• Concept Bureau
  • Posts
  • Understanding Wellness Branding Through the Radical History of Self-Care

Understanding Wellness Branding Through the Radical History of Self-Care

Wellness is one of the strongest forces in branding today, but the deeper history of self-care reveals a connection many brands never think about.

Author

Jasmine Bina
July 16, 2020

If you’re like me, you don’t know when it happened exactly, but one day self-care and wellness were everywhere.

Those messages about taking care of yourself, healing, thriving, making yourself whole, being enough, reclaiming your power, owning it… they were all around us. From cereal boxes to the makeup counter to furniture rental, CBD sticks, mobile apps and coffee - a new mindset about how to be… but also how to consume, had settled in. 

As second nature as this may all seem right now, the concept of self-care actually comes from a very radical and politically charged place in recent American history. 

In this week's episode of Unseen Unknown, I speak with New York Times journalist and editor Aisha Harris about the connected history of politics, race, gender and identity that underpins the self-care space today, and how it’s many interpretations reflect our American culture.

The history or self-care and wellness is deep and rich, stemming from the civil rights movement, Black and LGBT communities, the hippie wellness movement of the 1960s, and then going mainstream with a new political resurgence after the 2016 election.

We also speak with founder Jerome Nichols of The Butters, a self-care beauty brand and cult favorite that signals a new approach in the space among upstarts looking to bring self-care back to its communal roots. 

Jerome has built an emotional world around his products and goes deep into the thinking behind his brand, how wellness and sexual wellness have become synonymous, and the new forms of masculinity that are being explored in the category. 

Self-care and wellness aren't an industry. They're a new value layer that is rolling out across every brand vertical from tech and home, to food and spirituality. 

This episode tells the true story that rarely gets heard, and reveals the patterns, value systems and collective fears (as well as joys) that have made wellness and self-care the defining factor of our time.

Wellness is one of the strongest forces in branding today.

This is why, and also how.

You can also listen and subscribe on Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and Simplecast.

Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode and further reading:

Cream of the crop.

Here's what we've been consuming.

The brands and cultural pioneers shaping youth culture (Highsnobiety): "Influence is changing, both its meaning and who’s driving it. The old gatekeepers of authority — traditional media, big retailers and celebrities — no longer hold the same power they had before the world stood still, following the global COVID19 outbreak and the rise of BLM movements in all corners of the world."

How and When Brands Should Say 'I’m Sorry’ (Business of Fashion): "Cultural failures are trickier. Because consumers feel a deep attachment to “humanised” brands, especially fashion brands, cultural offences can feel like a direct insult to a group of people or an example of further exclusion outside the fashion system. What’s more, cultural failures — racist imagery in a product, for example — are often easier to understand than complicated supply chain issues. “It's far easier to apologise for what you've done than for what you are.”"

A group of young techies is behind '👁👄👁,' a mysterious meme that succeeded in getting Tech Twitter to donate to Black Lives Matter charities and clamor for invites to an app that doesn't exist (Business Insider): "It started as a joke and critique of Silicon Valley's obsession with exclusive, invite-only apps like Hey and Clubhouse, and how the mostly white tech industry can ignore "real needs faced by marginalized people," the statement said. The group, mostly young people of color in tech, said it used that exclusivity and secrecy to manufacture the kind of hype it knew would capture Silicon Valley. ."

The Problem with the “Designification” of Health Care (Metropolis): "The branding, both graphic and spatial, of Oscar, Tia, Parsley, and their ilk is exactly the problem with the health-care industry as a whole. These companies invest in their unique spaces and their gently hip interiors as a way of differentiating themselves from older medical practices as well as one another (a failed attempt, given their sameness)... The appeal of health-care start-up architecture is the individualization that it promises. It assuages our fears that our needs or concerns won’t be recognized in an institutional setting."

Strategy Thought Of The Day

Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.