Category: Business

Cosmetics brand e.l.f. (eyes, lips, face) is acquiring Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, the skin care brand the model and entrepreneur launched in 2022. The deal is worth $1 billion, according to a press release.

“We can’t wait to bring Rhode to more faces, places, and spaces. From day one, my vision for Rhode has been to make essential skin care and hybrid makeup you can use every day,” Bieber, 28, said in a statement. “Just three years into this journey, our partnership with e.l.f. Beauty marks an incredible opportunity to elevate and accelerate our ability to reach more of our community with even more innovative products and widen our distribution globally.”

Related: Meet the Dermatologist Behind Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s Hit Skin Care Brand

Rhode sells a selection of skin care products (toner, moisturizer, lip peptide gloss) with the goal of making “one of everything really good.” She teamed up with BeautyStat entrepreneur and chemist Ron Robinson and dermatologist Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali to help with the formulations.

“E.l.f. Beauty found a like-minded disruptor in Rhode,” said e.l.f. Chairman and CEO Tarang Amin, in a statement. “Rhode further diversifies our portfolio with a fast-growing brand that makes the best of prestige accessible. We are excited by Rhode’s ability to break beauty barriers, fully aligning with e.l.f. Beauty’s vision to create a different kind of company.”

“Rhode is a beautiful brand that we believe is ready for rocketship growth,” Amin added.

Related: Serena Williams Launches a New Company That She’s Been Working on for 6 Years

Rhode reported $212 million in net sales in the 12 months ended March 31, 2025, and plans to launch in Sephora throughout North America and the U.K. before the end of the year, according to the statement.

Bieber said she is stepping into an “expanded role of Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation.”

Rhode was the No. 1 skin care brand in Earned Media Value in 2024, representing 367% year-over-year EMV growth, according to the release.

E.l.f. Cosmetics was founded in 2004 (originally everything was only $1!) and has reported 23 straight quarters of growth.

The sale has been approved by the e.l.f. Beauty Board of Directors, according to the release.

Related: Is Selena Gomez the Next Beauty Billionaire? Rare Beauty, Worth Around $2 Billion, Is Reportedly Up for Sale

Your marketing strategy may be stuck in 2025.

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AI is no longer just helping B2B buyers; it’s making decisions for them.

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Next week I have a speaking engagement to share with a room of professionals about ‘AI’. It is such a big subject and everyone seems to be talking about it. It reminds me of back in the day when the Internet was in its infancy. All talk but not so much action.

I thought it would be interesting for my readers to learn a little bit about what I have learned and how I am using AI to massively improve my productivity. I will split my presentation into sections on particular business functions. I will be focussing on:

“How do I grow my business cost effectively when I just don’t have enough hours in the day?”

Marketing – always more to do, never enough budget – and how do I stand out from the rest. AI is a game changer – especially for a start-up or Entrepreneur who is still trying to do a lot themselves.

There is still a place for experience, creativity, and human emotion.

When you think about ‘where should I start?’ consider what is the one bottleneck in your business that if you solved it – life would become easier.

Below, I explore look at how AI tools are revolutionising marketing strategies, with examples of well-crafted prompts that maximise potential – so you can give it a try for yourself. (I might have had AI help me some what with the below). The most important thing to remember is to review what comes back, based on your own experience and who your audience is. Not everything produced by AI is factually correct or right for your brand.

AI-Powered Content Creation

AI tools like GPT-4 by OpenAI are transforming content creation. These tools generate high-quality content quickly, reducing the time and effort required for writing and editing.

• Example Prompt: “Generate a 500-word blog post on the latest trends in digital marketing for small businesses, highlighting the impact of social media and SEO strategies.”
• Benefits: Saves time, ensures consistency in tone, and allows marketers to focus on strategic tasks – but always check it.

Enhanced Customer Segmentation

AI algorithms analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and segment customers more accurately. This enables personalized marketing strategies that resonate better with target audiences.

• Example Prompt: “Analyze our customer database to identify distinct segments based on purchasing behavior, demographics, and engagement levels.”
• Benefits: Improves targeting and personalization, leading to higher conversion rates.

Predictive Analytics for Campaign Optimization

AI-driven predictive analytics tools forecast future trends based on historical data, helping marketers optimize their campaigns for better outcomes.

