Tomorrowism logo
Pattern Recognition is our cultural analysis platform, documenting emerging patterns in consumer culture + their commercial implications for modern brand leaders.
03.06.2025

WISDOM SIGNALING

New fear unlocked: wisdom anxiety

WISDOM SIGNALING featured image
TL;DR: Not look how much I have, but look how much I think.A few days ago we talked here about why reading is so damn cool right now. It’s my most-read piece ever. Watching the numbers go up made me... Full story
29.05.2025

Why is reading so damn cool right now?

"Go to the literature" - Joan Didion

Why is reading so damn cool right now? featured image
TL;DR: In a world that runs on instant gratification, books…especially the dense, complicated kind…have staged a surprising comeback. But is it actually surprising?Just a few years ago, talking about Heidegger at a party would've been social suicide. This week, Hailey... Full story
21.05.2025

The new architecture of a trend?

Mother Mermaid is being crowd-constructed live on TikTok right now

The new architecture of a trend? featured image
Trends used to bubble up after simmering around in subculture…or trickle down in response to inspiration from the runway…before being anointed by those-who-know (and/or ratified by the brute force of algorithmic consensus). But might we be in a new era?... Full story
19.05.2025

THE FUTURE IS FERAL

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.

THE FUTURE IS FERAL featured image
Look up brand strategist in the urban dictionary and you might just find a picture of Richard Huntington. Everyone who’s passed through the halls of a creative agency - or the marketing dept of a major consumer brand - over... Full story
15.05.2025

Fashion's most persistent lie

Why is it to hard to admit that we care?

Fashion's most persistent lie featured image
TL;DR: Effortlessness is perhaps the most persistent and damaging myth in all of consumer culture. Because it's about maintaining impossible standards, obscuring the work involved, and creating shame around trying ‘too hard’. So many fashion icons, from Jane Birkin to... Full story
12.05.2025

The West Village Girls hit a nerve

The offence of sameness in the land of the free

The West Village Girls hit a nerve featured image
If you’ve been anywhere near the internet in the past few days you will have come across the commotion over The Cut’s West Village Girls piece.You know who I’m talking about even if you’ve never been to the West Village:... Full story
08.05.2025

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN?

Biggest recession indicator of all?

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN? featured image
Lots of talk of recession indicators in the feeds this week. Reuters reports this morning that “The risk of a U.S. recession is 50-50, it's that close.” Goldman Sachs places odds at 45% and JPMorgan at 60%.I wonder if the... Full story
30.04.2025

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT?

Engineered emptiness

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT? featured image
Loads of ink has been spilled about The White Lotus S3 (I myself talked to Vogue Business and The Observer about it). But one line from the finale still haunts me. “No one in the history of the world has... Full story
03.04.2025

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Our wardrobes are trying to tell us something

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY featured image
Do you ever wonder what will we be remembered by? When you think about decades of the past, it’s pretty easy to close your eyes and picture a dress, a car, a make-up look that defines the era. But what... Full story
28.03.2025

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE

What's that glowing in the dark?

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE featured image
TL;DR: Disruption creates monsters. But also: cultural progression. Right now people aren’t just coping. They’re hoping.Last time we talked about cultural interregnums: times in-between times. When you have a feeling that things are no longer where they were, but not... Full story
21.03.2025

Part 1: INTERREGNUM

The time of monsters

Part 1: INTERREGNUM featured image
Monster derives from the Latin word for warn, remind, or instruct. Which also gave us another modern word: premonition. TL;DR: we're living through an industry-wide - and culture-wide - interregnum. A strange space between coherent ‘reigns’ where unsettling, even monstrous,... Full story
13.03.2025

In defence of weird

The extraordinary cost of being dull

In defence of weird featured image
TL;DR: risk aversion is k i l l i n g us Full story
06.03.2025

TRIVIAL PURSUITS

Are we amusing ourselves to death?

