on entertaining and then killing it on TikTok shop strategy, to me makes sense. I think it would actually not make sense if they were trying to educate on creatine value, because that's on its brand. They could sell it alive TikTok shop by speaking to a certain audience. You can do some really interesting things there. There's space for her to do more. I would say that the criticism I have is, I fear there is a market cap to the way they're doing it because it lacks education and awareness. But I don't believe that that would come from a creative like this. The question is, does Courtney follow Chloe and have a podcast where she interviews these kind of adjacent expert people so that she has that as a pillar that adds to her brand? But the point that I'm trying to underscore is, brand strategy is what's the most relevant when it comes to creative ideation. 'Cause we're also gonna talk about David's protein later here and this. And when there's so much noise on the internet, you have to figure out what creative strategy and what storyline makes sense for your brand. So would that creative storyline make sense for a brand like David's protein? No, 'cause the founders of it don't have an authentic story to tie to like that. So it's understanding the parameters where your brand exists within and figuring out what makes sense, but to your point, you saw it early. That's actually the line, the direction they're going down, like making Kim a lawyer in another creative and showing her in a court setting and then fighting like they do on the show, it is brilliant for tapping into the equity they already have. And once I'll say it again, brand is strategy. And most people do not understand how to build a strategy. Cool, let's move on to the next one. So the rise and fall of AI in creative industries. So we're gonna take two different approaches with this. For me, Molly, who's a model and Katya, who works for us, is also a model and they were talking about how what's happening in the modeling industry right now. And whether can you resist these AI twins or they're making an AI version of you, do you sign the contract where they allow you to make this version of you that they can utilize so that they don't have to fly you all over the world and do these creatives or do you resist it? And it poses an interesting conversation for like, there's even criticism or maybe not the right word. Speculation that even refile like a big beauty campaign just used AI models in their recent creative ads. And kind of where is this going? Is it good for small brands? Is it a problem? And I think you also being a lawyer, it allows for an interesting dialogue. The legality of that is complex. Like, you need good lawyers to protect your image, your own IP, you know, that's an issue. But what's more interesting to me is AI has become a shortcut, you know? And so as people rush into something, it's kind of, there's a lagging indicator. So I think in the future what people are, is not gonna be what people are doing now. Like just creating AI, like the content that I see. Everybody who's doing content right now. Everyone I know who's doing content, everybody who reads content, it's almost like the exact same AI. - Yeah, it's not this, it's not this, it's that. And it's, at some point you have to be like, look, am I really, am I really reflecting my personal brand, brand by just chucking out stuff that seems more complicated that's done by AI? Because I think there's an AI fatigue going on right now. - Oh my God, major. And it's taking away from the creativity. And what we're always telling people is, your personal brand, your brand of your company. It has to come from the creativity of you. You can't delegate the actual creative juices to an AI bot or else you're just gonna spend money and fall behind. - Yeah, yeah, it's complicated because when I look at, even when I'm receiving from clients, like there's signal versus there's noise. Everybody wants to stop paying UGC creators to maximize UGC creative from an AI generation machine. Everybody loves the idea that they don't have to spend $65,000 doing a short campaign clip and they can outsource the entire thing to AI. And I think the last few weeks of our episode, I've had some version of like AI creatives where it, to me, it's not interesting when the barrier is so low that anyone can do a campaign that feels off brand to like get a headline. And it's, but what's complicated about that is, there's this small area where it might have made a ton of sales off of that AI model that they used to shoot and to run ads with that nobody knows as an AI model 'cause they're not publicly talking about it. And that might work and sure they might have made a few hundred thousand dollars and like that's something and that's awesome, but is that where this is going? Probably not because if you analyze what works for the UGC community is that the idea was that the consumer had trust because it was a real person that wasn't famous, that wasn't payable. Like when I look at the ads that our clients are running, UGC creative is becoming less and less impactful because of the exact reason that you can go on programs like Billow and you can buy a hundred pack of credits and you can just have people that have never used your product talk