Brands, watch and learn from Addison Rae.

Plus thoughts on Rhode's lip shape campaign, content isn't brand, etc.

Rolling Stone’s Addison Rae feature left me feeling genuinely inspired as a brand marketer in the same way a great brand would. As we continue to move towards people > brands and chaotic maximalism > refined minimalism, the TikTok teen-turned-popstar is the perfect inspiration for a consumer brand in 2025.

People love to say she’s a TikTok influencer who got lucky. They miss the point — one of the strongest superpowers a founder can have is creative vision, and her’s won over Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry without any music — just a moodboard.

The other key superpower of a great founder is a knack for finding the right collaborators to bring it to life. Addison’s crew includes Charli XCX, Arca, Rosalía, Petra Collins, and Mel Ottenberg, who all recognized the brand’s potential. Charli said she was impressed by Rae’s instinct from the moment she met her, when she “burst into the room in Ugg boots and hot pants after parking her pink Tesla in the driveway and exclaimed, ‘Boys are stupid!’ Wait, we should write a song about that!’”

A brand vision is nothing without application across every touchpoint — product, creative, copy, merch, customer experience, content, ads, events, distribution…even hiring, in my opinion. That’s another thing about Rae that impresses Charli — everything she does relates back to the world she’s building. “‘every item of clothing she wears, everything she says in a red-carpet interview, everything she tweets.’” It’s this 360 approach that made it possible for her to completely re-brand in what feels like record time.

Here’s a fun exercise: What would your brand’s car be, and what would be in it? Addison’s is “as chaotic and ultra-femme as her persona. There are Chanel lipsticks and full-size bottles of Ex Nihilo perfumes in the compartment beneath the touch screen. Her back seat has at least one tutu, a wig, an embellished bra she found on Etsy, and a copy of Vanity Fair’s October 1992 issue, featuring a naked Madonna hanging off a pink pool floatie on the cover.”

That said, her transformation didn’t actually happen overnight. Her first attempt at music a couple of years ago flopped. “‘It almost wasn’t even about the song. It was [about] me doing it,’” she said. We all talk about product-market fit, but what about brand-product fit? If your brand identity doesn’t align with your product, it won’t hit. She hadn’t yet built her personal brand enough for people to believe it. Fast-forward a couple of years of strategic brand-building, and her music is topping charts.

And finally, a brand vision must be coupled with a simple yet powerful brand mission to bring it to life effectively. Addison’s is perfect: “All she can hope is that everything she does next will make people feel free and get them to dance.” If your mission isn’t that simple and doesn’t fit in one sentence, I encourage you to revisit it.

Let’s dance!

It’s only a matter of time before she actually launches a brand.

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• Rhode’s peptide lip shape campaign looks like a SKIMS campaign. So far it seems to do a better job of selling the outfits than the actual product. But I’m sure all the effective it-girl UGC is coming!

• Content is not a brand story. Speaking of Skims, brand-builder

  Ana Andjelic
  wrote a case study on how Skims can develop its brand to continue to grow and endure. “Back in the day, Nike grew because it introduced a new running product, but also because it became associated with the emotion of, and around, running. Product is king, but brands with enduring power combine their innovative product with an emotion in culture. Despite the brands massive cultural presence, Skims doesn’t reflect an articulated emotion.” She lays out a few interesting ideas, including marketing Skims as an operating system.

• Affiliate platform ShopMy just raised a $77.5 million Series B. The round was led by Bessemer and Bain and included several influencers who have benefitted from the platform. Premium affiliate really feels like the new primary growth strategy for beauty, fashion and wellness brands.

• Would you buy A.P.C. olive oil? Or have you? The french clothing brand just released its third batch, which is no longer surprising as consumer categories continue to converge. I also realized that A.P.C. stands for Atelier de Production et de Création (production and creation workshop), a broad brand platform to build on. L Catterton acquired a majority stake in March 2023 with the goal of quickly growing the brand from $100M to $300M annual revenue.

• This new water filtration brand wants to be the modern Berkey. I wish it looked less DTC-millennial. Just give me a Berkey that works 😭

• On that note, the millennial brand is officially dead.

P.S. I finally watched Conclave last night and I think it might be my favorite movie of the year? Anyone else? “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith.” So good.