Executive Overview
In an era defined by commoditization, algorithmic fatigue, and the relentless gravitational pull of the race to the bottom, modern brand stewardship faces an existential crisis. When every product can be replicated, discounted, or replaced with a click, how do companies maintain premium pricing power and cultural relevance?
This central question forms the bedrock of a compelling, guest-only episode of Adspeak by ADWEEK, recorded live at Brandweek 2026. The conversation brings together two distinguished marketing leaders: Paulie Dery, Chief Marketing Officer at AG1, and Victoria Lozano, Chief Marketing Officer at Crayola. Together, they dissect the anatomy of enduring brand equity, moving far beyond superficial product benefits to forge profound consumer connections and lasting cultural footprints.
The dialogue tackles the modern marketer’s most complex challenges: defending premium positioning against cheaper, commoditized alternatives; building authentic, value-driven communities; embedding products into daily behavioral routines; and reframing the competitive landscape not as a battle against direct market rivals, but as a struggle for consumer time, attention, and lifestyle alignment.
Furthermore, Dery and Lozano examine the delicate balancing act between short-term revenue imperatives and long-term brand investment, navigating C-suite expectations, and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in ways that amplify—rather than erode—consumer creativity and trust.
From AG1’s agile, challenger-brand ethos to Crayola’s century-old creative legacy, this masterclass provides actionable insights for modern marketing leaders. It outlines a blueprint for transforming abstract brand purpose into daily consumer habits, sustainable enterprise growth, and unshakeable customer loyalty.
Detailed Chronology: Insights from the Brandweek 2026 Stage
1. Escaping the Commodity Trap: Defending Premium Positioning
The conversation opens with a diagnostic look at the current market landscape. In a macro environment pressured by economic uncertainty, brands frequently default to aggressive discounting and feature-bloat, sliding into a destructive race to the bottom. Dery and Lozano argue that escaping this trap requires a fundamental shift in value perception.
- AG1’s Challenger Philosophy: Paulie Dery emphasizes that challenger brands cannot win on price alone; they must compete on systemic value and worldview. For AG1, the product is not merely a powder or a multivitamin; it is an foundational daily health habit. By anchoring the brand to holistic wellness and rigorous scientific integrity, AG1 justifies its premium price point by becoming indispensable to the consumer’s self-improvement journey.
- Crayola’s Legacy Evolution: Victoria Lozano discusses how a legacy brand protects its turf not by guarding a plastic box of crayons, but by owning the psychological space of creativity. By refusing to let Crayola be reduced to a back-to-school seasonal commodity, Lozano has steered the company toward continuous, year-round engagement, framing creativity as an essential human wellness practice for all ages.
2. Behavioral Integration: Embedding Products into Daily Routines
Moving from high-level philosophy to tactical execution, the CMOs explore the mechanics of habit formation. A brand achieves true resilience when its offering transitions from a discretionary purchase to an ingrained daily ritual.
- The Habit Loop: Dery explains that AG1’s success hinges on morning routines. By positioning the product as the very first decision a consumer makes upon waking, AG1 leverages behavioral psychology to drive retention. The marketing does not just sell ingredients; it reinforces an identity of discipline and vitality.
- Creativity as a Daily Practice: Lozano highlights Crayola’s strategic evolution into experiential and digital ecosystems. By encouraging consumers—children and adults alike—to pick up a medium every day, Crayola ensures that its products are tied to mindfulness, stress relief, and cognitive expression, making them friction-free additions to modern daily life.
3. Redefining Competition: The Battle for Time and Attention
Traditional market research measures success against direct category competitors. However, Dery and Lozano argue that modern consumer brands face a far broader competitive set.
- The Attention Economy: Consumers have finite hours in the day and limited cognitive bandwidth. Consequently, AG1 competes not just with other supplement brands, but with sleep, morning meditation apps, and fitness trackers. Crayola competes not only with other art supply manufacturers, but with digital video games, streaming services, and social media feeds.
- Lifestyle Alignment: To win this broader war, brands must align themselves with the consumer’s aspirations. Marketing must articulate what the consumer’s life looks like with the brand versus without it, elevating the value proposition from functional utility to identity expression.
4. Balancing Short-Term Revenue with Long-Term Brand Equity
One of the most persistent tensions in the corporate boardroom is the friction between quarterly performance metrics and multi-year brand building.
- Aligning with C-Suite Priorities: The speakers address the imperative for CMOs to speak the language of the broader executive team—specifically finance and operations. Growth targets must be reconciled with brand health metrics. Dery notes that performance marketing and brand marketing should not operate in silos; performance captures existing demand, while brand marketing continuously creates it.
- Sustainable Scaling: Lozano shares lessons from her 16-year tenure at Crayola, illustrating how maintaining long-term vision has allowed the brand to weather economic cycles without compromising its core integrity or diluting its pricing power.
5. The AI Frontier: Enhancing Creativity and Trust
As artificial intelligence permeates every facet of marketing and product development, Dery and Lozano tackle how brands must navigate this technological shift responsibly.
- Augmenting Human Ingenuity: Rather than viewing AI as a replacement for human craft, both leaders advocate for its use as an amplifier of consumer creativity and operational efficiency.
