Purpose is not a campaign layer. It is how Clinique rebuilt an iconic brand.

I started collecting Absolut Vodka ads in second grade. Not normal for a child. I didn't know what vodka was, what advertising was, or what marketing was. I knew the campaign was telling me a story. I got kicked out of school once because you can't wear alcohol paraphernalia in second grade. I got hooked. I started following Apple campaigns. The combination of creativity, smart thinking, and connection drew me in.

I studied marketing in college and joined Gallup because of their focus on behavioural economics: people say they're rational and are not as rational as they like to think. I was at Gallup for a while. There was one day when I was working with a chief nurse, presenting data, and she started crying. I asked if I'd said something wrong. She said when I hear this data, I know more people are dying under my watch than were before, and it breaks my heart. That was the wake-up: I need to go somewhere where I am as passionate as this woman. I went to business school, then to Apple in the retail group, then made the pivot into beauty with The Estée Lauder Companies, and now Clinique.

Apple connects the dots across every element. Design isn't just product. People associate Apple with design (the iPhone is beautifully designed), and design is bigger and deeper than that. The Apple stores around the world are town halls in many ways. Welcoming people in. Inviting you into the experience of the brand, not only to buy a product or a service and to become part of something bigger.

Every detail was thought about. The team member greeting at the front door, the lighting architecture, the communication, the way a product would be introduced. The crucial thing: equal elevation of the team-member experience and the customer experience. Full holistic design focus, care for every person who was part of it, allowed something magical.

I've been at Clinique for around two years. I felt like I was home. The same application of design and detail, the same care about simplicity. Simplicity means you've done the pre-work, and that you're delivering the best experience to the customer at the end. People say we're a simple brand without realising it's hard, messy work to get there.

The path through Apple, Estée Lauder, Clinique isn't logical to everyone. I believe in great brands and in brands that build experiences bigger than the products they sell. That's what makes the path logical in my brain.

Clinique was founded in 1968 by Dr Norman Orentreich (a leading New York dermatologist, also a chemist and formulator, a brilliant man) and Carol Phillips (a Vogue beauty editor). In 1967 Phillips wrote an article for Vogue, Can Great Skin Be Created?, interviewing Dr Orentreich. The text reads as current as anything today. Orentreich's point: it isn't complicated. Commit to a twice-daily routine of cleansing, exfoliating, and moisturising and you can have the skin you want. You don't have to be born with it. Everyone deserves a second chance at having great skin.

Mr Leonard Lauder saw the vision and together the three of them built Clinique. From day one, allergy-tested and 100% fragrance-free, which was not a thing at the time. The brand launched in 1968 with 117 products, all with a laser focus on creating great skin. Now in my job, I'm like, oh my gosh, that sounds so stressful.

To understand the future of Clinique you have to start with the past. Over 55-plus years the brand has been expressed in different ways, and the commitment to dermatology has been there all the way through; we just haven't always told it that way.

The work over the past period has been not creating a new brand. It's not whiteboard sessions, not new agency briefs to come up with a new way to talk about the brand. It's drawing on the core of who we are and bringing it to life now, more authentically. Reaching someone who needs that message today.

Tell our story and get louder about it. The market for dermatologist brands is growing and trending; not everyone realises Clinique is an authentic dermatologist brand. Before the dermatologists were on TikTok, that was who we are. Get proud, get loud.

Bring in a new generation while caring for current consumers. We have consumers across all age groups; that's a responsibility.

Provide trustworthy dermatological education in a world where TikTok and Instagram are full of skin information of varying accuracy. You can trust this brand. What can we do to help educate on what's happening on skin, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

The current campaign, Where Great Skin Begins, is built around the dermatologist-developed 3-Step routine (cleansing, exfoliating, moisturising) Dr Orentreich put together. Over 50 years, 3-Step is still our most powerful tool for bringing in new consumers and keeping current ones. The users are extremely loyal.

We put out an open call: if you've used 3-Step, let us know. You have to be in the New York area. We have three days because we're moving fast. You have to be willing to talk about something intimate (your skin). We were overwhelmed: people who'd used 3-Step for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and people who'd just started a month ago and were already seeing impact.

