My Marketing Moonie Yaps

If Sailor Saturn had her own skincare brand, it would be peak ethereal beauty with a dark, romantic twist. Like Queen of the Damned but with a little glitter. Hotaru Tomoe, the enigmatic and powerful Senshi of Destruction and Rebirth, embodies mystery, elegance, and transformation—all the makings of many of the bougee skincare lines we know and love. So I came up with Timeless Skincare. My second go at conceptualizing this imaginary brand was an absolute dream, capturing the essence of the romantic goth aesthetic while delivering luxurious, otherworldly products. Lessons from My First Attempt: Finding the Right Balance My first attempt at crafting this brand leaned towards a dark Lolita aesthetic, inspired by Sailor Saturn’s youth and her deep connection to Chibi Usa in Sailor Moon. However, I ran into some hiccups: 💜 Font Pairing Struggles – Finding the right balance between cute and gothic was harder than expected. The typography often clashed with the overall theme, making it di...

How a Brand Collab Fail Became Your Marketing Lesson It’s funny how a terrible experience with a brand can turn into a marketing lesson. When you see a brand collaboration online, it looks seamless—engaging content, aligned messaging, and a well-coordinated timeline across multiple channels. What you don’t see is the meticulous planning, approvals, and months of communication that go into it. I’m saying this as someone has and still is doing social media campaign collaborations between podcast brands, pharma companies and other marketing agencies at her 9-5. But in my experience with GloMelanin, a small black-women-owned skincare brand with effective products that I’ve used for nearly a year, it felt like none of those things happened. So let me tell you what went down (with receipts) so you can learn how NOT to run a collaborative campaign with other small businesses—and what you SHOULD do instead (with receipts btw).