Gloss & Grit - Polished thoughts. Real talk.

Controversial thought:   Is it time to just... switch back to Facebook? I recently wrote about my midlife calibration — and this might be part of it. I was early- ish on the Facebook scene. Then, I judged it — hard — for being only for older people. Lately though, I’m realizing the content I actually want to engage with is showing up on my Facebook feed. Things like friends finding friends (hello, Red Cross reunion!) and sweet celebrations I never would’ve caught thanks to the black hole that is my Instagram algorithm. Look, I’ve loved Instagram since the beginning. It gave me photo filters! It let me celebrate artistic moments in a simple way. It took me nearly 10 years to convince my sister to sign up (because as it works with most big sisters, what I reco the elder resists 🤣), but once someone else endorsed it — boom, she was hooked. But now I’m going to say something controversial (especially as a marketer): Instagram is no longer social & is starting to feel...

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time hiring for my franchise, Blo Blow Dry Bar  in NYC's Financial District . And in every interview, I share a little backstory: ✨ How long we’ve been around: coming up on 5 years! 📍 Who I am: a little about where I live & what I do 💻 How I work: mostly virtual, thanks to my other career in marketing 🧠 What I’m looking for: be responsible, act like an adult, and leave the drama at the door Naturally, the next question is: "Why this business?" It’s a great question — and like any good blowout, the answer has layers: personal, practical, and a little idealistic. 1️⃣ A Long-Held Dream 🌸 (Minus the Pollen) Back in my corporate days, we’d do visualization exercises at team retreats. Every single time, I’d picture the same thing: me, closing the door to my own shop at the end of the day. For a while, I thought that shop might be a flower store. I love the joy and beauty flowers bring… but my allergies had other plans. ...

Love Bombed at Work: When Boundaries Blur and Affection Becomes Manipulation “Love bombing” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in dating—lavish praise, intense attention, emotional overwhelm. But what happens when it shows up somewhere it absolutely shouldn’t? I was love bombed at work—and it took every ounce of self-awareness and strength not to let the manipulative dynamics change who I am. Let me be clear: I’m not anti-social at work. Some of my closest, most meaningful friendships began in the workplace. I’ve joined (and led) social committees, thrown team happy hours, and genuinely believe in the power of human connection on the job. The difference? Those connections grew organically. What I experienced in this particular environment wasn’t about cultivating relationships—it was about mandating them. There’s a difference between enabling connection and enforcing closeness . And when an organization starts expecting personal intimacy as a prerequisite for professional belong...

The Branded Perspective | Private Label’s Power Play - and What Smart Brands Should Do About It The economy continues its slow contraction—and with it, the rules of the CPG game are shifting again. We’ve already discussed marketing budgets shrink and hiring freeze across the board, pushing more work into project-based engagements. And we’ve acknowledged the disproportionate pressure small brands face compared to their well-established counterparts. But the next phase of this economic cycle? It’s all about shelf consolidation, and the biggest winners are private label brands. Private Label 2.0: From Budget Buys to Category Leaders Gone are the days when store brands were the “cheap knockoff.” Since the 2008 recession, retailers have not only expanded their private label offerings—they’ve improved them. Better taste, better design, better packaging, and in many cases, better positioning. Retailers love private labels because they offer better margins, stronger customer loyalty, and more ...

Bananas, Elephants & Broken Math: A Marketer’s Guide to Margins That Matter I was once in a meeting with the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) of a small company—CFO, COO, CSO, CEO, and me. We were reviewing our monthly results to prep for the board, and when we got to the margin goal slide, something caught my eye. The company-wide margin? It was just the average of each SKU category. 🚨 Yes, your alarm bells should be ringing. 🚨 I carefully asked, “Are we calculating overall company margin by just averaging SKU-level margins?” [Answer: Yes. ] Trying to tread lightly—because this was a big miss—I suggested that to make smarter decisions about portfolio and SKU prioritization, we should consider using a weighted margin to get a true picture of business impact. That suggestion was met with blank stares…and a gem from the CFO: “That would be too hard.” Reader, I bit my tongue. I didn’t say, “Give me two minutes to go back to the slide with our SKU mix and I’ll throw together a bett...

We are entering a new chapter in the consumer goods economy—one shaped not just by inflation or post-pandemic ripple effects, but by sweeping policy changes, tariffs, and a recalibration of supply chains. It’s not just the cost of doing business that's rising—it's the cost of staying in the game. In this emerging landscape, I believe big, established brands will be the inevitable winners. This is the first in a series of articles where I’ll unpack what’s happening, why it matters, and what it means for both brands and the broader ecosystem of grocers, distributors, and consumers. While many of the effects are just beginning to emerge, one thing is clear: we’re headed for a period of contraction, not expansion. Marketing Dollars Will Be First to Go As supply chain costs and tariffs eat into margins, marketing budgets will be among the first line items reduced—especially for brands trying to stay afloat. But here’s the catch: marketing is not just a spend, it’s a lifeline. It...

Marketing’s Great Unbundling: Why Projects Are the New Power Move Project Work Isn’t a Compromise—It’s a Strategy The past few years have pushed many businesses—across sectors—to operate leaner, slower, and more cautiously. As supply chain disruptions, tariffs, and financial volatility continue to pressure the bottom line, many companies have hit pause on hiring, particularly in marketing. Let’s not sugarcoat it: marketing teams are shrinking, hiring freezes are holding, and the people controlling the purse strings are tightening them hard.  It’s not marketing isn't essential - it's because decision makers don't always understand what it delivers. Or worse, they think they do and that it's an easy job.  The abstract nature of brand value, audience sentiment, and long-term loyalty doesn’t translate easily into a CFO’s spreadsheet.   If you’ve ever been asked to quantify the value of brand awareness in a single Excel cell, you know what I mean. And if you’ve ever sugge...