The Brands Winning in 2025 Are Doing This

Happy sunday, y’all! The sun now sets later so idk about you, but i am instantly happier.

It’s about to be a good week over here after spending a week with one of my best friends in LA and eating my bodyweight in erewhon’s buffalo cauliflower.

After leaving my apartment keys in LA (don’t recommend), i am into a week of fun and a few things I would love to see some of you at:

1. I’m hosting my second dinner with my pals at Archive this Thursday (3/13) in Manhattan. I have 1-2 spots left. you can learn more about it here.

2. I’ll also be making Shopify’s flagship my home from Friday-Sunday this week to celebrate the launch of my client, GOB. We’re still looking for some beverage donations so if that’s you, hmu.

   1. Friday is VIP/Friends and Family so therefore invite-only. If you work in music, health/wellness, fitness, sustainability, motorsports, events, you can RSVP here.

   2. If you’re someone who loves to party, we’re hosting a daytime rave with our friends, Jigitz, on Saturday afternoon. It’s first come, first serve. You can RSVP here for headcount, but I cannot promise entry.

Alright, enough about me. This week, I quickly want to touch on 5 quick and impactful things I learned at e-tail this year.

If you’re a brand in today’s modern environment, these are for you. We’ll chat through where people are spending their brand awareness dollars, the most important systems you need in place for marketing success, and more.

As mentioned above, the other week I spent 4 days at E-Tail, an amazing conference at the intersection of everything in retail and marketing across content, paid media, and more.

One thing that came up is how to handle similar brands in the same space as you. Are you supposed to pay attention? Are you supposed to stay in your own lane? Is there even a perfect answer? 

When it comes to launching a new brand in any market, I think that looking at what your competitors do well, could be better at or are missing could help you in what you need to focus on as you get your start in the market. You can easily learn from the examples before you, BUT you kind of need a tool to help you do that from seeing past emails, promotions they have run that were successful, assets they have used for paid ads, etc.

That’s why this week I want you all to meet Particl, a tool that has been so helpful in helping me state my "why" behind my social launch plans, certain assets I might need to create and more. 

If you’re a founder or a marketer simply looking to see:

• Marketing e-mails, SMS posts, and social posts from your competitors or like-minded brands

• See when a brand you like is having a new launch, discounts and promotions or if they even discontinued a certain SKU 

• Have a way to actually digest and understand the data you’re looking at vs. just staring at a bunch of numbers and wondering wtf you’re looking at 

This could be your solution to an easy, breezy dashboard to help you create data-driven choices across your marketing from social to paid to email and more. 

Take a looksie at an example below of their new AI Analyzer, Events, and Assets that I have been using. 

So, if you want to move faster and get a sense of your own future by having access to those that have done it before you, you can get two weeks of Particl for FREE right here  and with my code “KENDALL”.

If you end up liking it, you’ll get an extra 20% off your first month because Tanner and his team rock.

If you working in marketing, you should read this section.

Here are a few quick hit takeaways from spending days at E-Tail that are always great reminders whether you’re a legacy brand like Lululemon or just getting start in your journey of launching. I am just going to braindump it because that’s sometimes how I like to do things around here.

Smart Brands Experiment—Are You Testing the Right Channels?

The best brands aren’t just sticking to what worked last year—they’re constantly testing, learning, and adapting. New platforms, content formats, and distribution channels emerge all the time, and smart brands know when to experiment. But not every test is worth running. The key? Strategic experimentation—choosing the right channels based on your audience and goals.

Not every brand needs to be on every platform, but the best brands aren’t afraid to experiment. You don’t need thousands to do this either, which I do feel like is still a misconception. You need to analyze your audience demographics, content consumption habits, and conversion behaviors to determine where to test and then where to lean in more.

• For example:

  • TikTok Shop (while we have it) might not be for every CPG brand, but if you have a product that lends itself to discovery through short-form video and impulse purchases, testing could unlock a new growth lever.

  • Pinterest, while often overlooked, can be a sleeper hit for food and lifestyle brands given its high-intent users and how people use it for discovery.

  • Influencer marketing can look like a bunch of things to a brand whether it’s just going really hard on a product seeding program to create FOMO vs. spending money on actual partnerships.

  • Youtube may not make sense for many to create actual long-form content on, but it doesn’t hurt to potentially activate influencers or post your own short-form content via Shorts.

Things will forever continue to evolve, but how will you?

Strong Brands Are Built on Strong Relationships

At the core of every successful brand isn’t just great products—it’s real relationships with customers, creators, influencers, communities and partners. Consumers can tell when a brand actually cares versus when it's just chasing sales. The strongest brands invest in long-term connections, engage authentically, and turn customers into advocates.

