Creative Risks Pay Off

In beauty, fashion, and wider consumer, the dominant hiring pattern for image and creative leadership is internal to industry. The result is brand homogeneity. Similar campaign aesthetics, similar influencer rosters, similar product storytelling.

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What it costs:
Homogeneity is not an aesthetic problem, it is a commercial one. It compresses pricing power, flattens margin, and weakens pull at the top of funnel. Categories where every brand looks the same are categories where the consumer trades down. That is a P&L problem masquerading as a creative one, and it originates in hiring.

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What breaks the pattern:
Cross-pollination, applied with a calculated and transferable approach, consistently breaks the pattern. Nicola Formichetti, a fashion veteran, turning around MAC Cosmetics. Charlie Smith, an R/GA strategist, crossed into luxury as CMO at Loewe during its 5x growth period and now doing the same for Apple's challenger brand Nothing. These are the models to move forward and stay relevant to a changing audience.

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Haus Labs by Lady Gaga:
10% DTC revenue growth in 15 months through creative overhaul alone. The number one bestselling foundation at Sephora. More than 10 billion TikTok views. Allure Best of Beauty. Expansion into 12 European markets.
When Haus Labs approached us, the brief was not to fill a role, it was to reimagine one. We consulted on creative leadership strategy before running a global search for the brand's first Chief Image Officer, tasked with a full identity reset aligned to the founder's codes of vegan, cruelty free yet positioned and presented for significant scalability.

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Where the resistance comes from:
The resistance at the top is rarely about whether the move is right. It is about whether inventing a role or crossing industries exposes the CEO internally. The honest read is that the bigger exposure is not moving. Homogeneity is the quiet default that erodes brand equity while the numbers still look fine, right up until they don't.
Where are you defaulting to the familiar brand image and identity because reaching outside feels like risk, when the real risk is staying inside it?