Thriving Through Change: Career Lessons From a Maven of Marketing

BY Erin Behrens | December 20, 2024

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Authentic Marketing That Actually Resonates With Gen Z

Sol de Janeiro’s skin and haircare products might not be in everyone’s house yet, but ask Gen Z and you’ll quickly learn it’s the gold standard for brand authenticity.At its core, authenticity means transparency, communication, and a deep understanding of the consumer base. Interaction with customers is essential for any brand claiming to be “real,” and AdAge has dubbed Sol de Janeiro the darling of Gen Z for passing this authenticity test.Long considered a buzzword, authenticity has proven its worth: it helps build loyal customer bases who return and recommend products to others. In fact, 86% of consumers say authenticity matters when deciding which brands to support. Gen Z especially values authenticity, and brands that don’t adapt risk losing their trust. However, the difference between succeeding and failing at authenticity marketing might be simpler to navigate than it first appears.A Case-Study in Authentic Marketing: Sol de JaneiroSol de Janeiro threw its hat in the fragrance and body care ring just about a decade ago with bright colors to appeal to younger audiences, body-positive messaging, and a diverse, disruptive stance on the industry. It has since become a household name for Gen Z, with a focus on quality and viral skin routines fitting into their desire for an authentic consumer experience.“Our brand ethos stems from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, where we accept, embrace, hug and celebrate everybody, every curve, every fold and every truth,” founder Heela Yang said to the Moodie Davitt Report. “Treating our skin every day comes as naturally as showering or brushing our teeth. It is more than a daily habit, but an exciting and invigorating part of our day.”Advertisement of Cheirosa 59 highlighting the meaning behind its name and its signature scent notes (photo via Sol de Janiero)They used the full breadth of their authentic marketing when they launched their new scent Cheirosa 59 and its accompanying product line in early 2024. The product sold out in store-fronts and online during its launch week.The brand appeals to authenticity by paying homage to its Brazilian roots, featuring diverse body types and skin tones in its imagery, naming most products in Brazil’s native language, Portuguese, and using bright color-coding by scent to make its wide selection easy to navigate for new consumers. The brand goes beyond imagery to build a consistent and recognizable persona.With Cheirosa 59, the brand kept things consistent with naming their scent after a significant year in Brazilian culture, and introducing the new scent through influencer and pop-up events encouraging the testing of the scent's perfume, body butter, and shower oil.The secret to Sol de Janiero’s success in Gen Z with each scent launch is meeting customer expectations, a grassroots approach to social media, and alternating emphasis on body positivity or experiential campaigns. They also offer refills for products at a fraction of the cost to conserve plastic in manufacturing. It appeals to a desire for sustainability and affordability: important qualities in Gen Z audiences.So while they might not be recognized by all generations, for Gen Z they hit a perfect storm of experiential marketing, social-awareness, and trend-setting.Common Mistakes in Authentic MarketingTrying and failing at authenticity can backfire, especially when a company gets called out. It results in bad reputations, losing customers, and being written off as a brand entirely. A poll found that 20% of people have unfollowed brands on social media when they felt they were inauthentic. So how can brands avoid the pitfalls of inauthentic authenticity?At a time when purchases have increasing political implications, Gen Z seeks reassurance that the brands they choose are morally aligned. However, when taking a moral stance is not true to a brand’s persona, it can drive consumers away.A survey of 800 Gen Zers found 47% of respondents agreed that a brand that advertises around an unrelated cause is engaged in no more than a sales ploy. The balancing act of authenticity is a desirable goal, but the real goal is finding a brand-aligned moral stance and sticking to it.The main culprit is a lack of commitment to brand morals. Target serves as a prime example. The company has long touted its support for the LGBTQ+ community through its annual Pride collection, launched in 2013, along with advertisements celebrating Black History Month. This past year, it took a step back from their previously established moral stance, rolling back their DEI and LGBTQ+ support initiatives. This was done out of fear of federal backlash, leading to a similarly negative backlash: boycott campaigns, lawsuits, and a drop in stock price by as much as $27.27 per share. It seems the only thing worse than not taking a moral stance is taking one and eventually