Cultural Relevance in Branding

Looksmaxxing looks like a grooming trend. It isn't. It's the male version of something the beauty industry has always done, and that makes it both more familiar and more urgent than most founders realise. Sources: TikTok internal data; American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2024; ResearchAndMarkets, 2025. You've seen this before "Why does the male version require a briefing when the female version has been running for a century?" Good question. The beauty industry was built, e

How three wellness brands found their white space by seeing the market differently I spent years in tech selling digital products with one-click efficiency. Launch, optimise, iterate, repeat. The work was fast, the metrics were clean, and the distance between me and the end user was... complete. I never knew who bought what I built. I never heard how it landed. I just moved to the next campaign, the next product release, the next optimisation cycle. And then I started working

The shift from aesthetic wellness to measurable health. A conversation with Lisa Tengbom by Paula Ironside. The wellness industry didn't just grow, it expanded into something ambient. It became part of how we signal identity, discipline, even taste. Green juices, cold plunges, infrared saunas, rituals that promise not just health, but a certain kind of life. But as the category scaled, so did a quiet fatigue. Not necessarily with the practices themselves, but with what they r

What Rosalía’s LUX teaches founders about building sacred, human brands in a manufactured world. I remember the first time I heard “Berghain” from Rosalía’s LUX , released in November 2025. I played it on repeat for a week straight. There was something in it, the tension, the restraint, the orchestral swell against her raw voice, that felt timeless. It didn’t sound manufactured. It sounded carved. It shook me in a way that’s hard to explain without sounding dramatic. It fel

Building brands with soul and structure. Four months ago, I made a decision that made complete sense and no sense at all. I left ten years in tech, a world I knew well, a world that trained my brain in systems and scale, and stepped into wellness and beauty. An industry where business collides with identity. Where culture moves faster than product cycles. Where the founder is often the most powerful ingredient in the entire company. I’m not writing this from the safe distance

The wellness optimism era is over. Welcome to wellness overwhelm. For a few years, wellness ran on optimism. Not the sweet, wholesome kind. The caffeinated kind. The kind that said: If you optimise enough, you can do it all. Track everything. Fix everything. Upgrade everything. Turn your life into a dashboard and your nervous system into a KPI. It looked like a hybrid athlete everywhere. Run clubs as social networks. Fitness tourism. Brand races. Brand activations. Brand ever

Why the next generation of wellness and beauty businesses won’t be built on aesthetics, but on non-negotiables Across wellness and beauty, we’re hitting a point of aesthetic saturation. Not just in products, but in faces, lighting, copy, tone.The same skin. The same glow. The same language. Repeated, endlessly. And the data is starting to reflect it. Instagram, once the engine of beauty and wellness brands, now sits at some of the lowest engagement rates across platforms, hov

Why 2026 is the year wellness & beauty founders need to start building on culture, not aesthetics This week I'm writing about something I've been thinking about for months: why aesthetics alone won't differentiate you anymore, and what actually creates brands that feel inevitable. In this piece: 💛 Why everyone looking the same is costing you money 💛 What cultural intelligence actually means (with real examples) 💛 The three forces converging to make this urgent now 💛 How t

And why the right answer is also the smart one European founders might be asking: "Should we build for Gen Alpha too?" My answer: No. Not because the market isn't there. It is. $4.7 billion in the US and growing. Not because the opportunity isn't real. It is. Tweens are buying, parents are buying for them, and the trajectory is clear. But because the opportunity isn't sustainable. And more importantly, because it's not right. Over the past two weeks, I've shown you how Gen Al

And why some brands gallop while others trot in circles Happy New Year! I’m so excited to kick off 2026 with you! This year is all about serving creativity, inspiration, learning, and most importantly, building community. Because it's always better together, right? Now, speaking of new year... anyone else's feed explode with "Year of the Fire Horse" content? Mine sure did. DMs, posts, emails everywhere. Naturally, I got curious, then one Google search turned into a full resea

Why sensory textures are becoming beauty's new language of connection There's a moment that happens when you open a new skincare product. Before the results. Before the routine settles in. Before you even know if it works. It's the moment your fingertips meet the texture. In this article: 💛 Why K-Beauty's sensory innovation is reshaping global beauty expectations💛 How texture has evolved from afterthought to strategic advantage 💛 What beauty brands can learn about creating

Why your next growth strategy isn't about marketing harder, it's about meaning deeper. We're living in a time where people don't just buy brands; they become them. When someone chooses a skincare line, a yoga studio, or a therapy app, it's rarely about the product alone. It's because the brand reflects who they are, what they value, and the life they're creating. This is customer value creation through culture: building brands that transcend function to become symbols of mean