about it and then look authentic. - But that's a differentiator with a difference because you can see everywhere UGC is dead. Well, it's not dead because consumers don't want to connect with a brand at a personal level. It's dead because UGC is being corrupted by overuse, by undermining the trust relationship. So UGC is not dead, you know, as some of these influence on TikTok or whatever they're saying, you know, scripted, curated, unauthentic UGC is not UGC. - Yes, well it's exactly what I want to get into as well is when you look at like Lemmy's strategy 'cause we just talked about them. They're doing over 13 million a month through an affiliate network on TikTok, it's brilliant. But the reason why it's working is because it's real girls with real followers that are creating content to people that look like them, that buy like them, that have shared values like them. So they're authentically selling product to real people and that's a critical difference that brands are missing is this fake UGC creator has no community. Like nobody knows their face, nobody follows them. So to what point does that continue to work? - This is where we see a lot of frustration in kind of founders and CEOs is that there's always agencies that will come to you and there's a fickleness now. We see people bumping between agency and agency or whatever. But there's a fickleness where somebody goes, "Hey, this is a new thing. Let's take a shortcut to take advantage of it." And if you're in the first 10% of a trend, you can get a bump for it. But generally by the time you're hearing it, your past that 10%, now you're investing money, following a trend, it'd be way better to invest in your own creative and then have people who are telling you things that are working, but there's just all of this kind of flashy bells and whistles that people are following with. And you got to stick to the basics, which is authentic, UGC. - Yeah, I mean, you brought up another point to about the writing of the captions. It was actually an article that was in the cut this past week and it was saying basically like how shitty it is to have an employee that like everything they do is tragedy beauty and you have to rewrite it all. And the kind of this chatchy beauty, like mess of just this content that there's so much there, but it doesn't say anything. And how that's such a different issue of, there has to be an accountability when you own a brand to genuinely want to invest in the eyeballs and the intention of your community. Like you can't use the word community and then just cut corners on all areas of, your community is reading the caption. They're reading the script. They're like looking at the video. Like if you're just completely outsourcing all of this, you can end your day at three o'clock to get to happy hour and have a my-tie. Like it's not, it's not gonna work. - Like the analogy is imagine a Christmas card that's like printed off as opposed to one that's handwritten. Right? Like if you know it's, the worst thing though, the worst thing is a card that's printed off, but it's made to look like handwriting. Like to me, it's actually more offensive than now you get these cards that's fake handwriting. So it's like, look at me being authentic. It's actually corrupts the idea of what's going on and I think that's a trusting that's being broken here. I want to do it like a quick piece on AI and leadership and how AI is revealed something that everybody should know about leadership. There's four types of leaders that I was, when I was studying leadership, that one of the best militaries in the world identified years ago. There's the lazy, unintelligent leader who this military thought was harmless. They would just put them as ceremonial, right? And think of this from your own context in your business, the leaders you've seen. So you've got lazy and unintelligent. They generally, they don't create much works. They don't do much harm. And so they're seen as rather harmless. There's the workaholic intelligent person. They were deemed to be the ops people, the COOs, the people who get stuff done, but often they're not the leaders because they're much more useful just working their butts off. The leaders of this military, that had the best leaders, they saw were intelligent people who were a little bit lazy. They would sit back and look at the 30,000 square foot picture, and they could make good decisions and have a vision. But where this is relevant to our AI discussion is unintelligent humans who are very ambitious and workaholics, they deemed to be the most dangerous type of leader. And so you have to remove them. And you can see this with the AI now. You see more and more people who aren't that, and they're not that intelligent, but they're using AI to generate tons of stuff. They're working all day long, and it's creating work for everybody. And everybody's got to go through these long documents, and something to keep in mind in your organization. And I bet you everybody right now can imagine that kind of dumb workaholic who makes everybody's life miserable by starting projects, by doing all this stuff. So put that in a frame of reference of AI when you're using AI. It's not an excuse for hard work. And you need intelligence and AI, but stupidity in AI can triple the workload