backing out. Another common mishap in authentic marketing is passively partaking in trends. “There’s nothing worse than companies jumping on every Twitter trend for likes while ignoring their own actions,” Lynn Rosenthal, CEO and founder of Periscape VR said to Rolling Stone. “Companies need to stop acting like teenagers and realize they have a social, ecological, and ethical obligation to the world. Focus on your customers and workers. That will deliver lasting returns, both financially and socially,” she said.A clear example of Gen Z’s aversion to fake branding morals was their reaction to numerous corporate Twitter accounts posting for International Women’s Day. In response, a bot program flooded the comment sections with reminders about each company’s gender wage gap.Companies often lean on moral stances and trends to prove their authenticity to Gen Z, but low-effort attempts in these areas risk backfiring over time.How to Authentically Market to Gen ZThe most common way a brand will appeal to Gen Z’s authenticity is by giving their brands a face through influencers. However, influencer-based marketing can lead to more problems than revenue. Between over-saturation of sponsored content and managing the reputation of the influencer, there are a lot of ways to go wrong when making a social media personality the face of your brand.Some studies have found that sponsored influencer posts actually drive down brand engagement while unsponsored influencer posts seem to perform exceedingly well in building brand reputation. The difference is a very fine line.The way to create unsponsored influencer content is through focusing on electronic word-of-mouth. By encouraging content creation, exposure, and quality of content surrounding the brand, brands can cater to increases of organic, user-generated content.An example of this done effectively is Cotopaxi, an outdoor gear brand focused on sustainability and accessibility. Most of their branded content focuses on outdoor lifestyles and how their products are made using recycled fabrics. Their sponsored influencer content is posted directly onto their corporate account to avoid claims of  “selling out” while they respond consistently to feedback from consumers in the comment section about product design. Another brand doing this well, especially for Gen Z is athletic clothing company, Gym Shark. Gymshark’s philosophy is to sponsor influencers who create fitness content wearing their clothing, rather than content that deliberately advertises the product. They also focus on long-term partnerships with influencers instead of paying for one-off videos.“It’s all about being authentic,” Gymshark’s Head of PR Stephanie O’Neill said. “The vast majority of Gymshark ambassadors were once fans and consumers of the brand. Who better to represent the brand than those who actually love Gymshark?”It’s no mystery that brands with a two-pronged approach to social media content tend to fare better in terms of building rapport with Gen Z. They have tailored corporate promotions and unique influencer campaigns to make a web of content that creates a feedback loop of normal people making content around the product too. The Case for AuthenticityGen Z, ages 13 to 28, continues to grow as a consumer base. For marketers, the biggest challenge is delivering an authentic, unique experience to each individual within this group.By leveraging transparency in marketing strategies, understanding the consumer base, and having clear communication with returning customers, brands can achieve a more authentic brand experience, but misusing those marketing tactics can always backfire if the brand doesn’t commit fully to using authenticity strategies. Authentic marketing is just one approach to engaging Gen Z and their preferences. It’s important to assess whether authenticity marketing fits your brand or if other strategies might better resonate with this audience.Either way, it’s clear that individuality, consistency, transparency, and communication are the true markers of authenticity that Gen Z values.Willow Pawlisch is From Day One’s summer fellowship reporter. She's a student at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, double majoring in Journalism and Latin American Studies/Language. (Featured photo by Makidotvn/iStock)

Willow Pawlisch June 05, 2025

How to Succeed in Marketing? Show More Respect for the Dignity of Consumers

