“I constantly tell my team that failure is okay. Not everything is meant to succeed. And if you don't try something, you'll never know. Giving permission to test and learn or test and fail has to be part of your culture. Because otherwise, you create a culture of being scared all the time.”

—Jeremy Lowenstein, CMO at Milani Cosmetics

Normalizing a culture that’s not adverse to failure has helped Milani Cosmetics score 10 consecutive quarters of growth and more than $200 million in sales last year. Indeed, for a 23-year-old indie brand competing with larger companies with big budgets and sizeable marketing teams, that’s a key component of the secret sauce. So is operational agility, authentic creator partnerships and an always-on approach toward social trends in the mass color market.

We spoke with Lowenstein about his marketing philosophy, successful social media campaigns, democratizing prestige beauty and fostering a culture built on agility.

There is a common boardroom debate between prioritization of brand marketing or demand generation, our CM columnist writes. But this is a false dichotomy. In actuality, modern marketers are increasingly finding that brand and demand are not opposing forces but rather two sides of the same coin. CMOs hold a crucial role in leveraging both brand and demand to drive business growth. Here are some tactics to help navigate this journey.

AI-driven applications that increase business efficiency have quickly become must-have tools in marketing—from ChatGPT to Zoom AI Companion to Microsoft Bing. However, AI is still in its infancy, which means many of the solutions on the market are engineered for the masses and may not address your specific business needs.

To bridge that gap, some businesses are developing customized AI solutions designed to leverage their unique business data for intelligent automations. One example of this approach is training Generative Pre-trained Transformer, or GPT, models on customized knowledge bases. Check out how to build a GPT for your brand.

Lastly, a real challenge for marketers in today’s hyper-connected global economy will be to handle the sheer volume of data headed our way. By establishing a centralized data hub (CDH), companies can ensure all critical global marketing data flows through one central location and is aligned to serve overall company goals. Here are considerations for building a centralized data hub for your brand.

Until next week,

Kaylee Hultgren
Content Director
Chief Marketer

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