The Best of BoF 2025: Setting the Tone

As cultural tones shifted dramatically over the year, against a backdrop of near-constant economic anxiety, beauty brands struggled to strike the right chord. This fact was evidenced by two of the most panned campaigns this year: E.l.f Beauty’s courtroom sketch starring soft-cancelled comedian Matt Rife, and Sephora’s ill-judged Mariah Carey Christmas advert that encouraged reckless spending.

Brands had their own anxieties. The domination of AI meant that search engine optimisation was no longer enough: fluency in generative engine optimisation had to be quickly adopted — with absence from LLM search results proving fatal. Elsewhere, brands took to mastering “vibe” based marketing or completely overhauling their identities in order to adapt.

There were plenty of triumphs, particularly amongst the beauty brands courting Gen Z and Gen Alpha. From MAC tapping the unsignable Chappell Roan, to Aquaphor’s TikTok dominance and the frenetic mall activation of skincare newcomer Sincerely Yours, 2025 proved that brands who communicate themselves well can still be rewarded.

That’s not to say more mature spenders were overlooked, as legacy brand Bliss turned to the skeleton key of nostalgia to unlock its Millennial and Gen X base.

With Gen Alpha’s purchasing power only set to grow, and Gen X having established themselves as power spenders, beauty’s age-based approach is unlikely to go anywhere in 2026. Will marketers stick the landing? We’ll have to wait and see.

Top Stories

1. What Colour Is Gen Alpha’s Millennial Pink? All Of Them. After seeing how beauty’s youngest customer has been drawn to Drunk Elephant’s bright, colourful packages, labels are pushing a string of vibrant launches to capture shoppers’ attention.

2. The Aqua-for You Page. Beauty brands spend billions marketing products to Gen-Z. But their current favourite skin balm doesn’t even have an ad campaign currently running. How is this happening?

3. ‘Gilmore Girls’ and the Art of Nostalgia Marketing. With a ‘Gilmore Girls’ collaboration, Bliss continues its strategy to court Millennial and Gen-X shoppers; in a marketplace increasingly saturated by Y2K references, it may take more than a beloved name to win them over.

4. Gen Alpha Looks for Its Own Rhode. Drunk Elephant may be old news for Gen Alpha, but a wave of new brands, including Sincerely Yours and Yes Day, are hoping to capture tweens’ attention at just the right moment.

5. How to Rebrand Without Losing Your Fans. When growth plateaus, companies may remix their logos, colour schemes and even products in the hopes of appealing to a wider audience or re-engaging their core. But finding a new brand identity can sometimes mean upsetting fans of the old one.

6. ‘GEO’ Is Beauty’s New ‘SEO’. As influencers and consumers turn to the ‘ChatGPT glow-up’ trend for AI-generated beauty advice, brands are rushing to generative engine optimisation in hopes of upping their chances of being recommended.

7. How MAC Signed Chappell Roan, the Anti-Brand Ambassador. Despite setting a monumentally high bar for brand collaborations, Roan has committed a long-term, global deal with the Lauder-owned cosmetics label.

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