Pork is trying to make pork a thing
Plus: Studs believes experiential is back and has Nordstrom lost its way?
So nice to have some new people here! Thanks to anyone who shared this—appreciate you!
As always, the lens is a best-of-the-best on culture, trends, marketing, etc. What I’m dropping to friends on Slack or finding useful in meetings with brands.
RETAIL
SHOPPABLE HOMES & HOTELS ARE TRENDING -> Feed Me
Shoppable spaces are not new but they are having a moment. Goop just made a Goop Villa at the Colony Palm Beach (featuring a fave, Armadillo). Spaces like this really smart (though I wish the Goop one had more life), especially if you get to stay in them. Perfect for longer exposure to a brand. I’ve fallen in love with many brands while at a hotel, it’s the perfect setting for trials.
STUDS’ FOUNDER BELIEVES IN EXPERIENCES
This interview was so good. I love Studs. Best takeaways: 1) talk to customers—I can’t tell you how many brands don’t do this and rely on ‘data’ but regularly talk to people It’s so important. 2) The section on their value prop. Identifying the need for an end-to-end experience and then naming that an “Earscaping® experience.”—love. 3) “Now is a great time to invest in offline marketing and eventing because advertising costs are expensive,” Bubbers says. “Digital advertising has become very, very crowded — and it's becoming less efficient. Customers are now in a mindset where they are looking for experiences and activities….experiential marketing [is] the most effective [way] to elevate your brand from the rest of the pack”. Like I asked last week, is retail back?!
Ouch. Seems like people are not happy that Nordstrom has essentially turned most of their stores into online order fulfillment centers and consequently have shelved their commitment to customer service. It’s odd because, even today, when you talk to anyone about Nordstrom customer service is what people love most. It’s as if Double Tree stopped serving warm cookies. If you’re going to make your brand about something like this, if you lose it, people notice.
VEJA IS GROWING THEIR RETAIL FOOTPRINT
This store opened last year but it was new to me, maybe to you too? Veja has 5 stores now and is opening a flagship in London. The interiors are lovely, though very consistent. Will be interesting to see if this translates to sales/popularity as I haven’t seen a pair of Veja on anyone I know in a while, and they used to be quite the favorite. They can't be doing too bad, their offices in Paris look nice.
RETAIL MADE FOR WALKTHROUGHS
So many more pop-ups and stores are investing in putting their efforts onto TikTok via walkthroughs. I love this type of content, largely because of what I do, but it does give you FOMO. This one by Lipstick Lesbians (love them) from the Chanel store is good. This Poppi one is interesting (though I’ll never understand Paris Hilton as a DJ). Building for a ‘journey’ narrative is interesting.
This is not news, as One Medical has been redefining the doctor experience for over a decade but I think we’ll see more Studs-like experience in the medical arena pretty soon. It’s already becoming popular to commission your own MRI. As these become more mainstream, you’ll see these spaces on the high street, and getting a workup will be an afternoon activity similar to getting your ear pierced—something fun to do after brunch.
TECH
PINTEREST IS POPULAR WITH GEN-Z -> Feed Me
“Gen Z now makes up over 40% of Pinterest’s global monthly active users… We aim to inspire users and show them how they can use Pinterest in a relatable and actionable way.” Don’t sleep on Pinterest, I don’t think brands tap into it enough and there’s huge engagement.
SPORT
FERRARI, THE FUTURE FACE OF FASHION? -> Feed Me
Ferrari shares are up 13% after Lewis Hamilton. That’s great for them. It won’t be until after the Vegas Grand Prix but still big news for 2025. The rise of F1’s popularity in the US is fascinating. They have an average viewership of over 1M for each season’s 20+ races and 54B views of the #Formula1 hashtag on TikTok. Lots more brands are going to be playing in this space. And since there’s a lot of standing around in this sport it’s RIPE for brand activations. Yes, it’s fast-paced and you want to watch but it goes on a while so you can grab attendee attention. Also, Lewis Hamilton has made his mark in fashion, and F1 stars are fast becoming the equivalent of basketball players in terms of being tastemakers, expect we’ll see more brands tap into this too.
HELLSTAR IS LEANING INTO YOUTH SPORTS -> Brand Year Book
We mentioned that youth sports is getting bigger and getting more investment in last week’s newsletter. And then we saw HellStar, “recently launched Hellstar Sports, a program bringing 7on7 football tournaments (and merch) to students in 5th grade through high school.” More brands coming this way soon.
It’s not clear how this pop-up warrants being in Shoreditch but that’s not the point. This year’s Olympics are in Paris and I, for one, am very excited to see how brands translate their Olympic experiences. Expect to see a lot more sophisticated, more fashion-driven experiences and experiences made for socials (scroll down to the RETAIL section for more on that). If you’re a brand and you’ve missed the window for this Olympics, get ready because the next one is in LA and it’s going to be HUGE.
HEALTH
PRE AND POSTPARTUM IS BIG BUSINESS -> Feed Me
Unilever Ventures invested $6MM in Perelel Health’s Series A this week. They specialize in pre and postpartum vitamins. With the massive growth in women seeking fertility treatments (this market was valued at $22B in 2022 and projected to grow to $68.32B by 2032) and growing awareness of the 4th trimester, (global postpartum products market size was valued at USD 2.22 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand 6.5% from 2022 to 2030) we’ll see a lot happening in this space.