of your good people on cause frustration. I mean, I feel like that could be the theme of the whole episode because it's so real. Like you can see people that can just produce an insane amount of work product, but it's completely useless. And but it actually makes you want to go into the separate segment, which is because we've been talking so much with brands this week, while we've been here in LA about kind of, and while we've been here, open AI launched this like chat, GPT health kind of concept, and it's this dedicated GPT that is kind of like your health companion. And what's interesting is we've been having so many conversations with these health and wellness brands, and they all seem to be having some launching something that has to do with AI so that you can get more out of their product or their protocols or within the world that they're trying to tap into with this kind of AI adjacent app or product. I wanted to talk about, is it a problem for brands to be doing this? Should they be like, should they have to be connecting with AI or the opposite, which is what I just said? Should is it a problem that they should be avoiding AI in the context of this kind of this companion that's like an AI chat bot or something that they can communicate to that like dials and based on their own data or is this a necessary for brands to build a further community? Humans aren't going to be replaced by AI. They're going to be replaced by humans who know how to leverage AI intelligently in the medical community specifically. I'm thrilled to see chat GPT coming out with health because often the organizations, associations and institutions get in the way of progress and accessibility of the public. It's been proven that AI diagnosis is more effective than doctors getting the right, it's absolutely proven. But you're not seeing it being used. It's proven that autopilot on aircraft planes are better than pilots. But the pilots don't want to like lose a seat in the cockpit to AI because they're protecting it. Doctors don't want to lose their ability to build. Lawyers don't want to lose their ability to control things. You can use an AI and come up with contracts, right? So all of these professions and institutions and experts are trying to protect their ability to build, right? But chat GPT health is where it's going. Like if you're looking at getting into med school, I don't know if there's going to be family doctors in the same way there used to be in the future. I think we're going to need healers who can understand humans at a tactile level, touch, palbitate, and see something. And you don't need an encyclopedia of brain. The AI has that for you. You need to be able to read a human being. So I think there's going to be a giant shift in the healthcare space. And if you're a doctor, a healer, or you have a business, your personal brand has to be built now. Because AI will replace it if you don't have that connection with the community. You're so right. And that was very important to say. But the kind of conversation or the different angle to consider is does it make sense for, like, let's say, hypothetically, I don't know if this exists, or a ring is launching an AI assistant that you can talk to to ask questions based on the data that you're seeing. We're criticizing the use of AI in brands. Is that something that is, like, a necessary that brands should be getting ahead of? I'm just leveraging AI to better build a community relationship with their customers? Or is that something that is passe over a downer they should avoid? You should use the resources the best way they can be used. And AI to process information and data with millions of calculations a second. That's a good use of AI. But you're forward facing interface with your client should be as human as possible. The only thing that's complicated to it is there's obviously a bunch of reasons of why it's intelligent data capturing, like, allowing the ability to have deeper conversations with customers that allows you to, like, upsell products later. My only question is, how do you keep it novel? Like, if every brand is launching some form of, like, an AI coach or AI companion that ties with their product or services, it's going to be, like, how everyone launched an app, like, I don't want my phone to have 300 apps of, like, a McDonald's app and a Tim Wharton's app and a, like, that's kind of, I guess, like, my question of how do you, how do you make it novel? Or who, I guess, even we can leave this as it is, and we can track them as they continue to come out. But it was just an interesting thing I thought about this week with this headline. Yeah, when it comes to health, trust is the most important thing. And generally, people build trust with a human interface. So their challenge is going to be to build trust with their client, because health is, and staying current. Because if I can establish a trust relationship with some sort of health product, and it works for me, I'll stick with it, because it's too much to change. So they got to invest on getting trust early. Yeah, it's interesting. Even when I was thinking about, like, for the office, like, these AI, I had to call some service providers recently, and they have, like, these AI call services. We were not even talking to someone. And on one hand, I'm, like, it's actually kind of brilliant to get ahead of, because I think the standard is going to change for people. Like, I don't care if your business closes at 6.30. Like, if I'm calling at 8.45, I would be convenient for me to be able to, or at least my AI agent to be able to, like, get something booked in, start figuring out some pricing. Like, it's kind of an interesting-- there's two sides to it, where I think the world is going to evolve to more AI. Oh, interesting. Katya just said that the restaurants in Toronto are using AI as a hostess. But, like, that makes sense to me. On the phone. On the phone, yeah. They don't have to answer the phone. It takes away the ability for the hostess to kind of fit in-- Like, better people, yeah. Because they just have their resume of seats. So there's always going to be an element for good humans. But you have to amplify yourself with intelligent use of AI. Right, next topic. So Starbucks is reportedly preparing to launch a beauty line. We got this from a LinkedIn. Someone has become the head of beauty at Starbucks. So we're forecasting a line to becoming, what are your thoughts? I've got mine. OK, I'm going to try not to have too many haters there. But when I think of Starbucks, I do not think of beauty. Like, in the past, Breast is used to be cool. People, like, when it first came out, they were cool. Now when I see Breast days, I just see balls of anxiety. Starbucks should be getting into the nose ring. Hairdying, market, maybe, right? Because that's-- But from a beauty perspective, there was nothing about Starbucks that speaks to beauty, right? Like, I like to get my name right now in a cup. I don't know how Starbucks is going to become my morning routine in terms of a beauty perspective. But how much do you see? I think that it is super intelligent. And I will tell you why. And I will just show you after. Please just show me after. OK, so number one, this is totally this Sephora model, where they're going to have a gondola. That's, like, as people are waiting in line, they're going to have lip glosses. It's going to be, like, a lonege, like, sleeping mass. That's, like, peppermint mocha or pumpkin spice flavor. It's allowing them to tap into these cultural moments in a way that isn't as fleeting. Like, it's going to increase their average order value. And it's brilliant, because when I look at the Americanization of Tim Hortons-- so Tim Hortons was purchased by an American company. When you go into Tim Hortons now, there are, like, it's a very small kiosk of, like, accessories-- pens. They do, like, stockings at Christmas. They have, like, accessories that are at the front while you're waiting in line to buy products in food. Because Starbucks has gone to the kids, it makes perfect sense for them to have, like, lip glosses and chachkeys that even could be bag charms that allows Sephora to be more culturally relevant. And that's what they're foreseeing, because Starbucks wants to sell more and be more relevant and to the people that they're selling to. They've already proven this with mug sales and with cup sales. They want to be able to sell something else, because there's a cap to how many cups and mugs you could have in your house. Look, mugs make sense on the brand messaging. Especially when we used to love Starbucks, and you would travel, like, you love having that mug. It gives you that sense that you feel warm and welcome. Like, most Starbucks now, they've taken out tables, so you can't sit there. You don't feel warm and welcome there. True. Right? So what is the brands now just trying to commoditize more sales? If they had traveler things for beauty, but I think it is a divergence. It's a desperate attempt to get more revenue. And I do not want to be sitting in a lineup like at those stores where I have to go buy everything. But you're not the customer. Like, think about how many people buy those. Like, they're pink sparkly cups or like the bear cup that went super viral at Christmas. They can have the ability now to have, there's like this whole market of like water bottle charms. So like charms you put on your water bottle. Why doesn't it make sense if that's already trending and already big for a, like, the brand's lost its cachet. Like, we're not-- No, you know, maybe we'll advise Sephora to start put a little coffee counter inside their store. It'd be smart. I don't think so. I think it'd be really smart. And so are Rinsier put a-- No, they put a-- what do you mean? What brands we're getting into is Dior, Louis Vuitton. They've all got into experiential activations, which is putting a cafe. If you can't do it well, you don't do it. Who's to say that Starbucks isn't going to do it well? I am a Starbucks customer. What are you talking about? I guess Starbucks is any time I can. Well, I'm not saying you're not the Starbucks customer. I'm saying you're not the customer for these products. There's a huge base of people that are going to buy these products that aren't for the two of us. We go to Starbucks because we have to go to Starbucks. Starbucks has like-- I don't think Starbucks is going to be able to get back to being super cool with the retail footprint that they have. They have to make do with the problem that they have. And I think this makes the most