Cultural
Fluency
We build the world’s most culturally-fluent
brands by seeing what others miss.
Aesthetic
Intelligence
OPTIMISATION FATIGUE?
An elegant old theory about consumer culture meets our chaotic new reality
Manufactured Inadequacy
Know thyself -> buy yourself
New fear unlocked: wisdom anxiety
"Go to the literature" - Joan Didion
Mother Mermaid is being crowd-constructed live on TikTok right now
In convo with one of the world’s most well-respected brand-building thinkers, Richard Huntington, on the state of consumer culture, the future of brand strategy...and his new book.
Why is it to hard to admit that we care?
The offence of sameness in the land of the free
Biggest recession indicator of all?
Engineered emptiness
Our wardrobes are trying to tell us something
What's that glowing in the dark?
The time of monsters
The extraordinary cost of being dull
Are we amusing ourselves to death?
A week in my life as an agency owner
From rejecting fashion to weaponising it
final word: meh-gorithm
A multi-award-winning exec brand strategist and advisor to CEOs and CMOs. With classically-trained brand strategy skills and a deep sociological understanding of consumer culture, she helps leaders position their brands for both cultural and commercial growth. Before Tomorrowism, Beth sat on the boards and leadership teams of some of the world’s most-respected creative agencies and strategy consultancies (Wieden+Kennedy, adam&eveDDB, Portas, VICE), advising generation defining brands (inc. Nike, Google, John Lewis, Topshop, Cult Beauty, Uniqlo, L’Oreal, Vans), plus served as a government advisor to ministers in Whitehall. Beth leads all our brand strategy projects, and is also the editor of our digital publishing platform, Pattern Recognition, read by 30,000 brand leaders, academics, futurists and cultural analysts in 40 countries.
Mark has served in exec creative management positions at some of the most revered and awarded design practises and creative agencies (Made Thought, Wednesday, Moving Brands, Mother). With deep craft skills in brand design and art direction, his understanding of visual culture has helped lead and shape the visual codes and brand worlds of some of the most culturally tapped-in luxury, fashion and lifestyle brands (Adidas, Bally, Bang & Olufsen, Barbour, Ellesse, GAP, Kickers, Land Rover, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham). Mark leads all our brand design and visuals projects.
Paul is a highly experienced creative agency leader, having run a mix of award-winning specialist agencies and consultancies across strategy, advertising, design, CX, content and activation. That’s given him a unique vantage point on how to break down and solve all sorts of modern brand growth challenges. Paul runs all our projects, working closely with our client partners to build the right approach, format and team, then ensuring we deliver world-class work.
We’ve spent 20 years advising the leaders of some of our generation’s most iconic brands through complex brand growth challenges, in times of ongoing cultural and commercial upheaval. Our work has won more than 100 awards. We don’t just know how brands grow. We know how brands grow when everything around them is shifting.
We don’t talk around in circles in workshops. Or fill your server with long-winded documents you’ll never read again. We don’t speak in metaphors. And we tell the truth. Our work makes brands more distinctive, aspirational, covetable, memorable, iconic.
The greatest risk in modern business isn’t your competition. It’s cultural irrelevance. And rightly so. Brands that lose step with what’s going on in culture pay a heavy price. Brands with low cultural capital spend more on customer acquisition (Deloitte, 2024). Brands with high cultural capital command price premiums (McKinsey, 2024), and tend to be valued at higher multiples vs. peers with lower cultural significance (Morgan Stanley, 2024).
The most powerful levers of modern brand growth don’t show up in your quarterly report. But they affect what’s in it.
Cultural fluency
Your organisation’s ability to recognise shifts before they surface, by understanding the underlying forces shaping consumer culture. Where others might see random fluctuations, you see patterns. While others react to what’s trending, you’re the tastemaker.
Aesthetic intelligence.
The other AI. The art of expressing that cultural fluency to build brand worlds, codes and behaviours that feel distinctive in a sea of algorithmic sameness.
A pragmatic, efficient consulting model that works. The way we break down and tackle challenges is based on the kind of advice and support we know CEOs + CMOs actually value (we know, we’ve asked a lot of them about this). Sometimes we do everything on this list, sometimes we don’t. Every business is at a different stage with different needs.
Cultural + commercial pattern recognition.
Our tried-and-tested programme of problem diagnosis. Based on commercial analysis, behavioural science, semiotics and foresight, we work with you to decode and clarify your brand’s most critical headwinds and tailwinds. They’re not always what you might expect.
The brand blueprint.