Not long ago, the air conditioning at this writer’s house was on the blink. That wouldn’t normally be a problem in October, but in central Virginia, daytime temperatures can still register 80 degrees when other states are getting their first overnight frosts. I called a local repair shop, the same one that had installed the heat pump two years ago. Within a few hours, I received a text message with a photo of my incoming technician, his name, and phone number. He arrived on time, called me by name, and identified the problems quickly. One of them was a dirty heating coil. I had two choices, he told me: Pay him $350 for a cleaning, or do it myself with a $3 brush from the hardware store. He’d even show me how if I wanted a lesson.This is what professor Cait Lamberton would describe as a dignified customer experience, the focus of her latest academic work. “It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever worked on,” she told From Day One. “Businesses don’t necessarily understand how profound these experiences are for people, so they get them right sometimes by accident–but they could get them right on purpose.”In her 2024 book Marketplace Dignity: Transforming How We Engage with Customers Across Their Journey, Lamberton, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and her coauthors, Neela A. Saldanha and Tom Wein, argue that “treating your customers with dignity means showing every customer that you value and respect them because of who they are, regardless of what they buy from you or how you engage with their brand.”They developed a three-part, marketplace-dignity framework that applies to every part of the customer journey, from pre-consumption to post-consumption. First, representation: Customers need to feel seen by the firm. Second, agency: Customers need meaningful choices when engaging with the company. And finally, equality: Customers must feel that they’re treated as peers.Marketers will recognize already-codified elements of marketplace dignity, even if they don’t go by that name. This is the kind of thing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission concerns itself with. The CAN-SPAM Act, for example, requires businesses to allow consumers to opt-out of email messages. And last October, the FTC released the final text of its new “click-to-cancel” rule, which requires that companies make it simple for customers to cancel subscriptions, and prohibits them from making misleading statements about how those subscriptions work.Objections to–and Misconceptions of–Marketplace DignityLamberton hears resistance from the business world about implementing this framework that respects customers’ representation, agency, and equality—and she’s sensitive to those objections. Businesses seem to really snag on the idea of customer agency, she said. The first protest she hears is that providing consumer dignity must be expensive. “They assume that this has to do with integrating lots of nice perks at every step along the way or redesigning their entire customer service program so their consumers get everything they want at every step in their experience.” But in some cases, the company already uses components of the framework, but customers aren’t aware. For instance, you may already offer customers a choice they don’t know is theirs to make.“Sometimes people think that agency means lots of choices. It doesn’t. It means lots of control, which is a very different thing,” Lamberton said. She notes that agency can actually be a money-saver. “When a firm says, ‘Would you prefer us to reach out to you by phone or by text?’ Half the time, the consumer is going to choose the option that’s less costly for the firm. It’s possible that by giving the consumer more agency, you’re actually going to cut your costs and make them happier.”Others object to the notion of equality, believing that “they’re going to end up having a battle between two groups of people who both want more voice, and if we give these people more of a voice, then these people are going to be mad because they don’t have a voice.” But this isn’t a zero-sum game, she said.Some believe representation is about ticking a box, like a clothing company that uses models of all shapes and sizes, or a retailer promoting rainbow merchandise for Pride Month. Companies have long been accused of “pinkwashing” every June. That is, capitalizing on Pride while ignoring the well-being of their own LGBTQ+ employees or customers. Lamberton notes that those who fail with representation often misunderstand that marketplace dignity isn’t about “being nice.”No matter their feelings on the consumer-dignity triad, companies don’t get to opt out. Not choosing is still choosing, as the adage goes. “Every interaction you have with your customers has some level of voice, has some level of agency, has some level of felt fairness,” Lamberton explained. “You don’t have the option to say, ‘We just aren’t doing anything about this.’ It’s a matter whether you decide to do it intentionally or not intentionally.”Compare my experience with the HVAC company to another one two years ago. Shopping around for a new heat pump and a company to install it, I called a few to visit the house and offer an estimate. One firm sent three techs to do a one-person job (and charged me accordingly). While tinkering around my house, not only was their chatter among each other crude and mostly about politics and their disdain for those who don’t share their beliefs, they spoke condescendingly to me about their inspection. They presented a menu of options, but told me that only one was the “smart choice.” Of course, it also had the heaviest price tag.That, Lamberton might say, is an undignified experience.How to Practice