BEAUTY
THE FISHER FAMILY KNOW FRAGRANCE -> Feed Me
Manzanita Capital the family office of the Fisher family, purchased a majority stake in D.S & Durga. We’ve been following this brand for a while, well before their Abbott Kinney store opening and they are a fun one to watch. I love their brand story video—so good. But back to the Fisher fam, they are fragrance powerhouses! Previously invested in Byredo and Diptyque and Malin + Goetz—they have a good nose for good brands too.
MOVE OVER SEPHORA GIRLIES, THE BABIES ARE COMING
Emily had quite a long dive on the baby fragrance space this week, pointing out all the players in this space—no surprise, it’s big money. Baby & Kids Essentials Kit by Barbara Sturm for $210, a baby hair brush by Christofle for $450, a baby wash by Leonor Greyl for $42 Hydrating Milk by Dior for $115, and the list goes on. Luxury kid products are booming in all areas, not just fragrance and body care. It’s expected to reach $73MM by 2034. Nowhere near the fertility space but not small either.
‘MAKE IT BIGGER’ AND COLLAGE ARE TRENDING
These trends are fleeting so not necessarily reflective of a big culture shift on their own but they are interesting to see in comparison to each other. It feels clear that the ‘make it bigger’ trend like the giant Rhode bath bombs, the footlong cookie by Subway and enormous Saie products is tapping into the surreal vibes that AI has us all fascinated with now. But then on the flip side, seeing so many collaging in-person workshops from Saie (again) and New Balance points to people wanting to make things themselves and gather with live humans to do it. I think we’ll be living in this duality for a long time, but it will have different forms.
CULTURE
“She has more than 1.1 million followers counting Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and of those, “92 percent are women between the ages of 18 to 35,” she said. “Marketers don’t get that though. … I’m in this weird vortex of having an audience but no one knows I have that audience,” because many brands still assume that the only people interested in older women are other older women, despite growing evidence to the contrary.” It’s baffling this is still going on.
DATING HAS LOST GEN-Z -> AfterSchool
“The number of paying users on Tinder has declined for the fifth consecutive quarter, with Tinder customers who pay for the app falling 8% from a year earlier to just under 10 million. Match attributed the decline in users to the more expensive pricing plans it released last year and "daily new user softness." This cutesy Gen Z-coded campaign is not going to be enough to turn things around..” It’s pretty cringe. It could be so good.
FRICK! THE FRICK WILL HAVE 14 BARS
The Frick will operate 14 bars when it reopens this spring, but they will have lots of rules, including limited windows of service and a ban on happy hours. Clearly, The Frick doesn’t think sobriety is trending. This falls in line with retailers opening coffee shops and other hybrid forms that consumers like. Museum viewing tipsy is a fun time.
Matt Klein is brilliant. His META trends report is a bit heady but always interesting. I thought this was the stand-out insight for me. It’s ahead of its time, I don’t think we’ll see brands turn to this this year but give it a couple of years and I have no doubt we’ll be here. “In a world aflame, when everything is “wellness,” nothing is. “Imagine if: Mental health edu. in schools is all we really need.” “What if: Optimization is anti-human, denying natural states?” “Empower acceptance as much as betterment”. Just as we collectively turned on ‘girl bosses’, we might see a turn away from the 20-supplement-pills-a-day routine and towards a less-is-more vibe soon enough.
New consumer brands are going to slow down. So will celebrity-led brands. “This week made it clear that venture capitalists have given up on the idea that they’ll make their career finding the next hit consumer marketplace, retail brand or media company.” We’ll see a lot of acquisitions this year too. But where there is acquisition there is change so maybe it will be fun??
FOOD
PORK IS TRYING TO MAKE PORK A THING -> The Hustle -> AfterSchool
The Pork Checkoff is trying to get us all to eat the other white meat with a program titled “Pork and Partners”—you can’t make this up. If you don’t know what a ‘checkoff’ is, it’s a program run/paid for by producers to promote and educate about their goods. Dairy has one too and they are spending hundreds of millions ($400MM in 2021) to target ‘young families and their kids, teens and tweens” but comments on this Instagram account, this ad with Amanda Gorman has 53 sad little likes and the next to no followers on TikTok (this one is marginally better but not much) make me think they do not have it figured out yet. There’s potential here though. This reel is downright hysterical. Brands need to get braver.
FUN TO FOLLOW
This will be a few accounts I started following this week.
Pedro NeKoi - Digital Collage Artist
Will Nielsen - Photographer (particularly liked this with @vegetarianspacestation, a food stylist I follow)
Jules - Tech/trends reporter
JUST FOR LAUGHS
I’ve said this before but Bess Kalb is just the funniest. The Fall of Rome. So good.
This made me laugh but also this is why no one wants to go back to the office.’
“Gen Z is rebranding part-time gigs as ‘poly-work’ amid struggle to make ends meet. “Side hustle” is so millennial-coded.” -> AfterSchool
Ciao!
- Chris