Skin hits you at the core. If you don't feel like you look like you, you don't show up the same way and you don't connect with other people the same way. The campaign brings real stories together with the clinical and the science (everything Clinique does is clinically proven) so the emotional and the scientific land together.

Brand equity is everything and you have to know who you are. It's no different from being a human being. La Mer was born from the sea, and the Miracle Broth is at the heart of the brand. MAC is the grunge, the black, another incredible story. The lesson across all of them: be confident in what makes you you, be proud of it, and don't try to be someone else. The most authentic connection with consumers comes from that.

A strong brand DNA, very clearly cascaded around the world, then brilliant regional teams who know the brand in their gut and know what will and won't work locally. Anyone who says they've cracked it doesn't deserve to be believed; it's worth doing well.

The example: we recently launched Even Better Clinical Dark Spot Clearing Serum. One product, one formula, communicated in market-relevant ways. North America: dark spots show up differently across skin tones, so we clinically tested across all skin tones and communicated the clinical efficacy from lighter through deeper tones. China: the desire is crystal-clear, brilliant skin, so the product was brought to life visually with a crystal-egg execution that needed no words.

Almost Lipstick in Black Honey launched in 1971 for the woman of the era. In 2021 someone said Liv Tyler had worn it in The Lord of the Rings. It blew up on TikTok. Every year it's grown bigger. Over the last four years, around 30x growth. A product from 1971 being discovered as the most contemporary, the most cool, by a new generation.

It looks different on everyone, which is pretty magical. TikTok and Instagram open a new way of brand expression, and what I love most is they let the community speak about the brand. It doesn't matter what I say about the brand; it's the experience other people are having. Social allows people to express the brand as they experience it. That's powerful on many levels.

People are people. They want to be seen, heard, and connected with. You can run all the right courses, say all the right things, have all the right development conversations at the right times in someone's career; if a person doesn't feel seen and understood and valued for who they are, it doesn't matter. I've been fortunate to work for leaders who saw me and helped me at the right times. I try to be that as much as I can.

One of the reasons I love what I did at Apple is the same reason I love Clinique: it's all science. At Apple I worked with brilliant, brilliant engineers. At Clinique our R&D experts and the dermatologists we work with are equally brilliant. A simple moisturiser is not simple: the technology, the ingredients, the formulation. In my job I get to learn from these brilliant minds and help bring the work out to more people.

Clinique has Clinical Reality, built on over 55 years of dermatological expertise plus a proprietary AI trained on 3 million face scans from around the world. It analyses 80 points on the face and expresses what's happening on the skin in a simple way. You can access it from your phone or go in-store to one of the counters and work with a consultant. There's a Pro and a Micro version with different diagnostics.

The mission: deliver the best care outside the dermatologist's office. Not to replace the dermatologist. To be the partner, the last stop before you go and the first stop after. Everyone touching the brand has to be deeply clear on the mission. That's Clinique or that's not Clinique gets decided through that lens.

There's an immense value in the human experience and in people. Businesses and brands mean nothing without people. We're all here on this planet for a short amount of time. It's our job, our honour, to do the best thing we can for each other in the roles we're in. One of the best ways to help each other is through the businesses we work with every day. Whether through interactions with colleagues or through the work itself, hold the bigger view.

It's an exciting time to be in marketing. AI is opening many things. We're closer than we've ever been as a world; we can move and innovate quickly. It's like taking my kid into a candy shop: you get to pick out one thing. Go slow. You can't have it all. Go slow to go fast. Take time upfront to be clear about what you're committed to, who you are, what you stand for. Then enter the candy shop and use the tools and innovations to amplify the work.

I'd love to find a way to talk about all the products at Clinique with the right people at the right time, because we believe strongly in all of them. Many were created for a specific skin concern. Marketers have been linear over time: it's the funnel, the hero product, you go with the focus. The world isn't linear. There are hero products and there are smaller products that are, to the right consumer, the most important product in the world. Unlocking that efficiently, at scale, all around the world: that's the work.

Know who you are and don't try to be someone you're not. It sounds trite. In a world of TikTok where trends are prioritised and everything is trending, it matters more to be grounded and centred. You can get shaky watching social. The way not to get shaken is to have the inner strength, the inner confidence. Same is true for brands. You are here for a reason. Don't get caught up in the swirl.