TRIVIAL PURSUITS featured image
I like looking at fashion (and consumer culture generally) from unexpected angles. If you’ve been here a while you will know some of my first essays here were about things like the Lindy Effect or the Overton Window or Betty... Full story
04.03.2025

Building in public

A week in my life as an agency owner

Building in public featured image
I’m sure most of you prob know this, but as well as writing here I also run a business. Lately I’ve been taking part in quite a lot of podcasts/events/guest editing/interviews etc, and in every chat I’ve been asked about... Full story
18.02.2025

THE EMPERORS' NEW CLOTHES

From rejecting fashion to weaponising it

THE EMPERORS' NEW CLOTHES featured image
TL;DR: Just the natural maturing of tech-bro personal style, or something else entirely? Full story
13.02.2025

THE MEDIUM IS THE MEH-SSAGE

final word: meh-gorithm

THE MEDIUM IS THE MEH-SSAGE featured image
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at all sorts of ways this algorithmic drag towards anti-remarkable-ness we’re seeing in fashion, movies, architecture, film, literature, music, more, is affecting the way we live/think/dress/shop. We’ve looked at how life under... Full story
10.02.2025

MEH-GA BRANDS

They're supposed to be our cultural lightening rods

MEH-GA BRANDS featured image
TL; DR: When the world's biggest/most valuable brands are struggling like this, you know something's wrong. Full story
07.02.2025

ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE

Junk food for ya mind?

ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE featured image
TL;DR: Just like ultra-processed foods grab us by the tastebuds with data-calibrated salt/sugar/fat and shiny packaging, ultra-processed content grabs us by the brain stem. Both leave us hungry again soon, craving more. Full story
03.02.2025

THE OBSESSION ECONOMY

This is your brain on algorithms

THE OBSESSION ECONOMY featured image
Happy new week. After Ana posted my Meh-ocene piece on The Sociology of Business a few days ago there are a lot more of us here. The Sociology of BusinessMeh-ification, the plot thickens?In this Thursday’s guest post, we welcome Beth... Full story
28.01.2025

SPEAKEASIES AGAIN?

la resistance

SPEAKEASIES AGAIN? featured image
TL; DR: Speakeasies were hidden Prohibition-era bars where people could escape surveillance. In order to drink. We’re seeing the rise of places where people can escape surveillance. In order to think. Full story
hello@tomorrowism.co
Soho Works, 56 Shoreditch High St
London E1 6JJT

Beth Bentley

Chief Strategy Officer

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 Thompson

Chief Creative Officer

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 Bentley

Managing Director

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 POSITION, REIMAGINE OR REJUVENATE BRANDS FOR THE FUTURE THAT’S COMING.

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.

-----------------------------------------------


FORGET WHAT YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT BRAND STRATEGY

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 EXTRAORDINARY COST OF BEING UNREMARKABLE

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).

-----------------------------------------------


CULTURAL FLUENCY + AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE = your unfair advantages

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. 

-----------------------------------------------


OUR APPROACH + SERVICES

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.

 

03.06.2025 Pattern Recognition

WISDOM SIGNALING

New fear unlocked: wisdom anxiety

WISDOM SIGNALING featured image

Wisdom signalling? Saint Laurent Babylone. Paris: Anthony Vaccarello’s raw + refined fever dream of curated journals, rare books, and vinyl.

TL;DR: Not look how much I have, but look how much I think.A few days ago we talked here about why reading is so damn cool right now. It’s my most-read piece ever. Watching the numbers go up made me... Full story
29.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

Why is reading so damn cool right now?

"Go to the literature" - Joan Didion

Why is reading so damn cool right now? featured image

Hailey B’s Vogue satire

TL;DR: In a world that runs on instant gratification, books…especially the dense, complicated kind…have staged a surprising comeback. But is it actually surprising?Just a few years ago, talking about Heidegger at a party would've been social suicide. This week, Hailey... Full story
21.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

The new architecture of a trend?

Mother Mermaid is being crowd-constructed live on TikTok right now

The new architecture of a trend? featured image
Trends used to bubble up after simmering around in subculture…or trickle down in response to inspiration from the runway…before being anointed by those-who-know (and/or ratified by the brute force of algorithmic consensus). But might we be in a new era?... Full story
19.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

THE FUTURE IS FERAL

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.

THE FUTURE IS FERAL featured image
Look up brand strategist in the urban dictionary and you might just find a picture of Richard Huntington. Everyone who’s passed through the halls of a creative agency - or the marketing dept of a major consumer brand - over... Full story
15.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

Fashion's most persistent lie

Why is it to hard to admit that we care?