sense. If I was Starbucks, I would collab with somebody. So they had some freedom of action so they could kind of put things in there that were responding to what's trending. But for Starbucks to come up with their own beauty brands, I think it's going to be a giant fail in the end. They're going to waste a lot of money on that. Well, considering how close we're sitting, because I think this is a very positive disagreement. So we'll have to see what people think on that front. OK, so we have two different headlines. The first one here is the global president of makeup by Mario has officially stepped down from her role. So she's been with the company since it started in 2020. The story goes that she is looking to effectively retire and be with her family in Miami. So they've really padded the story so that there's nothing dramatic happening to the company before I bring in a very different headline. What are your thoughts on the makeup by Mario? Sorry. I don't know, I'd be interested to know what Mario is doing in this relationship. Like generally, you see these types of moves when a company is looking to be acquired or to go public. Yeah, to put, teach people leadership. Like, first of all, in business, think about where do you learn leadership? MBAs don't really teach leadership or business schools. They teach a leadership course, but where do you learn leadership? And it's a struggle for most founders 'cause they don't get training in it. But at every level that a company grows, you need different skill sets of leadership. It's one thing to lead 10 people. It's another thing to lead 100. It's another to lead 5,000 different skill sets. So often you'll see CEOs replaced because one leader or CEO or founder can kind of do the zero to one, but then you need a new skill set to get from one to 10. This is generally what you see there, but it's also kind of the end of the brand. When you get to this point, the brand is now just gonna be cannibalized for a corporate profits, you know what I'm saying? - It's complicated 'cause the makeup by Mario to me is probably one of the like best executed celebrity makeup artist makeup brands in that he obviously hired a team where the artist wasn't the operational bottleneck, which can't be said the same for Pat McGrath, right? Where the artist ends up being the reason the business can't scale. I think the biggest problem though with the, with this not makeup by Mario, but with this industry is that these founders are creating brands to sell them. Like they're not designed for longevity. They're not looking to get into building a brand that's going to exist for 100 years. Like that mentality has changed. It's how can I leverage my name equity to generate a few hundred million dollars or like the Hayley Beaver in Road, get that one billion dollar kind of acquisition. So I don't think that they're looking at IPO. I know that they've been on the market to be sold previously among other brands. And the thing that kind of sucks if that's everyone's plan to go to market for this reason, how does everyone benefit from the same outcome? - If everybody, like everybody we talk to, oh my goal is to start a business and be acquired in three to five years, right? But who are these acquiring machines? Like we assume there's a special. - Where does this be all? - It is gonna be popped by one giant conglomerate. - Yeah. - So at some point people have to focus on building great things at last. Not, but there is a plan to have an exit strategy where you can get much higher multiples if you have a proper brand, if you have a proper digital footprint. So you can get double the price or triple the price. If you build your brand properly prior to an acquisition. - The only thing that's complicated is I just, I don't know how you, how does makeup, but what makes makeup by Mario great is that he was Kim Kardashian's makeup artist. And he used her as a model and he would do these masterclasses. And he developed makeup that felt like what was what she used for these kind of iconic looks. Where does that go if you sell the company? The only reason why I buy his, he's got this great powder. And it's probably the only product in my entire makeup bin that I use to the pan and I replace it. Like it's a daily product for me. And I can't say that with many products. What happens when he exits the building? - That used to the pan is an interesting angle for a makeup brand. Like something that you would do. - I've got a lot of products I really like that I don't use to the pan. - No, but that would be a great creative element. You know, makeup by Mario gets used to the pan. - Totally. - Yeah. - Like, does she, is Kim selling makeup? - She, that's, so she brought on Amy, the founder of Amy Colet and she will be, she had a company called Skin as, she's had a bunch. She had makeup by KKW, which not gonna lie, totally bought. Then she had a makeup by Skin, which is like SKKN, which I didn't buy, but respected the packaging. And then that was purchased back from Cody. And now it looks like she's launching it again through Skims. And that's the whole model is because they looked at Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret proved it. Their kiosks at the exit of like their body sprays and their makeups and their lip glosses