Marketplace DignitySo, how can a business uphold marketplace dignity? It must be systematic, Lamberton said. “If this is relying on people being nice, there’s no way it sticks. It has to be something for which you can actually audit.” You can measure it like anything else. Firms already survey consumer sentiment on a regular basis, so add a question to your polls: “Do you feel that we respect you?”This isn’t quite the same as net-promoter scoring. Lamberton and her coauthors tried creating a “net dignity score,” but they were never satisfied with the design. The correlation between NPS and a measure of dignity isn’t perfect, she said.Cait Lamberton, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (Photo courtesy of Penn)“In some industries, being respected is really tightly correlated with liking.” She uses Chick-fil-A as an example, where customers say they feel very respected, and they like the company. In other sectors, those scores don’t necessarily match. For example, “there are certain celebrities that are very popular, and people will forward their content on social media—eft, right, and center. Net promoter score: probably pretty high. They have no problem recommending this content to other people, but they don’t necessarily feel that these people respect them.” Banking is similar, where consumers are happy to sacrifice warmth for competence. “Customers may not feel respected by their bank, but that doesn’t mean they don’t see it as a competent business.”When it’s systematized, dignity isn’t “contingent on somebody’s mood that day or some of these other fad-based vacillations,” she said. Marketplace dignity is the remit of more than just the marketing department–it’s a cross-functional responsibility. Dignity is to be upheld at every point along the customer lifecycle: pre-consumption, evaluation, consumption, post-consumption.Discovering the Need for Customer DignityLamberton had an epiphany in 2019, while reading a book by political scientist Francis Fukuyama. In Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, his thesis is that modern ideas of behavioral economics are as old as Plato, who segments soul into three parts: appetite, reason, and spirit. In behavioral economics, however, the first two are recognized (the things we want and the things we need), but the third, spirit, is ignored, Lamberton observed. This is where she identifies the desire for dignity. “I thought, maybe we’re missing something, and because we’re missing something, we’re trying to solve problems using the wrong tools.”Lamberton looked at current events and saw reflections of Fukuyama’s arguments. She watched the riots and outrage following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. “I’m reading one set of reports saying, ‘This is all unchecked emotion. This is irrational.’ I’m seeing other reports saying, ‘This is all a systematic attempt by a highly orchestrated group of leaders.’ I thought, ‘No way, isn’t this driven by a denial of dignity?’ I mean, isn’t that what we saw? Therefore, isn’t this perfectly rational?”She believes that’s why implicit-association training for police hasn’t solved the problems of racism and discrimination (it addresses reason) and why workplace anti-bias training hasn’t either (it addresses emotion). “The problem is actually that we need to figure out how to affirm the dignity of everyone involved.” This idea has undergirded Lamberton’s approach to teaching marketing ethics.Not all industries have a code of ethics, but the American Marketing Association does. It comprises three parts. The first two are to do no harm and to foster and maintain integrity (as Lamberton paraphrases it: “Don’t lie”). Your legal department will take care of those two, she said. As for No. 3: embrace ethical values. “If you dig into [the full text], it says to respect the dignity of the consumer. But of course, we never defined that. If that’s the only unique thing in our ethics that legal isn’t going to cover, then I think we have to talk about it.”When Lamberton picked up Fukuyama’s book, she was writing a commentary on anti-stigmatization cues in marketing. Her first instinct was to write about companies virtue signaling, but she went looking for a challenge to her own ideas. “Maybe there’s something bigger,” she said. That article was the first time she wrote about the idea of customer dignity.As people are more willing to air grievances publicly and divide among political lines, Lamberton believes her work has growing relevance. “I think people are going to continue to be very sensitive to these issues, and I think they should. The good news is that the conversation has sensitized people to concerns for dignity. I’m excited about the fact that businesses are interested because it’s a huge opportunity for them to do something affirmative rather than simply playing defense.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by TommL/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza January 16, 2025

The Brand Manager’s Nightmare: Is Every Purchase Decision Now a Political One?