A brand’s x-ray on a page. Or a tablet of stone. Creating shared vision + momentum throughout your organisation; fuelling commercial growth + cultural heat within your audience.
Audience mapping + sizing.
Conventional demographics and personas are too often based on convenient fictions. We’ve built smart ways of opening up new depths of audience understanding, shedding new light on where your growth’s really coming from. And why.
Brand platform.
A powerful, enduring foundation that roots your brand in culture and helps build authority for years to come. We’re the ones who wrote Where Design Lives for Heal’s, Anything But Ordinary for M&S, Don’t Shop Around for LYST, and plenty more.
Brand design.
Visual mediocrity is no longer acceptable. We evolve or rebuild brand worlds, codes + operating systems to make them more culturally fluent + aesthetically intelligent.
Brand health + investment modelling.
So much you could do. What should you do? We’ll help you make better decisions, and build the case for ongoing, effective brand investment and measurement.
OPTIMISATION FATIGUE?
Gimme this ring over a smart ring please. @Annika Inez
An elegant old theory about consumer culture meets our chaotic new reality
Paris is burning. View from my bedroom this week. This was at 11pm. Name a better city!
Manufactured Inadequacy
Suzanne Koller for Raey, AW22 via AnotherMag
Know thyself -> buy yourself
i know you know i know it’s a Rimowa
New fear unlocked: wisdom anxiety
Wisdom signalling? Saint Laurent Babylone. Paris: Anthony Vaccarello’s raw + refined fever dream of curated journals, rare books, and vinyl.
"Go to the literature" - Joan Didion
Hailey B’s Vogue satire
Mother Mermaid is being crowd-constructed live on TikTok right now
In convo with one of the world’s most well-respected brand-building thinkers, Richard Huntington, on the state of consumer culture, the future of brand strategy...and his new book.
Why is it to hard to admit that we care?
Camille Rowe | Pamela Anderson at the Met Gala 2025. Image: Vanity Fair
The offence of sameness in the land of the free
Biggest recession indicator of all?
image: whowhatwear.com
The strategy behind The White Lotus S3's high-profile brand partnerships
Vogue Business: “This is The White Lotus’s MO, isn’t it?” Beth Bentley asks. “This show always finds ways to make viewers complicit in the very things it criticises.”
Engineered emptiness
Our wardrobes are trying to tell us something
Studio Nicholson
What's that glowing in the dark?
Exhibit A: newly-opened third-space/design-haven/glimmer/radical act of hope + ingenuity, Launderette NYC
The time of monsters
Charlie XCX, Grammy’s 2025 | Monstrous audacity or incredible ingenuity? Ethically confusing and chaotic. But it’s legal. Image from Barefaced’s investigation last week.
The unique cultural significance of The White Lotus
The Observer: “The show’s absolutely skewering the rich – and yet, at the same time, we want to dress like them. There’s a crazy irony there.”
The extraordinary cost of being dull
Are we amusing ourselves to death?
A week in my life as an agency owner
Alex living her best life at Salted Books. | Downstairs reads for this week
Tomorrowism in conversation with one of our fav clients, LYST
Beth and Katy discuss the intricacies of brand-building in the era of algorithmic sameness, at Brands&Culture event at Ministry of Sound, London.
Beth supports the faculty at New York’s prestigious fashion school
How brands really grow in the aspiration economy. Student feedback? The best lectures of the year.
From rejecting fashion to weaponising it
final word: meh-gorithm
The Truman Show (1998) ends when Truman realises his whole life has been a TV show and his whole world is a set
Beth joins Peter Spear for a conversation about RISK and CULTURE
Beth took the hot seat for US mega-ethnographer Peter Spear’s industry-fav podcast, That Business of Meaning.
Ana hands the mic to Beth...
The Sociology of Business: Beth’s meh-ification theory takes centre stage on the world’s most widely-read brand strategy newsletter
Meh-ification...the plot thickens!
Beth’s Meh-fication theory is given a special episode of Ana Andjelic + Rei Inamoto’s podcast Hitmakers
A very interesting conversation
Beth speaks on a new NY-based podcast series After Work Drinks alongside a mix of interesting industry figures like Matthew Drinkwater of London College of Fashion
Talking brand-building at Europe’s biggest clean beauty event
Beth speaks on the main stage at The Natural Health Expo alongside leaders from some of the most progressive beauty brands of our generation.
From London to Brooklyn
Ed Cotton invited Beth onto his epic podcast, Inspiring Futures, to talk about the work Tomorrowism does, for who, how…and why.
Cultural
Fluency
We build the world’s most culturally-fluent
brands by seeing what others miss.
Aesthetic
Intelligence