- Preserving Trust: In an age of synthetic content and algorithmic saturation, consumer trust is the ultimate currency. The discussion emphasizes that AI deployment must be transparent, ethical, and strictly secondary to authentic human connection.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Anatomy of Modern Consumer Dynamics
To contextualize the insights shared by Dery and Lozano, it is valuable to examine the broader macroeconomic and behavioral shifts defining the modern consumer packaged goods (CPG) and wellness landscapes.
The Cost of Commoditization
According to recent industry data from global market research firms, brands that rely primarily on price-based promotions experience a long-term erosion of brand equity of up to 24% over a three-year period. Conversely, brands that successfully anchor their propositions to emotional resonance and lifestyle alignment command gross margins 15% to 30% higher than category averages.
- The AG1 Growth Trajectory: Under Dery’s marketing leadership and the broader executive team, AG1 has transformed from a niche biohacking supplement into a mainstream wellness staple. The brand’s valuation and market penetration reflect a shift in consumer behavior toward preventative healthcare and daily optimization.
- Crayola’s Ecosystem Expansion: Lozano’s stewardship has transformed Crayola from a traditional manufacturing enterprise into a diversified creative ecosystem. Today, Crayola’s footprint extends far beyond traditional wax products into live-action experiential attractions (such as Crayola Experience), digital content partnerships, and adult-targeted mindfulness kits, driving multi-channel revenue growth.
The Shift Toward Experiential and Habit-Driven Commerce
Modern consumers—particularly Millennials and Gen Z—are shifting their spending away from passive material accumulation toward active wellness, self-care, and creative expression.
- Wellness Economy: The global wellness market continues to expand rapidly, projected to reach staggering multi-trillion-dollar valuations. Within this space, brands that successfully transition from selling a product to facilitating a daily lifestyle ritual enjoy retention rates nearly double those of transactional brands.
- The Creativity Dividend: Psychological studies consistently underscore the mental health benefits of daily creative expression. By framing their products as tools for cognitive well-being, brands like Crayola tap into deep psychological needs that insulate them from generic market competition.
Official Statements and Leadership Profiles
Featured Guests
Victoria Lozano – Chief Marketing Officer, Crayola
With over 16 years guiding Crayola’s global marketing strategy, Victoria Lozano is a pioneer in brand evolution. Her career is defined by the successful transformation of a century-old manufacturing company into a vibrant, multi-dimensional creative ecosystem.
"Building an enduring brand means refusing to let your product be defined by its physical boundaries. At Crayola, we don’t just sell crayons; we cultivate a lifelong relationship with human creativity. When you anchor your brand to a fundamental human need—expression, joy, and mindfulness—you transcend seasonal trends and protect your value in the marketplace."
— Victoria Lozano, CMO, Crayola
Lozano’s deep expertise in category expansion, consumer behavior, and cross-generational engagement has enabled Crayola to maintain cultural relevance across eras, appealing simultaneously to toddlers discovering art for the first time and adults seeking stress relief through coloring and design.
Paulie Dery – Chief Marketing Officer, AG1
As Chief Marketing Officer at AG1, Paulie Dery spearheads the marketing vision for a category-defining health brand. Bringing a formidable track record of building iconic, community-driven brands at industry giants such as Yeti and Uber, Dery specializes in elevating products out of functional utility and into the realm of cultural identity.
"The moment you enter a race to the bottom, you’ve already lost. Consumers don’t rally around a discount; they rally around a worldview. At AG1, our goal is to make foundational health a seamless, non-negotiable daily habit. By focusing on systemic value, scientific rigor, and authentic community, we build brands that people invite into their lives every single day."
— Paulie Dery, CMO, AG1
Dery’s strategic philosophy centers on challenger-brand agility—leveraging community ecosystems, transparent storytelling, and disciplined habit loops to secure long-term consumer loyalty.
Future Outlook: The Next Decade of Brand Stewardship
As we look toward the horizon of marketing evolution, the principles articulated by Paulie Dery and Victoria Lozano at Brandweek 2026 serve as a vital roadmap for enterprise leaders. The coming decade will separate transactional vendors from cultural institutions.
1. The Death of Superficial Purpose
Consumers have grown acutely sophisticated at detecting hollow, performative brand purpose. Moving forward, brand purpose cannot be a marketing campaign; it must be an operational reality. Brands that survive will be those that integrate their stated values directly into supply chains, product design, and daily consumer interactions.
2. The Integration of Community and Commerce
The traditional funnel—awareness, consideration, purchase—is being replaced by continuous, circular community ecosystems. Brands will no longer simply sell to audiences; they will co-create with them. AG1’s reliance on community advocacy and Crayola’s cross-generational engagement model point the way toward participatory brand building.
3. Ethical AI and Human-Centric Craft
As automation and artificial intelligence streamline marketing operations, the premium will shift entirely toward human intuition, emotional intelligence, and authentic creative vision. The most successful brands will use technology to scale personalization while doubling down on the unreplicable warmth of human storytelling.
Conclusion
The masterclass delivered by Paulie Dery and Victoria Lozano offers an essential antidote to the commoditization crisis. By rejecting the race to the bottom, championing behavioral habit formation, and treating consumers as active participants in a shared cultural journey, AG1 and Crayola demonstrate how modern brands can achieve sustainable growth, premium pricing power, and timeless cultural relevance.