Bethany Blair is Vice President of Content at IPSY, where she leads Social, Creator Partnerships, Production, and Events. Her team sits at the intersection of brand, community, and growth, building creator ecosystems that drive both upper- and lower-funnel impact across organic and paid channels. Put simply, Blair oversees a content engine designed to move culture and performance in tandem.
Blair also hosts the brand’s in-house podcast, Hitting Pan. Through Hitting Pan, she engages in conversations with brand founders, celebrities, influencers, and beauty professionals, expanding IPSY’s authority while deepening community connection. Blair’s relationship with the brand runs deep: she began as an IPSY member in 2012, joined its creator program in 2015, and became an employee in 2018. Beauty has always been both her hobby and her profession — and that lived experience informs how she builds teams, partnerships, and platforms that resonate authentically.
Named to our Marketers to Watch list Blair shared her perspective on creator-led ecosystems, operational discipline in content, and the leadership clarity required to scale impact in an increasingly noisy environment.
What book or podcast do you recommend to marketing leaders?
I recommend the book Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. It is simple but powerful. It forces you to clarify the role your brand plays in your customer’s life instead of making the brand the hero. That mindset shift alone has unlocked better creative, stronger messaging, and more relatable content.
How are you and your team currently using AI?
We use AI to drive operational efficiency, not to replace creative thinking. Our job is to connect with IPSY members in a real and personal way, which means the brainstorming, cultural instincts, and storytelling need to come from humans. We believe the best ideas still come from lived experience and real conversations.
Where AI supports us is in the unglamorous but necessary work. It helps us build decks, organize trackers, draft internal documents, and streamline workflows that can otherwise eat up creative time. It allows us to move faster without sacrificing quality. For us, AI clears the runway so our team can focus on strategy, originality, and meeting our community exactly where they are.
What’s a prediction you have for marketing over the next few years?
We’ve spent years chasing scale. I think the next shift goes even deeper into depth. Audiences are more skeptical now. They can tell when something feels transactional. The creators who will lead next won’t always be the biggest. They’ll be the most trusted within specific communities. Some brands have already started moving away from broad awareness plays toward high-trust ecosystems. There’s better conversion because the recommendation carries real weight.
Not everyone is there yet. But over the next four years, I believe brands, creators, and management teams will become far more fluent in impact metrics and adjust their strategies accordingly. Trust will be measured differently, and investment will follow.
I also believe traditional brand channels will lose relevance unless they feel unmistakably human. Polished corporate feeds will struggle. The brands that win will look more like collectives of trusted voices than institutions. It is less about grabbing short-term attention and more about building shared identity. That shift will fundamentally change how teams are structured and how marketing budgets are allocated.
What’s the most innovative or exciting project you’ve worked on recently?
We rebuilt our entire creator ecosystem from the ground up. Historically, the program leaned heavily on mega creators and earned media value. We shifted to a multi-tiered model spanning nano to mega/celebrity talent, including scaled seeding, an accelerator program for high-quality micro creators, affiliate integrations, and in-real-life tentpole events. We still invest in megas, but with more disciplined vetting and three-month testing cycles before extending long-term contracts.
We also expanded outside of traditional beauty creators into internet personalities, moms, lifestyle and fashion creators, and even travel bloggers. Beauty will always be the heart of what we do, but we saw a ton of success with the more niche creators in 2025.
The exciting part was watching efficiency improve while output increased. We reduced spend, quadrupled partnerships, and drove meaningful lifts in traffic and engagement. It was not flashy overnight. It was operational, strategic, and intentional. Seeing it compound has been incredibly rewarding.
We also partnered with Raising Cane’s for an April Fool’s moment where we “canned” their iconic special sauce in a moisturizer jar. It was the perfect mix of absurd and culturally relevant. Landing a collaboration post with Cardi B made it even more surreal and fun for the team.
That single campaign drove over 10 percent of our total annual engagement and earned national pickup, including coverage on TMZ. It was a reminder that when brand, culture, and timing align, the impact can far exceed a traditional campaign.
What’s the most pressing business challenge you’ve faced in the last year and what have you done to solve it?
The biggest challenge was proving and optimizing impact across our team during a rebuild year. We rearranged budget priorities, brought teams together under the content umbrella that historically sat under different leadership, and worked to redefine impact and strategy. Doing this during a significant restructuring was no easy feat, but we have incredible team members that hunkered down and committed to a new way of working.
Instead of defending the old model, we rebuilt with an open mindset looking through a different lens. We created clearer KPI alignment across teams, negotiated stronger usage rights, diversified creator tiers, and implemented tighter reporting cadences. The result was more resilient programs that drove stronger traffic, engagement, and partnership output with improved efficiency. Sometimes the hardest year is the one where you choose long-term health over short-term optics.
What leadership muscle is most important for marketers to exercise?
Strategic discernment. There is noise everywhere right now. Trends, platforms, tools, opinions. Leaders need the ability to zoom out and decide what actually matters for their business.
For me, that means knowing when to chase a moment and when to double down on fundamentals. It also means protecting your team from whiplash. Clear direction builds confidence. Confidence builds better content. The best marketing leaders are calm in chaos and decisive when it counts.
What’s the most game-changing piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
“Build the thing you wish existed and never stop asking hard questions.”
Early in my career, I realized I was waiting for someone to create the program, team, or opportunity I wanted to be part of. Once I started building instead of waiting, everything shifted. That mindset is what pushed me to rebuild our content team model rather than maintain something that was no longer working.
It is easy to maintain. It is harder to construct. But builders create momentum, and momentum creates opportunity.
What gives you energy and inspiration outside of work?
Becoming a mom has changed me in the best way, both personally and professionally. My husband is a stay-at-home dad, and I genuinely love that my son, and soon my two sons, get to grow up seeing that dynamic up close. I hope it expands how they think about roles, ambition, and partnership.
Balancing everything is not easy, and I do not pretend that it is. But motherhood has given me perspective that carries into my leadership. It has made me more empathetic, more efficient with my time, and more motivated to build something meaningful both at home and at work.
I’m also a lifelong beauty enthusiast and expert. I was the kid sneaking my mom’s makeup and testing products with friends before school. Beauty is creative, expressive, and constantly evolving. Being able to work in an industry I genuinely love still feels exciting to me, even years in.
I spent some time as a professional makeup artist when I first moved to Los Angeles, and while I knew early that wasn’t my long-term path, I was determined to have a career in the industry in some way. I feel so lucky to have gotten there over time by collecting different experiences and staying the course – even when it was really hard.
Marketers to Watch is a recognition series that spotlights highly innovative and forward-thinking marketing leaders in the community. If you have someone you’d like to nominate for the series, apply here.
