This week, as part of our People in Business series, we speak to Regina Lakupova, a marketing and UGC expert, consistently sought out by well-known American and international beauty and wellness brands, who talks to us about how brands can build consumer trust.
Marketing and User Generated Content expert Regina Lakupova explains how creator ads help brands build consumer trust, solve content scarcity, and deliver measurable commercial results.
Brands are spending significantly more on creator ads, today it’s a fully established advertising channel, not just a niche tool within social media. While the Creator Economy Ad market was valued at $13.9 billion in 2021, it could reach $37 billion by the end of 2025. This growth is driven by the fact that creators help brands solve several critical challenges at once: ads that go live quickly, look native, and deliver measurable commercial impact, says UGC creator Regina Iakupova. Regina works in the wellness and beauty space, where creator ads are especially in demand. Her long-term clients include major brands such as Ulta Beauty, Nutrafol, Bubble Skincare, and TRESemmé. We spoke with Regina to understand why UGC creators are so effective at helping brands hit their advertising goals and how consumers ultimately benefit.
A Constant Stream of Fresh Content
The majority of advertising has moved to digital, with social media becoming one of its most prominent and fastest-growing segments. This channel places uniquely demanding requirements on creative freshness and variety. Traditional ad production, with its lengthy production cycles, simply doesn’t fit today’s pace. Brands need a fundamentally different kind of partnership, that is flexible and extremely fast. That’s why they’re increasingly turning to UGC creators who can quickly translate a marketing brief into ready-to-use video content.
Regina Iakupova, a marketing and UGC expert, is one such specialist, consistently sought out by well-known American and international beauty and wellness brands. Her ongoing clients, for whom she develops and produces content for new product launches and the scaling of existing lines, include TRESemmé, Ulta Beauty, Bubble Skincare, and Nutrafol. In her videos Regina showcases textures, shares results from personal use, and creates lifestyle integrations adapting her content across platforms including TikTok, Instagram Reels, and paid campaigns.
“Today, it’s not just about having a strong campaign concept — it’s about how quickly that concept becomes working visual content,” Regina explains. “The market runs on constant launches and rapid responses to audience behavior. That’s why professional creators who can work fast without sacrificing quality are so in demand.”
A strong creator effectively replaces an entire mini production studio: videos are shot in 4K with a thoughtful narrative, sound design, pacing, and editing. The entire process is systematic and predictable — Regina uses scripting templates tailored to different product types, along with shooting and post-production checklists. This allows her to manage multiple projects simultaneously without compromising on quality.
When a brand works consistently with a professional creator, content production accelerates and creatives go live faster. In a landscape where speed is everything, the creator-led model has become a key competitive advantage.
Restoring trust in the advertising message
Traditional staged advertising and influencer partnerships no longer deliver the results beauty brands are looking for. When making a purchase decision consumers don’t rely on an idealized image, they trust the real experience of someone just like them. That’s precisely the effect that skilled creator-led content delivers: clear marketing intent doesn’t get in the way of it feeling completely authentic.
“I never think about how to make the product look beautiful. I think about which viewer right now has the same problem I introduce at the start of the video. If someone sees themselves in it, they’ll watch all the way through,” says Regina.
To help a potential customer understand what a product is for, what problem it solves, and why it might be useful to them, a creator needs to show it in a way that’s both appealing and genuinely realistic: through close-ups, texture shots, and application demos. At the same time, every strong creator has a distinct visual signature that makes their work recognizable even when they’re not on screen.
The beauty content Regina creates carries its own unmistakable aesthetic — visible whether she’s demonstrating her experience with moisturizers and cleansers from Bubble Skincare, a popular youth skincare brand, or with serums and shampoos from TRESemmé, one of the best-known and best-selling names in hair care. Her frames are clean and visually uncluttered, keeping the viewer’s full attention on the product. Camera movement is smooth and natural, making videos easy and comfortable to watch. Another hallmark is natural lighting that accurately captures product texture and skin detail. And of course, high-quality close-ups — because beauty content only works when you can truly see it.
When content feels like an account of real, lived experience, it earns far more genuine interest than a direct ad. This is why modern beauty brands can’t operate without high-quality native creator content — content that builds trust, sustains dialogue, and cultivates lasting consumer loyalty.
Delivering real business results
Views and reach are no longer the primary benchmarks for beauty brands. What matters now is whether a video can be pushed into paid media, tested in multiple variations, and scaled without additional shoots. These are fundamentally different production requirements, and they’re exactly what creators with a professional command of performance marketing are built for.
Every video begins with analysis, Regina explains: what specific goal does this video serve, who will see it, and what should the viewer do after watching? A new product launch, brand awareness, driving a purchase — each objective requires its own structure, its own tone, and its own internal emphasis.
“A viewer’s attention is the most valuable resource there is. So when I start building a video, the first thing I think about is the hook,” she says. “What will stop someone from scrolling in the first two or three seconds? It could be a visual element, an unexpected line, a product texture, or a relatable situation.”
Once those opening seconds are locked, the marketing framework takes over: a quick setup of the problem, the product in action — texture, application, result — followed by a clear articulation of value and a final call to action. The video needs to feel organic while also guiding the viewer toward a specific decision, Regina continues. A creator always has that balance in mind — one that calls for both a director’s eye and a marketer’s instincts.
A separate part of the work is producing variations. For every project with her regular clients, Regina assembles a package of multiple creatives: different video openings, different ways of framing the offer, different visual approaches for organic versus paid content. The brand receives a ready-made set of materials for A/B testing — and can immediately determine which hook holds attention better, which call to action converts more effectively, and which format resonates with a specific audience. This significantly reduces testing costs and accelerates time to market.
This is the model Regina has built with Nutrafol, a popular American nutraceutical brand focused on hair health, for which she has been producing a monthly series of educational videos, product storytelling content, and paid social creatives for over a year. Long-term contracts with consistent content output are themselves a signal: brands keep coming back not for pretty visuals, but for material they can put into commercial rotation and measure.
The shift toward UGC creators reflects a broader change in the logic of the advertising market. Brands no longer need to simply exist in the feed — they need content that is fast to produce, earns trust, and drives concrete commercial results. And judging by Regina Iakupova’s work, the role of creators will only continue to grow: as versatile specialists capable of addressing reputational, production, and strategic business challenges all at once.
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