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Recently, I saved a major exclusive story from nearly getting killed at the eleventh hour. After developing the communications strategy, writing several versions of a pitch that a broader team of external partners would use over the course of the campaigns phases, and personally intervening when the opportunity was nearly lost after one of the parties involved fumbled, that same party later said to me, “Thanks for your help.”Help.Twenty years in public relations, including over a decade running a successful consultancy, and my strategic leadership was reduced to “helpa word that carries centuries of loaded meaning for Black women in America. It’s a word that seems disproportionately reserved for people of color, regardless of their role, impact, or level of experience.But this wasn’t an isolated incident. I’ve watched a familiar pattern unfold throughout my career: White professionals are dubbed rockstars for meeting basic expectations and praised for their brilliance for sharing a contrarian thought. Meanwhile, when Black and brown professionalsparticularly women of colordemonstrate exceptional results and seemingly do the impossible, we’re thanked for our “help.” Mislabeling leadership as help is a reminder that excellence isnt always enough to rewrite bias, especially for Black leaders, says Jenny Vazquez-Newsum, E.d.D., a leadership strategist, facilitator, and author of the book Untapped Leadership: Harnessing the Power of Underrepresented Leaders. It reinforces a long-standing systemic flaw that devalues the intellectual labor and expertise of Black professionals. Lets be clear about what help actually is. Help is being a fresh pair of eyes to review slides before a colleagues presentation. Help is picking up slack on a project when a teammate is out sick. What I and many other diverse professionals do every day isn’t help; it’s leadership that drives business forward and enables teams to succeed. The language we use matters. When companies frame Black leadership as “help,” they perpetuate a subtle but powerful form of professional diminishment. This framing doesn’t just affect individual recognition; it impacts career advancement, team dynamics, and business success. It reinforces an unconscious hierarchy where certain professionals are seen as leaders by default, while others must constantly prove their leadershiponly to have it minimized by being characterized as a supporting role. Language can be a subtle mirror of our biases, says Vazquez-Newsum. When we diminish Black leadership to help, we prescribe a subordinate narrative to extraordinary contributions. It undercuts expertise even if couched in good intentions or under a veil of gratitude.This systemic undervaluation has significant business implications. According to research from Russell Reynolds Associates, only 29% of Black professionals with 10-20 years of experience report satisfaction with their level of recognition, compared to 47% of their non-Black peers. Similarly, a LinkedIn survey of more than 2,000 Black professionals found that lack of recognition was a primary driver of turnover, with 33% citing it as a reason they considered leaving their jobs.The cost is substantial to businesses: Companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic diversity are 66% less likely to outperform their peers financially, per McKinsey data. When organizations fail to acknowledge Black leadership, they risk losing the very talent that could drive successwith Gallup estimating replacement costs reaching up to 200% of annual salary for leadership positions. The solution isn’t simply swapping wordsit’s fundamentally shifting how corporate America recognizes and values leadership. Companies must create systems that properly attribute individual contributions and build cultures where excellence is recognized, regardless of who demonstrates it. Vazquez-Newsum emphasizes the broader business implications. “Failing to acknowledge leadership where it exists is a business liability. Bias in language creates an unseen barrier in talent pipelines, costing organizations their most innovative thinkers. What some may dismiss as subtlety, others experience as a powerful deterrent, discouraging the very talent and contributions the companies need to thrive.” She says that companies build a communication culture that fully acknowledges the weight of contributions. It should be standard practice to explicitly articulate the scope and significance of a colleague’s contribution and align it with recognized leadership behaviors. Simple gratitude is not equivalent to adequate recognition.” Theres help, and theres business leadership. Its time for companiesand individualsto recognize the difference.
