Have you ever wanted to start your own business, but you don’t know where to start? Trust me, I’ve been there; it all starts with building your brand. As a business owner of five years who built my brand while in college, I know just how hard it is to build your own brand. I am a makeup artist, and my brand is “Najah Slayed That.”
I began building my brand in January 2020. Little did I know that in just a few months, the COVID pandemic would begin, and life as I knew it would change immensely. Although the pandemic started and everyone had to live their lives inside their homes, I didn’t let that stop me. I chose to pivot. I continued practicing my makeup looks on myself, creating my logo, and the digital media for Najah Slayed That’s Instagram. As the year progressed, and face-to-face contact became more controlled and regulated, I welcomed family and close friends to practice more makeup looks on. This allowed me to gain more content to use for digital branding and invite potential clientele. By 2021, I had established myself in my business and prepared a plan for promoting Najah Slayed That as I entered the college fall semester. So, it’s important to note that when faced with an obstacle, you know how to pivot because your reward is always on the other side.
The first thing you must do to build your own brand is to discover your niche. Ask yourself what you’d like to present to the world. Whether it’s a service, an item/object, or yourself, it’s important to hone in on your product. After discovering your niche, you must decide how you want to package it. For example, if you are aiming to be a service provider such as a makeup artist, you must decide the type of makeup you would like to specialize in. From there you will decide on your presentation. Presenting your product with your desired branded backdrop, certain colours, and signatures of your choice encourages individualism. Presentation is key because it is what draws in your consumer. Deciding on branding like your logo, brand fonts, brand colours, slogan, etc., is what will differentiate you from your competitors and entice your consumer.
Once you have developed your brand, you will then have to promote yourself. The easiest way to promote yourself is through social media and word of mouth. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and tell people about your brand. Especially on a college campus, reach out to your peers and student leaders and ask them to look at your work or follow your social media platforms. Ask your roommate if she wouldn’t mind being a model for your brand. Remember, your customers are out there and waiting for you. You may start slow, but you will grow with time. Following these steps will ensure the success of your brand.
Hello! My name is Najah Black, a graduating senior in Mass Communications with a concentration in Public Relations. I am from Houston, Texas. I am a current Marketing and Development intern with the non-profit organization Genesys Works, where I work in event planning, marketing, and content creation. I am also a content creator popular on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, specializing in fashion, lifestyle, and beauty content. I am a current member of the writing committee of HerCampus SUBR. I am so excited to begin my journey with HerCampus and welcome the chance to express my creativity through this organization.
As the UK’s HFSS restrictions take hold, food brands are losing their oldest emotional shortcuts. In this opinion piece, Loren Aylott of Manchester creative agency Dinosaur explores how the end of sugar-coated storytelling could reshape creativity, culture, and trust.
New year, new laws. It’s the week the industry has been preparing for: the official ban on junk food advertising before 9pm takes effect. The new HFSS regulations aren’t just a line in government policy; they mark a cultural reset. For the first time in modern advertising, a generation will grow up without being targeted by the seductive storytelling of sugary, salty, fatty foods.
The UK’s new HFSS advertising restrictions fully take effect, with a 9pm watershed on TV ads and a total ban on paid-for online promotions for “less healthy” food and drink, the impact won’t be loud or immediate. Kids won’t notice fewer cartoon mascots or glossy food-porn spots, but eventually their emotional and behavioural patterns will quietly shift.
And that shift changes everything for marketers.
The end of indulgence as a shortcut
For decades, food marketing has traded in fantasy, nostalgia, indulgence, and the comfort of “you’ve earned it.” We’ve sold sweetness as self-care and sugar as celebration, wrapped in slow-motion drips, glossy burger close-ups, and impossible perfection. But the old emotional shortcuts are disappearing, and what replaces them will define how the next generation connects with food. This festive season did feel a little quieter, more ‘demure’.
For years, festive advertising has wrapped indulgence in emotion, golden turkeys and overflowing puddings, families framed in warm light, as the soundtrack swells. This year, we saw more emotional connections, more community, and less pudding.
But as HFSS regulations take hold, the traditional language used in all food advertising will face new creative constraints. Expect brands to lean into togetherness, generosity, and ritual rather than indulgence; to show that joy can feel rich even when the food doesn’t. The future of food communication will reinvent “treat culture” and rely more on curiosity. Brands that want to connect with tomorrow’s consumers will have to offer something more nourishing, both emotionally and nutritionally.
The most successful food brands won’t be those that shout the loudest, but those that teach, play, and inspire. Brands that turn food into experience, and as the visual vocabulary of indulgence fades, creativity must work harder to earn emotion.
At first, the change will feel invisible – research from Leeds University found that when supermarkets reduced HFSS placements, shoppers didn’t notice. Yet, HFSS sales still dropped by two million items a day. Behaviour changes quietly when the cues disappear.
Invisible change, lasting impact
Children, too, will be subtly influenced by fewer in-store prompts and a rebalanced media landscape. Fewer sugary signals in their world will mean fewer impulsive habits and more space for mindful ones to grow.
For marketers, that opens up a new creative frontier: connecting through experience, play, education, or storytelling that celebrates curiosity. This is where the creative industry comes in. HFSS isn’t the death of marketing, but an opportunity for brands to think smarter and work harder in this category.
It’s a call for brands to re-evaluate their tone, their role, and their cultural contribution. Hospitality brands like Nando’s are already shifting how they speak, reframing the removal of free refills as a positive, health-first change rather than a loss of fun. It’s a small but powerful signal that transparency and progress can live comfortably alongside joy and flavour.
For agencies, this is a creative and strategic responsibility. The job now is to help brands rethink how they show up through repositioned messaging, a reset of owned-channel strategies, and an exploration of new targeting tactics.
What replaces the sugar rush
This is a massive opportunity to help brands build consumer trust through healthy product messaging and to support some with a shift to bigger, brand-led strategies – whatever the next step, agencies need to encourage clients to use these new rules as an opportunity to behave differently and thrive creatively.
The next generation will remember fewer jingles about chocolate bars and more stories about curiosity, balance, and joy. The brands that grow with them will be those that feel emotionally honest, that teach, entertain, and empower rather than just sell.
When the sugar rush of advertising fades, what’s left has to mean something. The new regulations require brands to grow up alongside their audience, replacing manipulation with meaning and excess with intention.
The next era of food marketing will be defined not by what brands are no longer allowed to say, but by what they choose to say instead. Those who embrace this moment with creativity, responsibility, and emotional honesty won’t just survive the change; they’ll help shape a healthier, more thoughtful relationship with food and prove that constraint, when handled well, can be the most powerful creative catalyst of all.
Value players are elevating their brands defensively against ultra-low-cost rivals such as Shein and Temu, whose business models remain difficult to undercut, even as policy shifts erode some of their cost advantage. For example, value brands Bershka and H&M have reduced the share of SKUs in their lower price tiers across categories and markets between 2023 and 2025, according to data from EDITED.
Mid-market players are tapping into the growing demand for “affordable aspiration” from consumers who remain price-sensitive but increasingly prioritise quality and design. Zara has pioneered this strategy, taking aim at trend-focused shoppers seeking fashionable designs at more affordable prices than luxury ready-to-wear collections.
Premium/bridge and affordable luxury players are seizing the white space created by the increase in luxury prices, which rose 61 percent on average between 2019 and 2025. Many aspirational consumers, also squeezed by inflation and seeking more creative inspiration from luxury brands, are opting to spend their disposable income elsewhere. Brands like Ralph Lauren are capitalising on this shift, increasing focus on categories like outerwear and bags, where customers are familiar with paying more. Similarly, French affordable luxury giant SMCP has reduced reliance on discounting to support the elevation of its brands, which it outlined as a key priority in 2025.
Brand elevation depends on three pillars — price, product and brand experience
1. Price: increasing the share of products in higher price tiers and growing full-price sales
31% of global customers are willing to splurge on fashion, driven by both tangible and emotional factors.
Price architecture: Drive value perception by shifting more of the assortment into higher price tiers and introducing “hero” products in premium categories, reinforcing stronger brand positioning
Discounting: Preserve brand value by scaling back promotions and discounting, ensuring pricing signals remain consistent with an elevated image
Channel exposure: Protect brand equity by carefully restricting distribution through outlets and off-price channels, particularly for signature products
2. Product: improving product quality, durability and relevance
51% of global customers say quality is a key driver in creating a high-end brand perception, the highest of all attributes.
Quality: Elevate customer perception by investing in higher-grade materials that align product value with rising expectations for price-to-quality balance
Design: Strengthen long-term appeal by focussing product development on durability and versatile styling that extends wear and relevance
Collaborations: Expand reach into higher-spending segments by partnering with premium brands, leveraging their equity to enhance desirability and brand stature
3. Experience: elevating perception through retail stores and brand marketing
47% of global customers say a brand’s story is a key driver in creating a high-end brand perception.
Brand marketing: Build stronger resonance by refining brand voice and narratives, and by actively engaging in cultural conversations where relevant
Stores: Differentiate the brand experience by enhancing store formats and visual merchandising
E-commerce: Invest in creating editorial content, elevated visuals and improved customer journeys
Ambassadors: Amplify cultural impact by partnering with aspirational, brand-aligned influencers
Product and pricing adjustments are core to an elevation strategy
Many value brands are retreating from ultra-low-price tiers where players like Shein and Temu increasingly dominate. In the UK, Bershka reduced the share of SKUs priced below £25 (approximately $34) by 15 percent between 2023 and 2025, according to EDITED. H&M made similar moves during this time, reducing the share of bags in this bracket by 25 percent in the UK. H&M has been diversifying its offering with premium ranges and capsule lines, such as H&M Premium and the Studio Collection, as well as collaborations with designer brands.
In the mid-market and premium segments, brands are incrementally increasing core assortments within most price bands. They are also introducing hero products in the higher tiers that create a halo effect that lifts consumer perception of the entire collection. For example, COS released its £1,000 ($1,355) Nappa leather shearling jacket in 2025. This is part of a 9 percent increase in the share of outerwear SKUs priced over £175 ($237) between 2023 and 2025 in the UK, according to EDITED.
Brands should be cautious about raising prices too quickly or steeply, as this can alienate the customer and call into question the balance between quality and value and the brand’s right to play within the price segment. Brands can use consumer research and peer benchmarking to calibrate pricing moves.
Higher prices demand superior quality and refreshed designs
Customers are expected to become more cautious with their spending in 2026. For those who do splurge, they will be paying special attention to signifiers of value for money, such as craftsmanship, durability and sharp creative direction. Brands that raise prices without improving quality or design risk alienating consumers and eroding brand equity.
Creative vision will play an outsized role in proving worth. For example, the wave of luxury creative director appointments at mass brands — including Zac Posen at Gap and Jonathan Saunders at & Other Stories — has injected a higher-end aesthetic into lower parts of the market. Gap also launched the premium line GapStudio in 2025, designed by Posen and featuring items like silk slip dresses and worn by celebrities on the red carpet.
Collaborations offer another route to import design authority and relevance into accessible price points. Partnerships such as JW Anderson with Uniqlo and Victoria Beckham with Mango deliver both credibility and access to a more aspirational audience. These collaborations are often positioned as limited editions, which generates desirability and exclusivity among consumers — even in a more price-conscious environment.