The best community strategies are not transactional but relationship-driven. Treat your early followers, repeat customers, and superfans like VIPs. It feels like we should already know this, but it’s 2025, and some social accounts look like a TV advertisement x 1,000. So, with that said, this also goes into how you create your content. If every single post is a promotion, a sale, or a push to buy, you’re doing it wrong already. Organic social is not the same as paid social. Stop forcing something on people when they might not even know what your brand is about. You need to give people time to get to know you and you need to get to know those who are taking their time to follow you.

So, what are just some easy low-lift ways of doing the above:

• Respond to comments in a meaningful way (beyond emojis) foster stronger loyalty. Have conversation. There’s a reason that community managers have a full-time job. Show up on your account, off your account, and pay attention to who is talking about you at all times. Search yourself on platforms, look up hashtags, etc.

• Show love to your most engaged audience members—surprise them with gifts (access to a new product, a piece of merch), feature their content on your pages or in your emails, or even just DM them a thank-you. Small things go so far.

• Listen to those who follow you. I will keep rewriting this over and over again. Create for your consumer, not your c-suite. Be a feedback magnet.

• Invest in genuine relationships with influencers for everyone’s sake. Audiences can tell when there’s real enthusiasm. Don’t force it.

• Show your face(s). A brand’s “personal” presence matters. An example of this is just one of my favorite series from the team at Glonuts with their Highs and Glows series.

The Systems You Build Will Either Scale You or Sink You

Every brand and marketing strategy is only as strong as the systems behind it. If your workflows, content processes, and influencer programs aren’t built for scale, they’ll eventually hold you back. The difference between brands that grow effortlessly and those that struggle? Better systems that streamline execution, optimize performance, and leave room for creativity.

• If your content strategy is rigid and lives tooooo close to the day to day of content calendar, you might be stifling creativity. You cannot plan months in advance when trends and cultural content exists. I am all for structure, but flexibility allows you to thrive and be nimble to be the first to act on a brand moment and double down on it.

• Your engagement strategy should be adaptive, not automated—if every response sounds like a chatbot, you’re losing authenticity. “AI can replace that” is a red-flag to me to don’t be one of those people.

• If some of your processes are manual and tedious, you’ll spend more time on reporting than iteration or getting ahead. Automation should be leveraged where it enhances insights, not where it replaces one’s best judgement. Make your life easier where you can, but don’t ignore what’s coming from that.

YouTube: The Most Overlooked Growth Channel for Brands

I am sure none of you are shocked since I don’t shut up about Youtube Ad integrations with influencers.

For years, brands have poured resources into Instagram and TikTok, chasing short-term engagement and viral moments. But there’s one platform that consistently drives long-term discoverability, deep audience trust, and sustained conversions—and most brands are sleeping on it. YouTube isn’t just for long-form content anymore; it’s a powerhouse for organic reach, SEO, and even conversion. If you're not leveraging it, you're leaving serious growth on the table if you have a product that’s applicable.

Here’s why YouTube might deserves a bigger spot in your marketing strategy:

• YouTube’s algorithm rewards high-retention content, making it one of the best platforms for brand storytelling whether you’re a brand who can find a way to leverage long-form on your own account or through influencers.

• As we have known for years, YouTube Shortsemerged as a TikTok/Reels alternative that some brands are ignoring—yet it’s where some of the best organic reach is happening.

• Search-driven content lasts longer on YouTube than on any other social platform—a well-optimized video from 2021 can still drive traffic today. This video I worked on went live over 1.5 years ago and still converts.

• YouTube creators often have stronger audience trust than TikTok creators due to the long-form nature of the platform. People (aka me) will watch a vlog for an hour from their favorite vlogger and stay, but with Tiktok, you can see up to 100 influencers in that same period of time.

• Affiliate-based marketing is stronger on YouTube since videos have a longer shelf life, influencers can continue to drive conversions months after posting without having to do extra lifting. With Instagram partnerships, unless they continuously keep posting after the fact or you’re leveraging their content for ads, you’re kind of hoping for the best.

Great Marketing Doesn’t Happen In Isolation

When social, influencer, product, and other teams operate in silos, opportunities are missed, messaging gets fragmented, and growth stalls. The best brands break down internal barriers, ensuring that every department works together toward a unified vision. Collaboration isn’t just nice to have—it’s actually and unfortunately a competitive advantage. Some thoughts:

• Social shouldn’t operate in a vacuum. They should be in the know at all times. Too many times are social teams hit up last minute with a “hey, can we post this” the day of something important and then called out that it could have been done better.

• Customer service and social should be connected considering social media is literally a customer service channel. Don’t have your social media manager and community manager playing CX agent when their time can be better spent elsewhere. It’s teamwork that really makes the dream work.