• Example Prompt: “Predict the performance of our upcoming email marketing campaign based on past campaign data and suggest improvements.”
• Benefits: Enhances campaign effectiveness, reduces wastage of resources, and improves ROI.

Chatbots for Customer Engagement

AI-powered chatbots provide instant customer support and engagement, improving user experience and freeing up human resources for more complex tasks.

• Example Prompt: “Create a chatbot script that guides users through our product catalog and assists with common queries.”
• Benefits: Enhances customer satisfaction, provides 24/7 support, and reduces response time.

Social Media Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis

AI tools monitor social media platforms to gauge public sentiment and gather insights about brand perception. This information helps in shaping marketing strategies and addressing customer concerns promptly.

• Example Prompt: “Analyze social media mentions of our brand over the past month and provide a sentiment analysis report.”
• Benefits: Improves brand management, identifies potential PR issues early, and enhances customer relationship management.

Personalization of User Experience

AI personalizes user experiences by recommending products, content, and services based on individual preferences and behavior.

• Example Prompt: “Generate personalized product recommendations for each user based on their browsing and purchase history.”
• Benefits: Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty, boosts sales, and enhances user engagement.

Conclusion

And there is so much more!  There are tools that help you craft content specifically designed to optimise for search (SEO) perhaps you could get it to help you craft the perfect brand promise, edit images or create great designs… If it is a bottleneck in your business then there is probably an AI tool that is changing the way we do business.

It might be worth practicing. How you write / develop prompts is key… put yourself in the shoes of the reader.

For more insights on how AI is transforming marketing and other industries, visit NaomiSimson.com.

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Also published on Medium.

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ former assistant, Capricorn Clark, told the court that the entertainment mogul threatened to kill her and also kidnapped her when he went to Kid Cudi’s house, where he threatened to kill the rapper who was seeing Cassie at the time.

According to Yahoo! News, during the tenth day of the explosive federal trial of Diddy, Clark shared how she was treated during her time as his assistant, giving details about the times the No Way Out executive had threatened her. During her testimony, she stated that when she was hired in 2004, she was immediately threatened on her first day once he discovered that she worked for his hated rival, Suge Knight, at Death Row Records.

She stated that on the night of her first day of employment, Diddy and one of his security guards took her to Central Park at 9  p.m. and threatened her.

“He told me that he didn’t know that I had anything to do with Suge Knight and if anything happened, he would have to kill me,” Clark testified.

Clark told the courtroom that in 2006, at his home in Miami, he told her that she essentially had no life if she wanted to work for him.

“See, your problem is you want a life, and you can’t have that here,” she alleges Combs said.

She also testified that in 2011, during the Kid Cudi fracas between Diddy, Cassie, and the rapper, she was kidnapped and forced to go with Diddy when he broke into the Day ‘n’ Nite rapper’s house.

“He just said, ‘Get dressed, we’re going to go kill [him],’” Clark stated. After telling Diddy she did not want to go, he forced her to accompany him and his security to Cudi’s place. He allegedly told her, “I don’t give a f**k what you want to do, go get dressed,” before they headed to the residence.

The former assistant also testified that she witnessed Diddy putting his hands on the ‘Me & U singer.’

RELATED CONTENT: Diddy’s $400M Net Worth Is At Risk If Government Seizes His Assets

In the early 1900s, as the automotive revolution reshaped industries, blacksmiths and carriage-makers struggled to adapt. More than a century later, we face a similar inflection point with AI. Just as horse-drawn carriages gave way to automobiles, entire industries are being redefined by algorithms today.

The question isn’t whether your company will adopt AI, but how. And the answer hinges on one critical factor: culture.

Related: How to Create a Workplace Culture That Supports Digital Transformation (and Why It’s Important)

What does an “AI culture” look like?

Building an AI-driven culture isn’t always about buying tools or hiring machine learning scientists. It’s about fostering a mindset where experimentation, learning and human-AI collaboration are core to your company’s DNA. Here’s how to start:

Model curiosity to dispel fear:

Leadership must champion AI, but grassroots innovation is what embeds it into real workflows. At CodeSignal, our engineering team doesn’t just use AI — they build with it. From leveraging GitHub Copilot for complex refactoring to fine-tuning custom LLM agents for internal tools, AI is part of their daily toolkit. And it’s not just engineering. Our marketers, for instance, prototype campaign ideas in Claude and validate messaging variations with Gemini.