generated so much revenue for Victoria's Secret. And it's a model that's so many clothing brands used to increase average order value. Because when someone is going to buy a $200 pair of leggings, that's a lot of money for the average person. It doesn't, it's hard to justify adding in another pair of leggings or another like piece of clothing. But to add on a body spray on the way out, even if it's $20, it just, it's almost like, it's a different sort of the way. - No, it's being a little science. - Yes. - You've already decided you're paying for it. At that point, your brain just goes, well, I'm paying this, what's another nine bucks? What's another? - It literally is like bright shiny objects in drum. Like I remember going into those stores when I was younger and I was just be like, ooh, lip gloss, let me touch, let me look. I don't even know if I've never bought any lip gloss at Victoria's Secret. But it makes you want to look at it and touch it. Like there's so, and you know what though, I also saw this in Columbia. We laughed about this before, but when I first went down the line, nobody spoke English when I was looking to interview until the mini lip glosses came out. And when we had free mini lip glosses in exchange for an interview, everyone was bilingual, it was hilarious. But watching women just completely change their state when there was mini lip glosses is, it really needs to be studied more. Like this female obsession with lip gloss and in mini size. There's something to it that I can have 3,000 mini lip glosses and still not feel like I have enough. - Interesting, well, we can look at that. I think there's a self soothing element to lip gloss where like there's a self soothing, there's a lot of anxiety these days. And so being able to buy something and then be able to self-sue with it and as it makes you look better, it's probably why it's very attractive. - And I think it's also so easy to lose. You know, like you can just have one in every person. It just, it feels like a part of like the, it's like I'm like ready to go on my Bob the Builder. I've got like my mini lip glosses. - But I was wondering. - I was wondering because we're doing so much in the clean space like with our protein powder that we're launching and some of the clothing companies we're working with. - What is in these lip glosses? - Microplastics are horrible. Their focal polymers, it's so bad for you. - Because lips are absorbent. Like it's a type of skin that has a thinner barrier, like it's a thinner barrier to your blood than here. - So that's so different from the other headline, which is S.A. Lotter is selling off Smashbox, Dr. Jard and Too Faced. Which is. - Too Faced Delayers. - The idea that, so makeup by Mario is kind of this like new age of, let's call them the 2020 brands where these like founders launch beauty lines. But prior to that, the Smashbox, the Too Faced, the Dr. Jard was kind of these brands that started that like influencer Instagram era. And it's so interesting because of how fast the beauty landscape moves. When I look at those brands, I'm like, yeah, like how have these not been sold off before? Like who's buying Smashbox anymore? - I don't know, but it is it's worth watching what these big legacy players are doing because they seem to be, there was that trend of acquiring the cool kids, right? But I think what businesses are finding, especially what the ones that I'm working with, is that there's, they're high maintenance brands that require constant virality. And it's just, it doesn't actually turn out to be profitable. So you can get a bump, but S.A. Lotter gets way more profitability from longevity type brands when people trust the skincare line and they last forever, as opposed to. - 'Cause it's LTV, right? Like the people spend like thousands and thousands of dollars and constantly, that's like an interesting point. It's like when you're only ever focusing on trend-focused brands, it's exhausting and very expensive. - And what does it say, but? - You're not buying a lot of loyalty. - What does it say about your brand? If it only continues to exist, if you get viral moments, you have to constantly search for viral moments, right? Like there's, whereas when you have a good longevity brand, like a Chanel or whatever, people will stay with you for a long time. So I wonder if there's a move away from this constant need for virality in brands and you see from a business level, people are moving away from that. - It's complicated because there really actually should be this like beauty graveyard, you know? Like we should like have this like visual of like the beauty, because you don't need makeup. And that's the problem is like a lot for the average person, not for, you know, the 15 year old is doing the full face and makeup every day for high school. It takes a long time to get to the bottom of the bottle or like the bottom of the, but they need to continue to create demand so that you keep buying new product. So they kind of can't coexist together because when I look at, especially with like all these clients that come in for us to do shoots at them and they bring their makeup and I look at it, a lot of their stuff, they're brands like I literally haven't seen in like 11 years, 12 years. Like people don't go through product