🔥 Something's Off: In Community #120

Your weekly spark centering entrepreneurial leaders, creators, and culture-makers from the rising majority

In partnership with

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

Something’s off.

Everybody’s outside right now — posting, launching, speaking, expanding. New rooms, new deals, new visibility. From the outside, it looks like momentum.

You feel it too.

The work is getting louder. The signal isn’t getting clearer.

The same brands showing up in every moment. The same voices in every room.

More presence. Less precision.

And if you’re being honest, a lot of it looks right — but is it actually working the way it should?

Last week was about the moment you get pulled back in.

That click clack symphony energy — when the right people bring you out of isolation and back into motion. When community reminds you: you’re still in this.

But what happens after that moment?

Because getting back in the room is one thing. Knowing what’s actually worth your energy once you’re there is another.

I think back to a moment I shared recently — when I accidentally ghosted my manager.

Yes, it really happened. I could have fixed it. Kept the rhythm going.

But I didn’t.

Not out of carelessness — out of clarity.

Because I had spent a year and a half investing in something that never really invested back.

And in that moment, I realized: not every relationship deserves to be maintained just because it exists.

Some things continue out of habit. Some out of expectation.

But not all of them are mutual.

👉🏽 And that shows up everywhere — not just in careers, but in how we build brands, teams, and partnerships.

🎥 Something on

I’ve been building my YouTube channel as a space for more honest, in-depth conversations with the people shaping culture, brands, and business.

Not just highlight clips — but the thinking behind the decisions.

If you’re responsible for where attention, budget, or strategy goes, those conversations are built for you.

If this newsletter has been useful, I’d appreciate you subscribing. Not just to support — but to stay connected to a clearer signal in the noise.

👉🏽 Subscribe here.

The Real Risk No One Talks About

It’s not just burnout. It’s misallocated energy.

Budgets going to channels that don’t convert. Partnerships that look right but don’t deliver. Campaigns that appear to perform on paper but don’t actually move people.

Because somewhere along the way, the focus shifts from what works to what’s expected.

And that’s how smart teams end up investing in things they don’t actually believe in.

📌 The Mutuality Framework

If community is the goal, mutuality is the metric.

1. Not every presence builds community

Just because a platform, partner, or channel is visible doesn’t mean it deepens connection.

We’ve all seen brands show up everywhere — and still feel distant.

Community isn’t built through constant presence. It’s built through meaningful presence.

2. Not every partnership strengthens community

Some partnerships expand your reach. Others dilute your signal.

The logos look right. The decks sound right. But the audience can feel when it’s not real.

Community doesn’t respond to proximity. It responds to authenticity — and consistency.

3. Community requires focused attention

Not just from audiences — from you.

Every initiative, every campaign, every new channel pulls from the same pool: focus, energy, care.

When everything gets attention, nothing gets depth.

And without depth, community doesn’t form — it fragments.

4. Invest where community compounds

This applies to people, platforms, and partnerships.

Where are relationships deepening over time? Where is trust actually building? And what just resets every quarter?

👉🏽 Community is one of the few assets that compounds — but only if you invest in it intentionally.

There’s pressure right now to keep expanding. More channels. More partnerships. More presence.

But the leaders who are actually driving results are doing something different.

They’re not everywhere. They’re intentional about where they invest.

Because in a landscape where everything is available, the real advantage is knowing what not to carry forward.

✅ Now Hiring

What you asked for, delivered.

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I’ll be adding roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

ICYMI last week:

💥 Director, Brand & Creative Operations — Chime (multiple other roles across levels)

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad