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A mood-led e-shop by wellness platform Woo

The Feel Good Marketplace by Woo, UK

UK – Gen Z-focused online wellness hub Woo has unveiled its own marketplace of feel-good products, Planet Woo, offering a range of cross-category wellbeing items optimised for emotional discovery.

Unlike a typical online store, the mood-led platform offers wellness products across homeware, tech, beauty, fashion and lifestyle, alongside live therapeutic experiences like sound healing or breath work.

Mirroring Woo’s visual identity, the e-shop is colourful and visually stimulating, and gives online shopping a Gen Z spin. Alongside standard shopping filters, shoppers can browse categories curated based on moods, like ‘main character’, ‘horny’, ‘reset’ or ‘trippy’. ‘The mix of product – from dildos to skincare to sneakers and psychedelics – is a mix of categories unique to Woo. ‘With the marketplace model mixed with our editorial content, we have the opportunity to re-invent categories for our Gen Z audience,’ explains Robyn Chalet, head of the Woo Marketplace.

Youth’s radical vision of wellbeing is making waves. New user interfaces are emerging, from Planet Woo’s shopping to next-gen mental health hubs – a topic we’ll cover on LS:N Global in our upcoming Gen Z Digital Wellness Market.

Strategic opportunity

Be real when speaking to Generation Z. A brand that feels human, showing vulnerability and self-awareness will resonate with them more than perfectionism and embellished truths

Iris Apfel collaboration highlights cross-gen appeal

Ruggable and Iris Apfel, US

US – A collaboration with interiors brand Ruggable is the latest project from 101-year-old interiors and style icon Iris Apfel.

Describing the collection of 18 washable rugs and five doormats as ‘a wonderful way to express yourself and not be like the mob’, Apfel continues to have cross-demographic appeal. In early 2022, she designed a collection for fast fashion retailer H&M, again promoting the importance of individuality and rallying against generic trends.

A New York-based textiles specialist and former interior designer who worked on projects at the White House, Apfel’s popularity soared when she curated an exhibition of her costume jewellery and favourite outfits for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Design in 2005. Most recently, she signed as a model with agency IMG in 2019.

The new collection is a clashing riot of styles, period influences and colours, and also draws on Apfel’s personal experiences. It is her message of individualism that retains cross-generational appeal and resonates now more than ever – as we detail in our reports, Youth Culture is Entering its Flat Age Future and Post-demographic Futures.

Strategic opportunity

Focus on shared values that bridge generations rather than addressing typical – often divisive – demographic segments

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report highlights leadership role

Global – Brand management consultancy Interbrand has published its annual Best Global Brands report, offering insight into the meaning and direction of brands for the years ahead.

The report also offers a league table of brands ranked on their brand value (brand revenue and brand strength, the latter defined by factors including market leadership, stability, market characteristics, internationalisation ability, development trend, brand support and legal protection). Topping the league is Apple with a brand value of £419.638m($482.215m, €482.096m), an 18% year-on-year increase, closely followed by Microsoft, then Amazon. The top 15 risers in brand value blend a host of fashion brands – Chanel, Hermès, Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Prada – with Lego, Tesla, Siemens and Mastercard.

The most relevant brands, according to the report, are those that balance power and responsibility. ‘With trust in traditional institutions dwindling, it is to great brands that many of us look for true leadership in and beyond crisis,’ writes Manfredi Ricca, global chief strategy officer at Interbrand. ‘We see them as beacons of change… Many of the brands in this league do more than offer exceptional products, services and experiences. They take sides on the most critical debates of our times.’

Google Aotearoa Office. Designed by Warren & Mahoney, New Zealand

Strategic opportunity

Brands are becoming increasingly hard to define, moving away from being product-centric and more towards those aspects of consumers’ lives they want to address. How is your brand enabling ‘consumer jobs’ such as playing, belonging, learning, connecting or thriving?

Stat: The number of centi-millionaires is rising globally

Aston Martin Residences, Miami

Global – A global elite of centi-millionaires considered affluent enough to never worry about money is growing rapidly. Until the late 1990s, £26m ($30m, €30m) was regarded as sufficient for someone to be considered super-wealthy, but this was recently re-evaluated at £87m ($100m, €100m) with global asset price surges.

In the Centi-millionaire Report, London-based consultancy Henley & Partners investigated the rise of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals, their shifting profiles and preferences. The database reveals a demographic shift – from largely older white males to one that increasingly includes women and people in Asia. In the next decade, centi-millionaires in Asia are expected to increase at twice the pace of those in Europe and the US.

‘They want to create a portfolio of complementary residences and citizenships that unlocks the world by providing them with personal access rights to a range of different cities, countries and jurisdictions,’ Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners, says on centi-millionaires’ aspirations.

According to the report, this group like to splurge on luxury goods to affirm their social status and on exclusive awe-inspiring experiences, perpetuating the prestige and opulence we described in our Guilded Luxury macrotrend.

Strategic opportunity

When marketing to affluent consumers, how can your business surpass their high standards and expectations, and attract the new diverse faces of UHNWIs that are emerging globally?