Marks & Spencer:
Marks & Spencer is elevating the style, fabrics and fit of its fashion offering. For example, the brand is leaning into real leather across coats, minidresses, skirts and shoes and is generating excitement by increasing novelty, refreshing two-thirds of its assortment each season while dedicating one-third to core basics. Fashion, Home & Beauty sales increased 3.5 percent in the fiscal year 2024 ending March 2025. Its premium Autograph range performed particularly strongly, with sales up 47 percent over the same period.
43% of global consumers say they care more about quality than ever before, up from 30 percent in 2023.
Uniqlo:
Uniqlo’s elevation strategy is centred around design authority and quality basics. Its premium essentials, such as its affordable cashmere sweater range, provide an alternative to trend-driven fast fashion. In 2023, the brand launched Uniqlo:C, a sub-label by Clare Waight Keller — formerly creative director of Givenchy and Chloé — focused on elevated everyday essentials and outerwear. In 2024, Keller assumed the role of creative director for the entire brand, expanding her remit to include Uniqlo’s core offering. Parent company Fast Retailing’s revenue grew 10.6 percent year on year in the nine months to May 2025, while operating profit expanded to 17.2 percent of revenue.
50% of global consumers say exclusivity creates a high-end brand image.
Product elevation only works when reinforced holistically across the brand experience
Borrowing aesthetic cues from luxury — across campaigns, editorials, photography and retail — can help justify elevated product positioning. For example, COS staged a ready-to-wear runway show at New York Fashion Week in September 2025, signalling its ambitions to extend its brand beyond the high street. While not every mass brand has a credible place on fashion week calendars, COS’ design-led aesthetic makes the case. Meanwhile, Zara’s use of famous fashion photographers such as Steven Meisel and Mario Sorrenti helps position it closer to high-end fashion.
Redesigned retail environments can offer similar signals and in-store service adds further weight. Aritzia’s personal style advisor approach to customer service is the backbone of its store experience, offering a high-touch styling journey like luxury department stores, which reinforces its premium positioning.
The same principles extend online. Websites and apps increasingly reflect elevated positioning through streamlined interfaces, lifestyle-driven storytelling and immersive visuals that replace function-focused user experiences.
There is a 76% correlation between a positive store experience and consumers’ perception of a brand as premium.
Zara’s High-Tech Concept Store:
In August 2025, Zara reopened its Manchester flagship in the UK with a new concept designed in an elevated format.The layout includes a series of curated rooms, each dedicated to collections such as Zara Origins, highlighting higher-value product lines. This zoning approach borrows from luxury retail, moving away from the uniform mass-market feel typical of fast fashion.
Technology is central to the redesign. Automated product sorting from fitting rooms to online orders, assisted return stations and app integration reduce friction and allow staff to spend more time on high-value customer interactions.
There is an 87% correlation between memorable and creative advertising campaigns and consumers’ perception of a brand as premium.
How should executives respond to these shifts?
Redesign product pyramids to signal elevated positioning
Build a product pyramid informed by consumer insights, balancing core assortments for the existing customer base with premium tiers aimed at capturing “splurge” purchases and recruiting more aspirational audiences.
Invest in material quality, craftsmanship and fit. Ensure consistency across the assortment to build credibility and trust with customers, which can translate into pricing power.
Introduce halo products in categories such as outerwear and leather goods that lift the perception of the entire brand.
Hire recognised creative talent to inject creativity and originality, or use capsule collections and designer collaborations to import design authority and generate excitement.
Adjust pricing architecture over a long-term horizon
Plan a multi-year brand elevation roadmap, emphasising gradual progress across multiple seasons over one-off drops or store renovations.
Use a combination of internal sales data and social listening tools to gauge price sensitivity across categories and define the brand’s price ceiling.
Place smaller-volume orders to limit overstock risk and reduce reliance on discounting to protect brand equity.
Reinforce positioning across the brand experience
Roll out the elevation strategy across the full brand experience — from communications to in-store environments. This means placing emphasis on elevated brand storytelling and cultural relevance while ensuring store design, visual merchandising and service standards signal the same aspirational positioning.
Online, brands can reinforce these cues through improved visuals, editorial content and frictionless user journeys that feel both premium and intuitive.
Higher-touch experiences more commonly found in luxury — such as personalised clienteling or exclusive community activations — can also build advocacy and deepen customers’ emotional connections
This article first appeared in The State of Fashion 2026, an in-depth report on the global fashion industry, co-published by BoF and McKinsey & Company.
One of the earliest turning points in personal branding, one that made career-minded professionals understand that they’re responsible for their careers and the visibility that shapes them, was the launch of LinkedIn in 2003. Since then, career visibility has followed a simple rule: polish your resume, keep your LinkedIn profile current and compelling, and show up to meetings awake. But that rule no longer holds, thanks to AI.
In The Age Of AI, Career Visibility Works Differently
Although we’ve all become skilled Googlers, search is no longer a simple query-and-results experience. It’s increasingly AI-assisted. People are asking Google, other search engines, and AI platforms questions like “Who’s the leading expert in storytelling?” or “Identify people who understand video production and graphic design.” This shift is often referred to as Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking pages, GEO is about making your expertise easy for AI systems to understand, trust, and recommend. But AI tools and the AI summaries that appear atop Google searches just don’t have access to your LinkedIn profile. That means the hard work you did to make it reflect who you are and what makes you exceptional no longer delivers the same visibility it once did.
At the start of the personal branding boom, I recommended that professionals have a brief website/blog to showcase their expertise. LinkedIn, at the time, was rudimentary in what it offered, and with a website you had total control of how you tell the world about yourself. Over the years, though, LinkedIn has added features that made your profile a near equivalent of having your own home on the web. The customizable banner, the Featured section that allows you to use multimedia to highlight your brilliance, and the ability to include long-form content to showcase your thought leadership are just a few of the many enhancements LinkedIn has made over the past two decades. But, because LinkedIn is a mostly closed ecosystem, accessing much of its content requires authentication. That means AI systems have limited crawl access, limited visibility of content that is public, and may not be able to attribute content you created to you. That’s a major personal branding challenge.
What AI Search Changes About Personal Branding
If you don’t own a piece of the internet that AI can actually read, you’re invisible to a growing share of opportunities. When an AI Overview is present, the average click-through rate for top-ranking organic links can drop by 34.5% to nearly 50%, according to Pew Research Center. People are relying on the AI summaries to answer their questions. That’s why a personal website is once again valuable, now, as your AI-readable career home base. AI systems favour:
Open, crawlable content
Clear authorship
Consistent themes across pages
Signs of expertise over time
AI looks for structure, clarity, and patterns. Different audience, different rules. And the impact on your career can be serious. If AI can’t see you, it can’t recommend you.
What A Personal Website Does That LinkedIn Can’t
Having your own website puts you in control of three things that AI cares deeply about.
Context. You can explain not just what you do, but why you do it, who you help, and how you think.
Depth. AI favours original thinking. Articles, insights, frameworks, and your unique point of view matter more than job titles.
Ownership. Your site is stable. Platforms and algorithms come and go. Headlines change. Your site is the one place your story doesn’t get rearranged by someone else’s design team.
How AI Actually Finds People
AI tools don’t search the way you do. They synthesize. They look for:
Repeated themes across content
Clear positioning language
Specific problems you solve
Evidence you’ve been thinking about this for a while
They reward clarity over cleverness. Specificity over buzzwords. Humanity over hype. Those are key branding trends for 2026 and beyond. And that’s good news for those who seek to be real in the virtual world. If your expertise is buried inside a profile behind a login, AI wasn’t designed to connect the dots. Your website, though, gives it dots to connect.
What To Include In A Career-Smart Website
Here’s the good news. Having your own website does not mean you need 20-pages of content and an intricate design with multiple tabs. What you need is brand clarity. At a minimum, include these five elements.
A clear homepage statement
In plain language, say who you help, what you help with, and why it matters. No mystery. No keyword games. AI prefers direct sentences.
A human About page
Tell your story like a person, not a resume. What life experiences shaped your thinking? What do you believe? What’s your purpose? This is gold for AI and even better for building an emotional connection with fellow humans.
Proof of thinking
Articles, essays, talks, newsletters, or case studies. Original content screams expertise far louder than boring, trite jargon like “results-driven, team-oriented professional.”
A focus area or services page
Be specific about your primary focus area, not all the things you can do. Focus on just those you want to be known for. AI rewards focus, and personal branding is about being known for something, not 100 things.
Demonstration of credibility
Include media mentions, speaking, certifications, notable clients (for brand association), and projects. These help you build trust with both humans and machines.
AI Visibility Best Practices Without The Tech Headache
You don’t need to be an SEO wizard. You just need to be consistent.
Use the same language across pages. If you help leaders build thought leadership, say it more than once. AI notices patterns.
Write like you talk. AI models are trained on natural language. Stiff corporate writing actually works against you.
Update occasionally. Fresh content signals relevance, but you don’t need a blog schedule that takes over your life. One thoughtful, on-brand piece every two to three months will suffice.
Make authorship obvious. Your name, bio, and perspective should be clear on every piece of content. Anonymous wisdom doesn’t rank, and it won’t get associated with you.
Connect your site to LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as the front porch and your website as the rest of the house.
Your Website Signals A More Modern Career Strategy In The Age Of AI
This isn’t really about websites. It’s about augmenting platform-dependent visibility with owned visibility. You still need to master LinkedIn, but AI is changing how opportunity finds you. Recommendations will increasingly come from synthesis, not SEO or search results. The people who show up will be the ones who make it easy for AI to understand who they are, what they stand for, and why they matter. In other words, get clear on your personal brand!
It’s Time To Build An AI-Friendly Personal Brand Engine
In a world where AI is doing the asking, your website is how you answer before anyone even knows your name. And the rules of working with AI are empowering. It goes beyond trying to game algorithms by having all the right keywords in everything you post. The next era of visibility goes back to the origins of personal branding. It’s about being the real, human you, consistently without apology or hesitation.
William Arruda is a keynote speaker, author, and personal branding pioneer. He speaks on branding, leadership, and AI. Watch his AI-Powered Personal Branding Session to learn more about the intersection of AI and personal branding.
For years, brand homes—dedicated spaces where consumers can immerse themselves in a brand’s story, values, and products—have prioritized either exclusivity or mass accessibility. Activations have often cantered on exclusive ultra-high-net-worth experiences, while easily accessible brand history-focused locations risk veering into tired museum territory—rarely giving visitors a reason to return.
But the next generation isn’t interested in velvet ropes or a dull brand history lesson. Those are the experiential codes of the past. Today’s brand home must speak in a language that chimes with the younger audience it’s trying to captivate.
Embracing a New Aesthetic
Gen Z have finely tuned visual tastes. They’re drawn to the surreal and captivated by AI-powered imagery. For them, everything is subconsciously expected to be ‘aesthetic’ and Instagrammable—even the most functional spaces. ‘Fridgescaping’ videos are on the rise over on TikTok, for example, while Pinterest boards showcase airport security trays artfully arranged with visually pleasing objects.
As the digital generation, Gen Z crave real-life experiences as a form of escapism—but only those wrapped in exceptional execution. A brand home targeting this audience will win by translating Gen Z’s AI-driven visual sensibilities into real-world environments that feel born from an algorithm and built to be shared. Spaces that look like they’re plucked straight out of a social feed.
In 2025, following the success of the Back to Nature rebrand, UK agency, LOVE hit the road (literally) with a joy-packed ‘Snack Stop’ pop up on the California coast—which took snackers on a nostalgic trip to a time when life was simple, and snacks were great. Popping up at the iconic Abbot Kinney, the gas station-inspired space had a bright, bold shop exterior, while a stylized gas pump and pink convertible Cadillac filled with goodies added a cool photo op for both visitors and passers-by. Throughout the space, props tapped into the brand’s tone of voice while providing content for the ‘gram
Harnessing Gen Z’s FOMO will be a critical part of future brand home strategy. We’re hardwired to feel the ‘fear of missing out’ when something—or somewhere—is temporary. Spaces needs to constantly deliver new, time-sensitive news to give people a reason to return.
Gen Z are digital natives, shaped by fast-scrolling, ever-changing feeds—and they crave experiences that mirror this pace. For brand homes, this means crafting permanent spaces with a pop-up mentality: modular, shapeshifting environments that transform with the time of day, season or cultural—environments that lean into the temporary and the fear of missing out. Selfridges’ ‘The Corner Shop’ leads the way—a pioneering retail concept that allows guest brands to creatively take over the space.
This mindset extends to the way Gen Z travels. They sidestep tourist clichés in favour of cultural ‘hidden gems’—places they can discover and share before they hit the mainstream. For brands, this means seeking out locations that feel both relevant and unexpected, and designing them as culturally rooted destinations that reward early adopters. IKEA turning up for a ‘Hack House Party’ in a north London neighbourhood, staged ahead of its Oxford Circus store opening, is a great example.
Enable Community and Connection
Another powerful driver is Gen Z’s desire for community. Togetherness and connection should sit at the heart of every brand home brief. This generation looks to brands for a sense of belonging and for cultural moments that feel like a reward for their loyalty. A brand’s cultural involvement with its surrounding community can have a significant impact on a consumer’s purchasing decisions. It reflects a cohort that values creativity and brand-relationships through the lens of connection and self-expression, not status and exclusivity.
Gen Z also seek knowledge exchange through creative, enriching spaces. Brand homes should be reframed as cultural hubs and creative playgrounds – places where guests will want to come and stay.
Tapping into our ever-expanding opportunities for entertainment and experience, brand homes are most successful when they are multifaceted, merging art installations, music, food, fashion and performance. Product buy-in will follow. Prada Mode’s travelling club embodies this approach: a destination for contemporary culture, offering guests unique art experiences alongside music, dining and conversation.
So, this is where brand homes are headed. In the future, they must be living, breathing spaces that evolve with shifting tastes and values, keeping pace with a new generation. By blending heightened aesthetics, ever-changing experiences, and a genuine sense of community, brands can create spaces that not only attract visitors, but ignite cultural movements.
This industry perspective is by Ella Palmer, culture and strategy manager at Manchester, United Kingdom–based creative agency LOVE.
Ella Palmer is the culture and strategy manager at Manchester, United Kingdom–based creative agency LOVE., which partners with global brands across the arenas of sport, luxury, food, alcohol and beauty. Guided by the mantra “We see what you won’t,” LOVE. has shaped strategies and campaigns for clients including Heineken, Hendrick’s, JBBDCo., Laithwaites, Lucky Charms, Moët Hennessy, Nike, Penfolds and SK-II. A trend forecaster and strategic thinker, Palmer combines cultural insight with creative curiosity
The agency world is filled with visions of perfectly joined-up customer journeys. With the help of strategists, creatives and experience specialists, we look at the origins and plausibility of that vision.
’360° views of consumers…’ ’Perfection at every touchpoint…’ ’Fully joined-up customer journeys…’ Listen to the goals of marketers and their clients right now and it’s easy to get the picture of a single big dream: a technology-enabled, universal stitching-together of just about everything to provide faultless flows through streamlined brand worlds.
But whose dream is this? Where does it come from? And is anyone getting anywhere close to realizing it?
Better is better
As M&C Saatchi London’s chief data strategy officer James Calvert says, a version of the joined-up dream is quite natural, thanks to a “general, though not always stated, belief that when you have things working together, performance will be better,” and that, ”if we make everything look like it’s all part of the same thing, it’ll work better”.
Seems true enough. But as Avery Hennings, lead experience specialist at The Marketing Practice, puts it: “We can all sit here and say that a joined-up experience is better than a fragmented one… what we’re missing is the ’why’.”
It’s not customers who are leading the charge; certainly, words like ‘joined-up experience’ aren’t on many of their lips. And a quick poll of our assembled experts suggests that it’s not always clients who are demanding fully joined-up customer experiences either. “Sometimes we hear about a ‘2025 vision for a connected journey’ coming from the very top,” says Ogilvy Experience’s strategy director Michael Crewe. “But then the people you’re working with on a day-to-day level all have different metrics and different targets that they’re working towards. It can be difficult to look at it end-to-end because their goals don’t make sense together, so when we’re trying to join it up, we’re not building something that’s truly connected, but using rubber bands and sticky tape to try and stitch things together”.
Often, it is agencies that become evangelists for what some would call ‘joined-up thinking,’ thanks to what Journey Further’s conversion director Jonny Longden calls, simply, a “disconnect between strategy and execution”. Customers might not be in the streets demanding joined-up thinking from the brands they buy, but as DPDK’s chief creative officer Michael Vromans has it, “they’ll let you know when it’s not good“. He says: “Great design is the absence of ripples; it’s hard to discern when it’s seamless, but it’s easy to point out when it’s not”.
According to our panel, the roadblocks in the way of seamlessness won’t surprise many: siloed organizations, failure to understand what customers really want, creaky old decision-making processes, failures to understand timescales of change. As Jacob Harris, partner at Known, says: “The long-term effects of the joined-up customer journey are well-studied, but you show this to a client at the start of a project and no one wants to wait for that. There’s this interesting balance between what they want to drive now versus what you can show them that exists in their categories before you can even get into understanding the customer”.
Joining up what?
‘Joined-up’ is all well and good, but it will of course mean something different for every brand – not least because joined-up consistency will be straightforward for smaller brands that show up in one place, but rather more complicated for global brands that show up everywhere.
Hallane Hill, content lead at Optimizon, argues that the key is convenience: “Consumers want convenience as they move between digital and physical interactions with brands. Their shopping experience needs to be the same at every single touchpoint.” Kristie Naha-Biswas, Assembly’s head of strategy, agrees, adding: “It’s about finding those opportunities to connect online and offline, and adding that extra connected experience so that consumers have what they need when they’re researching or shopping.”
For Calvert, the joining up isn’t worth much unless it’s joined by another value: simplicity. “Sure, people will let us know when there’s a problem or if something feels confusing, but what they’ll never say is, ‘why don’t you consolidate your apps and make that better?’” Joining up, in other words, goes beyond simply fixing the problems that customers tell you about; it can also mean trimming back elements of the overall experience that aren’t pulling in the right direction.
Crewe calls this challenge the “effort to understand the entire world of the customer,” but also understanding that “your brand plays only a tiny role in that”.
January has long been regarded as a reset month. Credit card statements arrive with the weight of December spending. Grocery bills reflect holiday meals and impulse purchases that felt justified at the time. For many, January is the first clear view of how small decisions add up, and it is a practical moment to reassess everyday habits rather than pursue dramatic resolutions.
Food spending is often where that reassessment begins. Groceries are a recurring expense, but can be flexible. While people may feel locked into rising prices, the way food is purchased and used still leaves room for big savings. The most effective changes tend to come from basics that are easy to overlook, and not extreme budgeting tactics or restrictive plans.
Why January creates momentum
The calendar shift matters. January grocery trips are usually calmer than those in late fall, with fewer holiday displays and less pressure to stock up for events. Seasonal routines change as well. School schedules settle, travel slows, and meals become more predictable. This creates space to notice patterns that were hidden during busier months.
Financial awareness is also sharper. Bills from November and December have already arrived, offering a full picture of spending rather than a running estimate. When grocery costs are reviewed alongside utilities, subscriptions, and other fixed expenses, food spending often stands out as one of the few categories that can be adjusted without long-term consequences.
This combination of clarity and calm makes January a practical starting point. The goal is not to overhaul everything, but to tighten habits that will carry through the rest of the year.
1. Planning without rigidity
Planning often gets framed as restrictive, but effective grocery planning is more about direction than control. January is an ideal time to return to simple planning that accounts for real schedules rather than aspirational ones.
This starts with looking at the week ahead. Nights with late work hours or activities may call for leftovers or simple meals. Quieter evenings allow for cooking that stretches ingredients across multiple meals. Planning around time reduces takeout spending, which often spikes when days feel unmanageable.
It also helps to plan around ingredients rather than recipes. Choosing meals that share produce, proteins, or pantry items limits waste and avoids buying one-off ingredients that sit unused. This approach creates a rotation of familiar, easier-to-shop-for meals.
2. Unit price over sticker price
One of the most overlooked tools in grocery stores is printed directly on the shelf. Unit pricing is designed to make comparisons easier. Yet many people still default to the largest package or the lowest visible price tag.
Unit prices reveal patterns that are not always intuitive. Larger packages are not always cheaper per unit. Items on sale can cost more than regular-priced alternatives. Brand loyalty sometimes comes at a premium that is only visible when the math is done.
Learning to pause for a few seconds and compare unit prices changes purchasing behavior without sacrifice. Over time, it builds familiarity with what a fair price looks like for staples. That awareness makes sales easier to judge and prevents overpaying for convenience packaging that offers little real value.
3. The quiet cost of food waste
Food waste is one of the least visible drains on grocery budgets. Items thrown away rarely feel expensive in isolation, but together they represent a steady loss. January cleanouts often reveal expired condiments, forgotten freezer items, and produce that never made it into meals.
Reducing waste starts with awareness, not perfection. Keeping a rough mental inventory of what is already at home prevents duplicate purchases. Using the freezer strategically extends the shelf life of leftovers, bread, and meat that may not be used immediately.
Another overlooked habit is planning meals that intentionally use leftovers rather than treating them as backups. When leftovers are expected and repurposed, they are more likely to be eaten. This alone can reduce weekly spending by meaningful dollars without changing what people eat.
4. Sales cycles and timing
Many grocery stores follow predictable sales cycles, though timing varies slightly by region. Learning those rhythms takes observation more than research. Certain items rotate through discounts every few weeks, while others rarely go on sale.
January sales often reflect post-holiday inventory shifts. Baking supplies and seasonal items may be discounted as stores reset shelves. Recognizing these patterns allows people to stock up strategically rather than reactively.
Timing also applies to shopping frequency. More trips tend to lead to more impulse purchases. Fewer trips help control spending, even if the cart looks fuller. January is a good month to experiment with reducing shopping frequency and seeing how planning fills the gap.
5. Store layouts and impulse pressure
Grocery stores are designed to encourage spending beyond the list. End caps, checkout lanes, and seasonal displays are not accidental.
Sticking to the perimeter is not a rule, but understanding why certain items are placed where they are can help. High-margin products are often positioned at eye level or near traffic bottlenecks. Staples may be placed farther apart to increase exposure to other items along the way.
Being aware of these strategies does not require avoiding entire sections. It simply reframes impulse purchases as deliberate choices rather than defaults. That shift reduces the surprise when totals increase at checkout.
6. Private labels and flexibility
Store brands have expanded significantly in both quality and variety. January is a useful time to reassess assumptions about private labels, especially for pantry staples and basic ingredients.
Trying one or two store-brand items per trip spreads the risk while building familiarity. This creates a personalized list of items where brand loyalty matters and others where it does not. The savings accumulate, especially when applied consistently.
Being open to substitutes when prices spike prevents frustration and keeps budgets steady. This does not mean abandoning preferences; it means recognizing that many products serve the same purpose, with minor differences.
Takeaway
The most effective money-saving habits are often unremarkable. They do not require apps, strict rules, or public accountability. They rely on attention and repetition.
January offers a clean entry point, but the value comes from carrying these habits forward. The savings may not feel dramatic week to week, but they become noticeable over months.
Food budgets rarely improve with a single major change. They improve when overlooked basics are practiced consistently. January is simply the moment when many people are finally positioned to notice them.
The long, happy relationship between Apple and chipmaker TSMC is going through a rough patch. It seems Nvidia has come between them.
As a result, Apple reportedly must pay significantly more for the processors it acquires from the South Korean foundry — and Cupertino might even need to fight to gain access to the latest chips
It’s yet another example of how AI causes problems for Apple.
Apple and TSMC’s long and fruitful relationship
The partnership between Apple and TSMC has been crucial for both companies, and it drove them to the top of their respective markets. The Korean chipmaker became the exclusive manufacturer of Apple’s CPUs in the mid-2010s, and together the two companies have steadily pushed technology forward, from early A-series iPhone processors to today’s super-powerful Apple silicon for Macs, iPads and data centres.
Apple’s enormous scale and willingness to commit billions of dollars in long-term chip orders helped justify TSMC’s massive investments in cutting-edge fabrication plants. Meanwhile, TSMC’s manufacturing expertise gave Apple early access to the most advanced processors, delivering performance and efficiency advantages over rivals.
Apple loses its seat at the front of TSMC’s production line
“Nvidia likely took the top spot in at least one or two quarters of last year,” said Culpan.
Despite occasionally being described as a chipmaker, Nvidia does not manufacture its own GPUs and AI accelerators. Nvidia is a fabless semiconductor company — it designs products but relies on other companies to manufacture them. In fact, TSMC serve as Nvidia’s primary foundry for its most advanced chips.
With the huge growth in AI data centres, Nvidia is selling chips as fast as TSMC can make them. And that gives Nvidia plenty of pull with the Korean company. Maybe more than Apple has.
“Apple, which once held a dominant position on TSMC’s customer list, now needs to fight for production capacity,” said Culpan. “With the continuing AI boom, and each GPU from clients like Nvidia and AMD taking up a larger footprint per wafer, the iPhone maker’s chip designs are no longer guaranteed a place among TSMC’s almost two dozen fabs.”
A-series and M-series chips cost Apple more
Along with more competition comes higher prices. Culpan claims that TSMC hit Apple with “the largest price rise in years” last fall. The analyst did not reveal how much the cost of iPhone, Mac, etc., chips will go up, though.
In the past, being the foundry’s largest customer really helped Apple in negotiations over the cost of processors. But now that Nvidia has taken on that role, Apple is in a weaker bargaining position.
It never rains but it pours
Paying significantly more for processors is only one of the challenges facing Apple thanks to AI. The massive expansion in servers going into data centres being built by OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and others is straining supplies of RAM and other memory, also driving up the cost of these vital components.
With the cost of processors, RAM and SSDs all on the rise, Apple will find itself under pressure to raise prices on its products.
Feature image credit: AI image: Gemini/Cult of Mac
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
While there’s no doubt that technology has always been present in the creative industries, its accelerated use has disrupted almost every aspect of our lives.
Marketers regularly use tools to enable more efficient work and speed up workflows, while data is useful for informing a campaign’s direction. However, questions over the purpose of technology remain. Creatives recognise that while technology can act as an enabler of creativity, they can’t become too reliant on or distracted by technological developments as it could trivialise their campaign’s message. There’s a necessary fine line between experimenting with new tech and focusing on the campaign’s core message to ensure that their idea is creative and, most importantly, remains relevant.
The Drum, in partnership with Mailchimp, has launched A Guide for Growing Businesses to discuss some of the issues small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) face today when it comes to business growth.
The guide further explores how SMEs are achieving growth by finding a balance between creativity and tech.
Know your tech
“It’s difficult to define ‘technology’ today,” says Unit9’s creative director, Kate Lynham. “From improvements and everything ‘in-camera’, CGI techniques to artificial intelligence software, it all falls under the same umbrella and you can’t really work without it in some way.”
Tech falls under so many categories and is used in such varied ways that separating the tech from the creative can be difficult to do. Lynham urges marketers to become really familiar with the tech they’re working with so they can continue to find room for experimentation. “If you don’t have enough of an understanding of the tech itself, then you can’t think of ways to manipulate it,” she adds. “Reimagining what a piece of technology can do is part of the process. At Unit9, we’ve used a GPS system across three different jobs, with each providing totally different creative outcomes even though the base technology is the same.”
To download the digital version of The Drum’s Guide for Growing Businesses complete the form below.
Resisting tech trends
It can be tempting to plunge head first into the tech and try out new innovations as they arise. But Nexus Interactive Arts’ executive producer, Colin Davis, urges marketers to proceed with caution and not get swept up by tech trends. “The real source of a lot of what people perceive as technology getting in the way of creativity stems from how technology gets covered in the press,” he says. “Novelty and ‘world’s first’ get attention and thus there is a PR premium placed on that, which causes the technology to drive the creative, which rarely results in amazing work that stands the test of time.”