that on mass. I'm not like, there's obviously like, there's, and that's why one of the headlines of drunk elephant just came out with an article today of wanting to complete, they were, they went all the way to the children. So they were like super famous for infamous rather for first being for like adults and having this fun kind of like approachable packaging. Kids got obsessed with it because of the YouTube era with kids and beauty. And then these children were using like retinal and like clinically tested like skin care products. It completely tanked the brand because I am not buying a retinal product that a seven year old is using. It took away that coolness factor and then drunk elephant got into this horrible place with like tons of controversy and they just came out with this campaign of like, we're not for the kids like, we're for the adults and like all the models are older again and but they didn't rebrand. - Is it branding? - It's a disaster. - It's a branding dog's breakfast. - Literally. - I just think like there's kind of high maintenance brands that you can buy for a bump. But at some point it become a liability if you have to constantly try to get people to be excited about it because they're not excited about the product in itself, you know what I mean? And then there's like lower maintenance brands that take longer to build but have more brand value in them and so you get better LTV out of it. - Well those are what's complicated with the, our last headline of talking about like SACs going under because we're on contact right now with a few heritage brands that have had products in market for over 50 years that have like a loyal base that are super successful because people really trust the brand and they just keep going back and buying the face cream. But the problem is that model was built off of having a sales associate at your local department store that could wine and dine you, could bring you in, could bring you to VIP events, you know, like could gift you product, could like sit down with you for an hour and a half and talk about your skincare routine. Like what happens when the world is now is just focused on like that retail experience is dying. So how do you build that longevity and product off of like fleeting social moments? - Well, like I love the idea of the lagging indicator and I always use it in real estate. So as soon as you see six cranes in a city building skyscrapers, it's time to sell real estate 'cause it's glutted and as we were saying here, we can't swing a dead cat without hitting a celebrity. - Yeti Brandon, I'll hit right now, it's hilarious. - So right now there's a glutt, right? And I think there's an absence of strategy and so everybody is reacting to this glutt of there's money here and let's do this. But in the absence of strategy, I think you're gonna see the strong survive in the end and that's where you really need to focus on. Because I don't, it may be dying that in person experience but it probably will come back. 'Cause at some point we don't have, people don't have money to just keep buying stuff online because somebody said to buy it, they wanna have a tactile experience, they wanna connect to somebody who can inform them in person because we're losing trust to it. - Well, we wanna try it. - No, and that's, that to me is this kind of this element to go full circle on this episode is when we talk about it in the beginning is UGC dead, you know, are these, but they all work together. Like you need this in real life activation, you need a community. - It's a symphony. - But it's a symphony and you need these people that are also using your product. Like when I'm thinking about these heritage brands, it's a problem that they're over-reliant on in-person experiences because there's a whole segment of people that are not connecting or learning about the brand. But then on another hand, if the retail is dying, then it's gonna become way too frothy to only expect on social media to be communicating the value point because how do you get someone to sit down and care about your clinical research, your white papers, like how the product sits on your skin, why you developed it, how you developed it, like how many people are tuning in to an hour-long podcast if you're an on-haley Bieber? Like it's hard. - That's why that symphony that strategy is so important because people are still gonna need to interact with the human, I think to get them on board. But now maybe it's not just in one brick-and-mortar location that people have to walk to in a mall or on a street, bring your in-person interactive two events where your target market audience is. Like people are still gonna wanna interact with it, but you can make it more mobile. - Totally. - And just static. - Then that brings me to another beauty headline that Elf the team launches a sub-stack. Okay, so they call it zero distance and it's interesting 'cause I think that the sub-stack for brands is gonna become overdone 'cause when they don't have a personal brand, they lack community for people to care. Like what makes sub-stack interesting is you can speak on-- - You can say controversial change. - Yeah, yeah, and you can like link other products. Like Elf is gonna be focused on doing Elf. But what's interesting about it is that