• Brands that integrate real-time feedback loops (social listening → product tweaks → content updates) build stronger communities. See a specific type of comment coming in? Act on it.

• Cross-functional collaboration makes influencer campaigns more powerful. Example: If a brand's retail team knows they’re launching in Whole Foods, the social team should already be coordinating influencers for an in-store push.

  • You can see how my old client, Laoban, did that.

    • Launch post is here to announce. Influencer content here and here.

• Internal influencer strategies matter too—some of the best UGC comes from employees, founders, and internal advocates.

Influencer Marketing and Organic Social Aren’t Dead—They’re Just Evolving

If you’ve heard someone say, “organic social is dead” or “influencer marketing doesn’t work anymore,” they’re probably just using an outdated playbook. The reality? Both are thriving—just in new ways. Brands that are adapting are seeing some of the best results yet. I also think that saying that is an excuse if I’m going to be blunt. For some brands, it might be easier for a big amount of reasons and sometimes it takes brands time to really learn where they can tap into that resonates. It’s not supposed to be easy. If it was then everyone would be poppin’ off.

What’s actually driving results for Influencer:

• Creator-led paid social – Influencer content repurposed for ads consistently outperforms highly polished brand ads.

• Long-term relationships over one-offs – Sustainable brand-influencer partnerships drive higher trust and conversions. This is why brands pay for multiple posts at once to allow an influencer to take their own consumer through a funnel of hitting on brand awareness, educating them around why they enjoy it, and then getting them to want to try it out.

• Affiliate & revenue-share models – More brands are compensating influencers based on performance, leading to better alignment.

• Micro & nano influencers > Macro - Smaller creators have more engaged audiences and feel more relatable. You can no longer rely on the big name to save you. I heard of a brand wanting to pay an influencer $100,000 before even launching. Please don’t do this lol.

What’s actually driving results for Organic Social:

Well, before we get to that, brands are treating social like a one-way billboard instead of a conversation. Please can we stop talking AT our consumer and starting having a friendship with them????

What actually works:

• Prioritizing community engagement – The brands winning on social aren’t just posting; they’re actively responding, DMing, and commenting.

• Mixing brand-owned content with influencer & UGC (User Generated Content) – The best social feeds feel like a dynamic mix of perspectives.

• Humanizing the brand – Founders, employees, and teams should be visible on social. People trust people, not logos.

• Consistency & iteration over “viral” moments – Organic social isn’t just about hitting one big viral post; it’s about showing up daily and refining over time.

Naturally, there is a ton more that works for both and across all of these points, but I hope these were helpful 🙂 

It’s time for Ahead of The Trend - A quick, snappy ode to the fun things I’m seeing online across creators, social, and brands. Sometimes, it’s a trend. Sometimes, it’s just a tip I want to share about marketing. TL;DR: just cool things I’m loving right now or things you should know.

Brand of the Week: Ripi, a new frozen pasta brand that just recently hit the market. I grabbed it at Pop-Up Grocer and safe to say, it’ll be a new go-to. The sweet potato ravioli with brown butter, rosemary and maple is chef’s kiss.

Products of the Week That I Can’t Stop Using, Eating, Reading…You Get The Point:

• Using: I bought this whiteboard from IKEA and i know it might sound stupid, but i think it increased my productivity by approximately 6,978%, but could be wrong.

• Eating: Pistakio’s new CRUNCHY Pistachio Spread. MY GOSH. It’s perfect. I have always been a fan of the smooth, but i love options. I got to try it at the Snaxshot event in LA last week and cleared two mini jars in less than a week.

• Watching: If you need a laugh, Andrew Schultz’s new special “LIFE” on Netflix is a tearjerker in a multitude of ways.

• Reading: I’ve found myself re-reading some parts of Contagious by Jonah Berger. If you want to learn a bit more behind the psychology of going “viral” and why things catch on, add this to your line-up.

A Random Mix of Things You Should Definitely Know About: If you’re in LA, you need to go visit Gefen and the team at Couplet Coffee and please remember that if you’re a brand right now that the TikTok ban extension end date is April 5th so be mindful in how you’re focusing your time and energy when it comes to content and investments.

THAT’S A WRAP!

As always, thanks for spending some time with me. If you liked it, I would love to hear more about you, what you’re working on and any questions you’re dying for answers to whether you’re launching or been around the block a few times.

My goal of this is to similarly take feedback and making sure you get something in your inbox every week that you want.

If you have a friend or coworker who you think would love to join the part, just shoot them this link - would mean a lot 🙂 https://kendalldickieson.beehiiv.com/subscribe

See you later this week! Also, let me know if you prefer getting these sent during the week or prefer the weekend because i am indecisive <3333

-KD

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