Wieden+Kennedy’s head of technology, Michael Naman, agrees – the industry needs to restrain using tech for tech’s sake or else we risk undermining creativity. “We as an industry are fantastic at navel gazing; we continually fetishize over what we can do with technology and forget about what technology is doing to our clients’ businesses,” he says.
“These businesses will be unrecognisable in the next five to 10 years as they continue to digitise what they do.”
Collaborative creative processes
Streamlining the creative process and getting creatives to work more closely with tech developers is one way to make sure that the process is a bit more joined-up. “Bringing creatives and coders together at the beginning of a brief can yield fantastic results, but you have to be willing to learn,” he says. “You can’t just rock up with a tech idea and expect it to work out of the box. It can be unnerving to hand over your idea to a team of coders who are going to tell you that certain bits aren’t going to work, so focus on building trust between teams and production companies.”
Relatability
Ultimately, tech can push ideas into unimaginable territory, but brands need to remember the importance of connecting with their consumers.
“Creativity can suffer when marketers are too quick to jump to a solution that is solely data-driven and ignores the human factors at play,” cautions Media Chain’s COO, Dominic McGregor.
Going post the digital hype of course is key, but it is also critical to remember how technology can create opportunities.
Technology is an incredible tool for understanding audiences and informing creative decision making, an assistant in the creative process. However, it’s important for marketers to get the balance right between tech and creativity because, ultimately, it is creativity that creates value, concludes Lynham.
Jeremy Knauff helps you develop a leveraged approach that efficiently turns a single topic into a mountain of content that you can publish to all social media platforms
I bet that there’s a particular agent who constantly shows up in your social media feed and gets tons of engagement. It probably drives you crazy because they’re not smarter or more charismatic than you, but they still get the lion’s share of the attention in your market.
You know you need to publish more content to stay in front of your audience and build brand recognition and trust. This may seem impossible because you’re already so busy providing top-notch service to your clients, but the truth is that you can keep serving your clients just as well, while building a mountain of content that keeps you in front of your audience and builds brand recognition and trust.
Write a comprehensive article
You might be wondering, “Why write an article if I just want some social media content?”
The answer is simple — it becomes the foundation to build a mountain of content that you can then publish on social media, plus you can also publish the article on your website.
Your unique insight and voice is what will make people interested, so this is a critical element.
You should aim for about 750-1,500 words, focus on one key topic and hit on three to five key points to support that topic. You also need an engaging opening that explains why it matters and a closing that brings it all together.
Craft long-form posts
Once your article is written, you can easily craft half a dozen or more long form posts that are perfect for Facebook and LinkedIn.
The first is to address the topic itself and why it matters to your audience, which you can draw from the opening of your article. This should be an informative post about the topic and how it impacts your audience without digging into the supporting points yet.
Next, you’ll write a post for each of the key supporting points from your article, briefly reiterating the topic and why it matters, followed by the supporting point, which should make up the bulk of the post. This should give you another three to five posts.
It’s important to note that you’re not going to just copy and paste from your article for these posts. Instead, you should write something new based on the info from your article.
Extract short-form tweets
When it comes to X, short-form content really shines — especially when you can leverage questions or controversy.
The first thing you’ll do is pull all of the powerful one-line statements from your article to use as individual tweets. And you can take things a step further by creating a quote graphic that you can share with tweets. These can also be shared on other platforms as well.
Next, you’ll pull a few longer sections, making sure to keep them under 280 total characters each. This ensures that your audience can see the entire tweet without clicking the “see more” link.
It’s relatively easy to generate a dozen or more pieces of short-form content using this tactic.
Record a long-form video
Your article gives you a framework to record an informative long-form video on the topic, which you can upload to YouTube and other social media platforms.
The key here is to use an outline rather than trying to read the article as a script. This ensures that your video sounds natural and engaging instead of robotic and boring. And remember to make eye contact with the camera — if you stare down at your notes while talking, your audience will tune out.
I try to keep my videos under 30 minutes because most people have a short attention span today. It’s usually pretty easy to make one video on the topic, but you may be able to record a few videos from one article.
It’s also important to complete all of the available fields when you upload your videos to YouTube, including a short, engaging title, a well-designed thumbnail, a robust description and a list of tags. This helps ensure that your video shows up in feeds and search results.
Extract short clips
Once you’ve recorded your long-form video, you can extract short-form clips from it to publish on every platform. These are especially effective on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram when limited to three minutes. And this is a powerful way to rack up a ton of views and quickly earn more new subscribers.
You can do this manually with video editing software, like Adobe Premier or Camtasia, or you can use AI tools like Descript or OpusClip to automatically extract multiple short clips on autopilot. And these AI tools also automatically generate captions that match your branding, which is critical for maximizing watch time since many people scroll social with the audio turned off.
You’ll find that in most cases, you should be able to generate anywhere from half a dozen to several dozen short-form videos from your long-form video.
The algorithms that power social media platforms prioritize video content, so this is an essential element of your marketing efforts today.
You need to publish more content
Consistently creating lots of content is a must in today’s noisy marketplace, but it doesn’t have to mean slaving away in front of a camera or at your computer all day.
It just requires a leveraged approach that efficiently turns a single topic into a mountain of content that you can publish to all social media platforms.
When you do this properly, it enables you to demonstrate your expertise, build authority status and cut through the noise to stay in front of your audience so that you’re the one they think of when it’s time to make a buying decision.
This is your blueprint to do exactly that, and if you follow it consistently, you’ll build a more resilient business that generates predictable and scalable revenue.
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The James Beam Distillery offers varied experiences and is a cultural destination in the Clermont Kentucky community with events ranging from bourbon tastings to Kentucky Derby parties.
The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin offers an immersive, multi-floor experience at St. James’s Gate