the angle for the first one they launched from the Elf CEO is this kind of idea that's trending of like building in public. And that the trend to get ahead of is engaging with your community on product development, showing the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like looking at your platform as a TV show that people can tune in and see what's happening, why it's happening and what's going on. And then calling it zero distance kind of speaks to this idea of there's no longer a distance between this huge conglomerate and you as a consumer. And we're gonna break down those walls so you know what's happening, what we're working on and what's going on. - Look, it could work, but if the brand problem this is a zero distance, it should be coming from the CEO or from somebody up top, but you know, they're kind of saying, "Hey, this is gonna attract marketers." 'Cause they wanna talk, I don't care what most marketers say. 'Cause they can't say anything. They're terrified, they have to answer to people. So we'll see if they actually deliver that they're saying interesting controversial things or if it's a security way to try to appear intelligently and not really saying anything. - I agree. I don't think that this one's gonna be like the case study of the case studies, but I think it speaks to a trend in the industry that founders need to be ahead of, especially when you are a small business and you're a startup. The power you have is the story you can tell. And that's what a lot of founders are missing is that you're what's happening behind the scenes for you launching the product. I mean, yesterday we went with a good friend of ours launching a tennis brand and we were howling at what's happening behind the scenes. And that's so much equity that she's losing. She's unable to form a relationship with her customer because of this fear of she's not ready to launch. - Like the industry is infected as society is by a fear of saying things that are meaningful. Everybody is kind of putting a finger up saying, can I say this, is this right? And in your own business or your own brand, honestly, be authentic, say things that matter to you and don't worry about it, like everybody we've met here, the amount of people have come up and go, oh my God, you're the only person talking like this. Thank you for saying this. Like we shouldn't be the only people saying real things about what's going on in this industry and it applies to your own business. So don't be scared to say something interesting. So you can be known for something rather than being known for fitting in the crowd. - Yeah, yeah. I just, what we're doing is different than building in public. Right, like we're providing, we've proven that by being real and being authentic and not worrying about being perfect, build a tribe. Right, like that is the proof of what we're doing. To take that further, if you're a business owner, that is lacking resources that is not hailey Bieber, you're not married to Justin Bieber. You know, you know, it's actually crazy too, that all the episodes we did this week of celebrity, whatever, beauty brand founder, hair stylist, it's not that easy. When you know, when you know all these famous people, it's actually, it's kind of like a false indicator of success because you think like, hey, I'm best friends with Oprah and she's for sure gonna post it. They have so many people around them and they're trying to make money off of their likeness that it becomes very awkward and very finicky of who is your real friend when you launch a product and it's the through line on the celebrity side. So the grass isn't always greener and I think that people, if they're like, I have no budget, how can I do this like X? Well, that aside, you actually have a lot of power in showing what they're not gonna show which is the reality of what it looks like to launch a business. Like, yes, right, we were talking with another friend of ours. She's like, is it normal to go through 40 iterations of getting your product to be ready for market? I'm like, you'd be shocked. I'm like, it usually is the standard because when you really care about your product, you're going through multiple iterations. You should be showing that because you're obsessive on making it perfect for the customer. Like, you're not white labeling a product and selling junk to your community base. Like, that's a differentiator. It's not a weakness, it's a strength. - It's a standard thing we're telling people all the time. - Yeah. - Substack, we'll see how it goes. - Yeah, I mean, we'll see how it goes. Well, I think that's what you've just had the CEO of symbiotica walk-in. She's excited for the episode. I think we should keep our other content for next week. Is there anything else that you're dying to talk about? - Lots of good stuff on the horizon. From our perspective, in terms of guests, please, if you're here, like follow, share. - Yes. - Spread the podcast, spread the word. - And we will see, we'll be recording again, this coming Sunday. So we'll be back in the saddle for getting content and next week, oh, we'll talk about it so next week, but next week is Harvard. - We're speaking Harvard, that's it. - You're teaching it, I guess. - It is good. - Legally blind moment. - Have a great week, guys. Goodbye.