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E-Commerce
It’s hard for a designer to get the world’s attention at fashion week. But a year ago, the Maison Margiela show went viral thanks, in large part, to Pat McGrath’s makeup, which made models’ skin look like it was made of glass. The show was theatrical. Creative director John Galliano conjured a dark, ethereal universe apparently inspired by the Belle Époque of the late 1800s, when women had tightly cinched corsets, and voluminous dresses with padding that accentuated their busts and hips. Models, including Gwendoline Christie (second from right), walk the runway during the Maison Margiela Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week, January 2024. [Photo: Pierre Suu/Getty Images] But the models didn’t look human. They looked like like otherworldly creatures, with pale skin, small lips, flushed cheeks, and a glossy sheen that made the skin look translucent. It began with a conversation with John [Galliano] about the Seine in Paris, under moonlight, McGrath recalls. We envisioned porcelain dolls coming to life, merging ethereal beauty with a sense of wonder. We wanted to create something that had never been seen before. In the days after the show, TikTok and Instagram exploded as people tried to recreate the look using everything from vaseline to oil. McGrath even entered the fray, sharing exactly how she created the look with special effects water-based glue, followed by gel masks. Over the last year, she’s been working on a product that makes it easy to create the look at home. She releases Skin Fetish: Glass 001 Artistry Mask this Thursday exclusively through her brand, Pat McGrath Labs. [Photo: Pat McGrath Labs] McGrath has actually been tinkering with trying to create this makeup for about four years. The final product comes in a tube and consists of ingredients like glycerin, rose-flower water, and allantoin. You apply it across the entire face like a peel-off mask. The key is to ensure that it is applied evenly, and in three or four layers. I like to apply the mask in thin, even layers across clean dry skin with a taper brush with soft bristles, McGrath says. Let it fully dry before adding the next [layer]you can use a hairdryer on a cool setting or a fan to speed things up. Makeup for the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Garage Magazine. [Image: courtesy Pat McGrath Labs] The final look is stunning, much like the models in the Galliano show. But it is a difficult look to pull off every day, since the the mask can crack if you talk or even smile too broadly. But McGrath says that you can customize the product. You can even just put it on certain high points of your face, she says. Once the mask sets, it forms a smooth, peel-off film that reveals hydrated, glowing skin. Yes, the look is dramatic. But McGrath says that’s the whole point. It’s meant to give everybody the opportunity to create a unique look and express themselves in creative new ways. And given the enthusiastic response to the show, McGrath believes that there are may people who would enjoy wearing this look to a party or a date. It’s a love letter to those who embrace bold beauty, she says. It’s about merging runway-level innovation with real-world usability. [Photo: Pat McGrath Labs] In many ways, this product epitomizes McGrath’s entire brand. The British makeup artist first became a fixture in the fashion world in the 1980s, creating looks for designers like Anna Sui and Versace. Then the business world came knocking. Giorgio Armani and later, Procter & Gamble hired her to create cosmetics. In 2015, she launched her own brand, Pat McGrath Labs, which quickly exploded. McGrath says that her brand is designed to bring the secrets of makeup artists to everyday people. She and her team spend a lot of time coming up with formulas that make it quick and easy to create looks that might otherwise take hours backstage. I took a three-hour process and distilled it into an effortless 10-minute process you can do at home to achieve the same look, she says. Importantly, this mask is actually good for your skin. And this is also key to McGrath’s strategy. It expands our focus on skin-first innovation, she says. [We’re] merging skincare benefits with transformative artistry.
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E-Commerce
Most upstart companies prepping a new product launch would probably not be thrilled to receive a cease and desist letter from an established giant of their field. But as is readily apparent from its insane packaging (not to mention its insane name), the gummy candy purveyor Rotten is not most companies. Last May, founder and CEO Michael Fisher had his signature gummy worms on hand at the industrys Sweets & Snacks Expoand a flyer for a new product: Rottens Gummy Cruncheez, which launch today and bear resemblance to Nerdss uber-popular Gummy Clusters. [Image: Rotten] Nerds and their parent company Ferrara got wind of the product, took a photo of the flyer we had up, and soon after the Expo sent us a legal letter in efforts for us to halt production, Fisher says, adding that, sure, it was a bit terrifyingbut it was ultimately validating. Getting a letter like that so soon after from Ferrara and from Nerds actually gave us a lot of confidence that we might be onto something pretty big here. Nerds has every right to be protective. After all, as Inc. reported in October, those cult-fave Gummy Clusters beloved by Kylie Jenner and others made hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Can a new brand focused on healthier ingredients and utterly wild throwback design get in on the action and take on Big Gummy? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rotten (@eatrotten) CANDY, IN MODERATION According to Rottens website, its candy was developed in a lab by the infamous Dr. Rotten (see here)so when I scheduled an interview with Fisher, I was expecting an eccentric on-brand variant of just that. But in lieu of a shock of gray hair and a general sense of deranged zeal, Fisher showed up rather clean cut and mild-mannered. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved gummy candy, particularly sour gummies, he says. When I started Rotten, one of my best friends from freshman year in college reached out and was like, ‘Ah, this makes so much sense, because you would always have those in your dorm room.’ That dorm room was at Stanford, where Fisher earned a degree in management science and engineeringand where he says everyone was creating some sort of startup. After Stanford, he was a 2019 fellow at Venture for America, a nonprofit that connects young grads with emergent businesses, in his case, the online caregiver supply shop Carewell in Charlotte, NC. [It] was a super exciting opportunity for me to think about entrepreneurship outside of the context of Palo Alto and Stanford, and really get out of that bubble, he says. I just had the most fun I’d ever had doing anything, building that. And I knew I wanted to be able to do that for myself and build my own brand. Fisher had been cutting soda and sugar out of his diet, but missed eating candy on road trips or while watching TV late at night. He tried some zero-sugar and low-sugar gummy alternatives, and was not a fan. He saw a gap in the market for a gummy that was healthier than what was in stores, but didnt feel like it was sacrificing taste or texture to do so. Soon, he found himself attempting to make his own. That really started my journey, he says. Quickly I learned that I was not going to be making this product at home by myself. Gummies are incredibly technical. Fisher found a food science partner mid-2021 to help with the R&D, and they developed a line of regular and sour gummy worms using fruit juices, fruit powders and allulosea non-artificial alternative to sugar found in figs and raisins thats nearly as sweet, but with far fewer calories. The way that we’ve developed our product is . . . to try to be kind of about moderation, Fisher says. You won’t see us come out with zero-sugar products. You won’t see us come out with a product that only has one gram of sugar. And thats very intentional. [Image: Rotten] CREEPY CRAWLERS AND GARBAGE PAIL KIDS When you eat Rottens products, they dont taste like diet candy or a health-food alternative. They taste like . . . candy. But heres the ingenious thing: Given his healthier take on the product, Fisher knew he had to compensate for it with the packaging design. And marketing. And name. Candy is all about indulgence and this kind of release from the mundane, he says. Oftentimes, things that are very healthy don’t deliver on those. And so [I] really wanted to build a brand that felt super fun and exciting and nostalgic. His goal was to create a product ecosystem that felt like it could have its own show on Adult Swim. So, he developed the Dr. Rotten backstory, along with an associated mythology to the candy. He leaned on imagery that would have felt at home in the 80s/90s universe of Garbage Pail Kids and Creepy Crawlersa subset of the omnipresent era that has somehow not been plumbed as deeply as the rest of it. And then theres the name. Yes, people tried to fight him on it. But he was a fan of Liquid Death, which was taking off around the time he moved to Los Angeles. He liked that they had a strong identity and brand positioning. To this day, we get comments on our posts or ads of people saying, Naming a food company Rotten is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, he says. Ultimately, we just keep the mindset of, ‘We’re not going to be for everyone, and that’s okay.’ And at the end of the day, if you hate us and you remember us, that’s a lot more than a lot of other brands are getting. As a market test, Fisher (who to this day is Rottens only full-time employee) launched a Kickstarter in the fall of 2021. He hit his $10,000 goal in four hours, and the project was more than 320% funded by the fifth day. His backers soon became R&D partners who offered feedback and helped iterate and develop the gummies alongside Rotten. In the wake of extensive testing and refinement, the brand formally launched online in October 2023. Today, a rep for Rotten says its in more than 1,000 storesfrom Zumiez to Safeway to Sprouts to Hy-Veeand has sold more than 1 million units. Which brings us back to those Gummy Cruncheez. Like Rottens flagship worms, theyre free from any artificial elements or dyes, and Fisher says they have 60% less sugar than Nerds offering, thanks to ingredients like chicory root fiber, monk fruit, and allulose. True to Fishers palette, there is also a sour option, something the market crrently lacks. His biggest focus for 2025? My vision for Rotten is it’s available wherever you’re buying candy, which is everywhere, he says. Ultimately, most candy purchases are impulsive and happening in storeand so expanding in retail is our main goal this year. One legal letter from Big Gummy was encouraging fodder. Does he foresee a second? I hope not, he says with a laugh.
Category:
E-Commerce
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