Deskside with: Aliza Licht
Insider tips on authentic audience engagement, media pitching strategies, and why your personal brand matters more than ever in 2025
This interview is SO major! We are incredibly honored to have the ultimate PR guru Aliza Licht on Press Pass to share all of her insider tips.
Aliza Licht is a powerhouse in the world of brand building and strategic communications. As a marketer, bestselling author, podcaster, and founder of LEAVE YOUR MARK, she has spent over two decades crafting narratives that resonate in the competitive fashion industry and beyond. Once known as the anonymous voice behind the wildly popular DKNY PR GIRL social media persona (a revelation that earned her a New York Times feature), Licht has transformed her industry expertise into a multimedia brand and consultancy dedicated to helping both businesses and individuals elevate their presence. Her career spans impressive roles including Head of Social Media & Brand Experiences at Warby Parker, EVP of Marketing at alice + olivia, and SVP Global Communications at Donna Karan International. Named among Business Insider's "Top 20 Most Innovative Career Coaches" and featured in Time's "Five Women Who Rule the Fashion World," Licht has become the go-to authority for authentic brand building. She is the author of two books, Leave Your Mark and On Brand: Shape Your Narrative. Share Your Vision. Shift Their Perception, as well as founder of the podcast Leave Your Mark.
In this exclusive interview, Licht shares her insights on navigating today's media landscape, the evolving definition of personal branding, and how smaller brands can make meaningful connections without breaking the bank.
For smaller brands with limited budgets, what are the most cost-effective ways to build brand visibility and generate media interest without spending significant money on traditional PR?
I think for smaller brands, the number one way would be to figure out the right contacts. Getting a subscription to Muck Rack or another database where you can actually identify journalists who cover your market is essential. Direct outreach to these outlets with a tailored pitch, understanding what the journalist actually writes about, looking at their previous work is tactic #1—don’t pitch someone who doesn’t cover what you do. I think a lot of people don't go that route because they don't know how to manage it. But with AI nowadays, you can leverage it by asking for help putting together pitches for local journalists and asking how to properly format it. There's so much you can educate yourself on. I would also be putting together a targeted list of influencers who you can gift product to, or bring them in to experience something. Obviously, it's not guaranteed that they're going to talk about it, but that is a way to bring people into the brand.
Given your experience as DKNY PR GIRL, you are the ultimate pioneer of social media influencing. What social media strategies would you recommend in 2025 for a smaller brand looking to create authentic audience engagement and meaningful brand narrative?
I actually posted about this on LinkedIn the other day! I’m seeing some social media agencies and freelancers really preying on clients who don’t know any better by purchasing bots or using bots to build an audience. Because, just like in PR, the KPI for these agencies/freelancers is follower growth. I recently met with a woman as a potential client who had 12,000 Instagram followers. Looking at her feed, I noticed some posts had only one like. When I dug through her following, I also realized the followers weren’t real people.
First and foremost, understand who you're working with if you're going to trust a freelancer with your social media. I recommend designating an in-house person. Building something in-house is always preferred. Then, understand the landscape and maybe invest in some professional consultation. You could book me for 30 minutes on Intro, for example.
I also recommend understanding the importance of content made specifically for each platform. In the same example of this potential client, she had all of these graphics made on Canva. That's not what works on social media today. Video is the biggest driver now. If you want to reach people beyond your existing audience, you need to be doing video.
Understanding what works is really important, and recognizing that the goal should be community building. Getting a small audience excited and engaged about your product/service is so much more important than follower count. Social media nowadays is based on users' interests. Make sure that you're clear in your branding and offering, and why someone would visit your page. Tap into search by reverse-engineering content so it gets served to people looking for what you offer.
What are the most common personal branding mistakes small business owners and entrepreneurs make, and how can they proactively avoid or correct these missteps?
It's a double-edged sword. On one hand, the founder is what especially separates one brand from another that sells the same thing. I think it's crucial for founders to put themselves out there and connect with their customers.
It should be done, however, in a way where if you're ultimately thinking about scaling this business for sale down the road, you need to make sure as a founder that you can be detached from that brand. Investors want to know: can this brand live on and grow if the founder is no longer a part of it?