Starting May 12, Avelo Airlines, a budget carrier, is scheduled to begin flights chartered by the U.S. government to fly from Mesa, Ariz., to El Salvador. The Boeing 737s will be carrying not vacationers but people, in shackles, who are being deported, destined for a known hellhole of a prison.Even before the plane took off, Avelo had touched down in a public relations fiasco. Avelo said it was proud to assist the government, yet all but stated that it needed the business. The company is a startup, an Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) that operates out of secondary airports such as Wilmington, Del. Avelo quickly became the target of a boycott by groups in Delaware, as well as Connecticut and California, where it operates, who accused the airline of transporting people who were being deported without due process. For that same reason, Connecticut’s attorney general, Will Tong, threatened Avelo’s tax breaks and subsidies.A higher-profile company, Tesla, has learned the cost of the controversy created by its CEO, Elon Musk, who spent $250 million to help elect Donald Trump president and then fired tens of thousands of federal workers in his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).The world’s richest man has lost some $150 billion in wealth this year as shares in his car company continue to fall. Tesla reported that its profits dropped 71% and revenue from car ales declined 20% in the first quarter as customers abandoned a brand once viewed as progressive and eco-friendly. But Musk’s ties to Trump have made the Tesla brand toxic. The used car market is flush with Teslas, as owners abandon the company. Tesla owners who can’t afford to unload them display bumper stickers proclaiming, “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”For other companies caught one way or another in the political crossfire—Target, Anheuser-Busch, Costco—it’s a year that offers lots of bad options concerning brand and reputational risk as America’s politics continue get more strained. And pained.Even America as a brand is in play, the golden door having been slammed shut, the world leader now becoming isolationist. The president of the U.S. dissing Canada, geography’s nicest neighbors, has set off a boycott by Canadian tourists that is already apparent in places like Las Vegas, New York, and Florida.  Within this political maelstrom, companies are trying to figure out whether consumers are going to turn every purchase decision into a political one. As for me, I'm just trying to buy paper towels on the cheap.  Does my cereal choice really have to be a commentary on the Trump Administration?  Can’t a hamburger just be a hamburger? Increasingly, the answer is no.The Hazard of Getting Outside the Brand FitOf all the corporate jobs I wouldn’t want to have right now—other than DEI director—brand manager might be one of them. This used to be a fairly straightforward assignment. If you are in charge of say, Ivory Soap, your job is to make sure the brand speaks to purity, cleanliness and motherhood.But in our over-politicized world, virtue signaling and value signaling can trip over each other. And when they do, there’s trouble. We saw this happen, most spectacularly, when Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Lite brand decided to do a promotion with a transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. There was an actual brand fit—Bud Lite has a longstanding marketing presence in the LBGTQ community, just as it does in deep red areas. And given that Bud Lite had run some pretty insipid creative in the past (and I’m talking about you, Spuds MacKenzie), this promotion should have had a half-life of about 30 seconds.But Bud’s umbrella brand image of traditional American masculinity—all of it pulled by Clydesdale horses—was too much for MAGA America, which staged a loud boycott. Bud Lite’s sales tanked until the company counter-programmed with the reddest of red, white and blue advertising. Gay and trans people are still drinking Bud Lite, presumably, but you are just not going to see that highlighted as much. You can call A-B a coward for being bullied, but brands, and the companies behind them, adjust their identities at considerable peril. Consider what happened to BP, the British oil giant that tried to reposition itself as a green energy company.  Then its Texas refinery blew up, revealing the firm’s horrible environmental record. Granted, oil companies did green energy pantomime during the Biden Administration, but they are suddenly oil-and-gas companies again, as opposed to the energy companies.And maybe that kind of honesty is preferable. Resource extraction is a dirty business. If you’re driving a gasoline-powered auto, maybe you shouldn’t expect chlorophyl from a hydrocarbon seller;  just fill’er up, shut up, and drive.But if  you want to know how to do down-and-dirty,  there’s Waste Management, now known as WM, which has managed to raise trash removal to some kind of sacred environmental  mission. WM’s communications all but scream, “We love garbage!” It’s a clear corporate statement that shareholders and other constituencies can understand.How Much Leeway Does a Brand Have?A company’s brand or trademark is often explained in terms of permission: What does your brand or logo allow you to offer customers? Being Budweiser gives you permission to market the beer made by a company founded by a German immigrant—that is now part of a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate—as All-American. But Anheuser-Busch earned that permission over the last 100 years of brand communication. What it doesn’t permit you to do is engage in identity politics, at least not today.And not every brand-marketing failure is caused by controversy. In the 1980s the old-line retailer Sears, Roebuck bought Dean Witter, an old-line stockbroker. The reasoning was that consumers would gladly buy stocks where they buy socks. Because both firms were trusted, went the logic. But people didn’t shop for equities and power tools the same way, wouldn’t you know. Sears had neither mission nor permission to sell stocks.Costco, on the other hand, is an example of a company that had permission from its customers to freely reject the anti-DEI initiatives of the Trump Administration. From its beginning as a membership wholesale club, Costco was green, liberal, worker-friendly and an absolutely first-rate operation. Customers love the place because cheap groceries and merchandising magic are bipartisan. There was no red drain from Costco’s coffers, because the company and its culture were behaving in the way that co-founder Jim Sinegal had executed from the start.Target employees marching in the New York City Pride Parade in 2017. When Target stepped away from its DEI commitments earlier this year, a boycott broke out (Photo by Aneese/iStock by Getty Images) On the other hand, poor Target, the midwestern retailer that’s been a favorite of young families, managed to catch it from both the left and the right by trying to please both. Target’s decision to back away from its DEI program, which included supporting gay rights, infuriated the soccer-mom set as well as Black shoppers. The ensuing boycott has hurt in-store traffic, down 9% in February and 6.5% in March  vs. the prior year, compelled CEO Brian Cornell to seek a meeting with Black leaders to try to repair the damage. The company pledged to buy $2 billion from Black-owned suppliers. But not everyone in the community is onboard.Then we’ve got Ben & Jerry’s, where the corporate owner, the Dutch conglomerate Unilever, just fired the CEO for being too political, even though the brand has a stated mandate to be socially progressive. This in the context of Unilever's decision to sell its ice-cream portfolio, which the company carefully assembled and artfully mismanaged. Co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have offered to buy back the company and return the brand to its progressive roots. Set Chunky Monkey free! That might not matter to people who just want some chocolate ice cream. But if you are part of the company and its community, you care a lot, because the politics are part of the culture.That’s why nobody expects Patagonia to be anything but a fierce environmental steward, because that’s exactly the company that Yves Chouinard created. How fierce? In 2021, Patagonia pulled its business from the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort after a then-owner hosted a fundraiser for far-right, which is to say anti-green, Republicans.Essentially, Patagonia fired one of its prestige customers. You might label that decision as extreme, but it’s also an example of a company living up to its culture and mission. Over the long term, there may be way more value in reinforcing the mission than losing a customer.Bill Saporito is an editor at large at Inc. magazine whose work has also appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post. Previously, he worked as an assistant managing editor at Time magazine and as a senior editor at Fortune. He has written for From Day One on the power gap among labor unions, the myth of the “woke” corporation, and the perils of getting technology and people misaligned.(Featured photo: People take part in a protest on March 2025 outside of the Tesla centre at Park Royal in West London, as part of a campaign encouraging customers to boycott Tesla. Photo by Stefan Rousseau/Associated Press)

Bill Saporito April 30, 2025