Today’s [beauty] brands rely on intermediaries to acquire and retain customers. Social media platforms and their ad-marketplace counterparts [Meta, YouTube, TikTok], fueled by KOLs and other creative stars of the day, have become the key beneficiaries of brand spend, and strategic focus for the consumer industry, leaving customers to be passive consumers of brand content via third party curation. This results in poorer customer experiences, less innovative products and reliance on intermediar...