This means you need to have a personal social presence as a founder/individual, and you need to have your company social presence. The two can play together at times and cross-pollinate, but they need to be distinct.
What advice do you have for smaller brands on effectively pitching themselves to media outlets in such a saturated marketplace?
I just got off the phone with a journalist where we spoke about media literacy (she even wrote a Substack article on the 25 Steps To Publishing A Feature Article, which you can find here). Brands and publicists need to understand the rules of engagement:
Just because you send someone a product to try, doesn’t mean that they’ll be writing about it. It also doesn’t mean they’re going to like it.
You don’t get to control the headline of an article.
You don’t get to see the article before it’s published.
These are PR 101—when you’re building relationships with media, you have to be respectful. It's a little church and state in that way. I just had a conversation on my podcast where we discussed a situation where someone on LinkedIn had just posted that their brand was inviting a journalist to cover an event, but wanted to know their social media deliverables on their personal social media for covering the event. As a brand, you cannot dictate that.
I had the opportunity to listen to a presentation from you at Teen Vogue University during a pivotal time in exploring different career avenues in journalism. Part of our community on Press Pass is in this same phase of life—what would you say is the singular, most transformative piece of career advice you could give her?
Obviously, Leave Your Mark is still a great resource for that younger audience. But the reason I wrote On Brand was to take that Leave Your Mark reader and age them up a bit as they progress through their career.
I was just in Dallas doing a talk for On Brand, and during a book signing beforehand, someone came up to me and mentioned that her company had told her she needs to work on her personal brand, but she didn't know what that meant. I found that incredibly interesting because it goes back to redefining what it means to have a personal brand. I think there's a lot of misconception about personal branding being reserved just for influencers and celebrities. It's not. It's about making sure you're shaping your narrative, that people understand your value, and that you're visible in your organization.
When I do these talks for companies and corporate employees, the organizations brave enough to bring me in are often worried about their employees leaving if they build their personal brand. In reality, there's a way to build your brand within an organization where you add value. It's imperative that people understand that waiting around for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say, "You're so good at what you do, I'm going to give you a promotion" is not a strategy. It's about understanding how you're showing up, no matter what level you are in the food chain.
Many of us, including myself, have thought, "If I put my head down and do the work, they're going to notice." Sometimes that's true, but sometimes you become this invisible person that people take for granted because they know you're going to do the work. That's why On Brand is actually really important for people who are part of companies as well.
Quick Hits
Apps: Video Shop, TikTok Studio, Canva, Noom
Restaurant: Carbone
Current Read or Daily Media Diet: I feel like I read the entire Internet every day. I've always felt that my timeline of people I follow (on any platform) needs to be nutritious and feed me from a knowledge perspective, whether that's news-related or industry-related. I want to see people I can learn from, admire, or who are important to my business. I essentially deliver to myself all the headlines I need to be seeing from across countless outlets, across the spectrum of topics. That's my initial "what's happening in the world right this minute" or "what's happening in the industry right this minute." For diving deeper into subject matter, I have my usual sources. I think there are certain ones you need to keep your finger on the pulse of. From a cultural perspective, I'm never going to give up my New York Post. Ever. Never giving up Page Six. For more serious topics I want to dive deeper into, I follow the Wall Street Journal, The Free Press, and listen to a lot of different podcasts. Media of late has been very disappointing to me in terms of biases, so I've been trying to find new voices to actually listen to. That's been a big shift. The other thing is citizen journalists. There are so many great citizen journalists or news influencers covering things like the Blake Lively case, for example. I'm getting all that intel from TikTok sleuths who are doing an amazing job covering it. I don't need a big media outlet for that. So I have to say, while my screen time is not something we should talk about, I'm very well informed.
Item You’re Eyeing: Maybe because I'm not in the fashion industry anymore, my splurges have shifted from shoes and bags to trips and experiences. We've been trying to do mini trips to bridge the time between Christmas and Memorial Day. That spread of time, especially January through March, is kind of horrible. We just went to Aspen, which was amazing.
Piece of Life Advice: Know who you are and know your values.