The key? Leaders must model curiosity. Share your own AI experiments — and failures — with your team. CodeSignal has a Slack channel dedicated to experimentation with LLMs, where team members share how they’ve been using AI and what they’re learning (“productivity hacks” are a team favorite).

I have been studying AI technology and building AI-native products for over a decade, but this doesn’t stop me from continuing to learn. I regularly share my learnings, from using the latest LLM models for everything from code writing to email writing to image generation, and debate with my colleagues on how different models perform on complex math challenges.

The point of me doing this is to set the example that incorporating AI into your daily workflow doesn’t have to be intimidating, and in fact it can be quite enjoyable. It also reinforces that we’re all learning this new technology and figuring out how best to use it to do our work together.

Provide access to the right AI tools:

Today, tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney are free, yet many companies still gatekeep access. That’s a big mistake. We give every team member a ChatGPT Teams subscription, with the expectation that they’ll play around with it and even create their own GPTs to augment their workflow. In the past year, our employees have created over 50 custom GPTs that help them draft sales emails, gather market insights, extract data, answer HR questions and more.

Make AI literacy a core expectation — then build on it:

Giving people access to AI tools is necessary, but it’s just the first step. To create a meaningful impact, leaders must pair access to tools with training.

CodeSignal does this by asking every team member to complete AI literacy training, where they build skills in using and interacting with LLMs with hands-on practice. Our team recently finished a “spring training” in generative AI literacy, where everyone at the company (even me!) completed a series of experiential learning courses online and shared our learnings, questions and ah-ha moments in a Slack channel. We boosted motivation for completing the training by setting up a goal of 95% participation — rewarded by cool new swag when we met the goal.

Next, we’re building on this foundation of AI literacy by running an AI hackathon at our next in-person meetup. Here, team members will break into teams based on how they use AI and their depth of knowledge. Some teams will explore using LLMs to draft creative campaigns and set project timelines, for example, while others will be building custom GPTs to automate actual parts of their job. The machine learning experts on our team, meanwhile, will be working on building innovative new AI applications from the ground up.

The goal here is to set the expectation that everyone uses AI, yes — but more than that, to give team members ownership of what they do with it and the freedom to choose which parts of their job can best be complemented by AI.

Related: AI is the Coworker of the Future — 3 Ways Employers Can Get Ready

The stakes have never been higher

For some organizations and teams, adopting AI will be uncomfortable at first. AI tools raise a range of new technical, regulatory and ethical questions. Many employees fear that AI will displace them from their jobs. That discomfort is real — and it deserves our attention.

As leaders, our responsibility is to guide our teams through uncertainty with integrity and transparency by showing how embracing AI can help them become even more impactful in their jobs. I do this by modeling AI use in my everyday work and openly sharing my learnings with my team. This gives team members permission to experiment on their own and helps move them from a mindset of fear to curiosity about how AI can be a partner to them in their jobs.

To return to the analogy of the automotive revolution: We’re teaching our carriage-makers how to build self-driving cars.

If you’re a business leader, ask yourself: Am I modeling what it looks like to learn and take risks? Am I giving my team the tools and training they need to build AI literacy? Am I fostering a culture of exploration and experimentation on my team?

The AI revolution is already here, and the future isn’t going to wait for companies to catch up. Neither should we.

The speed with which AI entered our lives is phenomenal. 

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I used to think building a community just meant “posting consistently” and praying someone commented. Spoiler: it doesn’t work that way. Whether you’re a startup founder, a SaaS marketer, or a creator trying to keep your small community of audience from turning into a ghost town, community management is hard.

Before I got into content marketing, I dipped my toes into the community world and quickly realized that building real connections takes more than good vibes and emojis. So, I did what marketers do best: I over-researched like crazy. I compared 20+ tools to find the best online community management software to keep people engaged, active, and actually coming back.

Of course, there’s Slack, Reddit, Discord, and even Facebook Groups, but most of those weren’t built to scale or support the kind of branded, intentional community experience I was after.

In this list, I’m breaking down the standouts, from sleek all-in-one platforms to lightweight tools perfect for early-stage communities. Whether you’re focused on user growth, member retention, or just want a place your community actually wants to hang out in, there’s something here for you.

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