Fashion's most persistent lie featured image

Camille Rowe | Pamela Anderson at the Met Gala 2025. Image: Vanity Fair

TL;DR: Effortlessness is perhaps the most persistent and damaging myth in all of consumer culture. Because it's about maintaining impossible standards, obscuring the work involved, and creating shame around trying ‘too hard’. So many fashion icons, from Jane Birkin to... Full story
12.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

The West Village Girls hit a nerve

The offence of sameness in the land of the free

The West Village Girls hit a nerve featured image
If you’ve been anywhere near the internet in the past few days you will have come across the commotion over The Cut’s West Village Girls piece.You know who I’m talking about even if you’ve never been to the West Village:... Full story
08.05.2025 Pattern Recognition

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN?

Biggest recession indicator of all?

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN? featured image

image: whowhatwear.com

Lots of talk of recession indicators in the feeds this week. Reuters reports this morning that “The risk of a U.S. recession is 50-50, it's that close.” Goldman Sachs places odds at 45% and JPMorgan at 60%.I wonder if the... Full story
30.04.2025

Tomorrowism in Vogue Business

The strategy behind The White Lotus S3's high-profile brand partnerships

Tomorrowism in Vogue Business featured image

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.”

30.04.2025 Pattern Recognition

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT?

Engineered emptiness

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT? featured image
Loads of ink has been spilled about The White Lotus S3 (I myself talked to Vogue Business and The Observer about it). But one line from the finale still haunts me. “No one in the history of the world has... Full story
03.04.2025 Pattern Recognition

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Our wardrobes are trying to tell us something

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY featured image

Studio Nicholson

Do you ever wonder what will we be remembered by? When you think about decades of the past, it’s pretty easy to close your eyes and picture a dress, a car, a make-up look that defines the era. But what... Full story
28.03.2025 Pattern Recognition

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE

What's that glowing in the dark?

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE featured image

Exhibit A: newly-opened third-space/design-haven/glimmer/radical act of hope + ingenuity, Launderette NYC

TL;DR: Disruption creates monsters. But also: cultural progression. Right now people aren’t just coping. They’re hoping.Last time we talked about cultural interregnums: times in-between times. When you have a feeling that things are no longer where they were, but not... Full story
21.03.2025 Pattern Recognition

Part 1: INTERREGNUM

The time of monsters

Part 1: INTERREGNUM featured image

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.

Monster derives from the Latin word for warn, remind, or instruct. Which also gave us another modern word: premonition. TL;DR: we're living through an industry-wide - and culture-wide - interregnum. A strange space between coherent ‘reigns’ where unsettling, even monstrous,... Full story
20.03.2025

Tomorrowism in The Observer

The unique cultural significance of The White Lotus

Tomorrowism in The Observer featured image

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.”

13.03.2025 Pattern Recognition

In defence of weird

The extraordinary cost of being dull

In defence of weird featured image
TL;DR: risk aversion is k i l l i n g us Full story
06.03.2025 Pattern Recognition

TRIVIAL PURSUITS

Are we amusing ourselves to death?

TRIVIAL PURSUITS featured image
I like looking at fashion (and consumer culture generally) from unexpected angles. If you’ve been here a while you will know some of my first essays here were about things like the Lindy Effect or the Overton Window or Betty... Full story
04.03.2025 Pattern Recognition

Building in public

A week in my life as an agency owner

Building in public featured image

Alex living her best life at Salted Books. | Downstairs reads for this week

I’m sure most of you prob know this, but as well as writing here I also run a business. Lately I’ve been taking part in quite a lot of podcasts/events/guest editing/interviews etc, and in every chat I’ve been asked about... Full story
28.02.2025

On stage at Brands&Culture

Tomorrowism in conversation with one of our fav clients, LYST

On stage at Brands&Culture featured image

Beth and Katy discuss the intricacies of brand-building in the era of algorithmic sameness, at Brands&Culture event at Ministry of Sound, London.

20.02.2025

Beth lectures at Fashion Institute of Technology

Beth supports the faculty at New York’s prestigious fashion school

Beth lectures at Fashion Institute of Technology featured image

How brands really grow in the aspiration economy. Student feedback? The best lectures of the year.

18.02.2025 Pattern Recognition

THE EMPERORS' NEW CLOTHES

From rejecting fashion to weaponising it

THE EMPERORS' NEW CLOTHES featured image
TL;DR: Just the natural maturing of tech-bro personal style, or something else entirely? Full story
13.02.2025 Pattern Recognition

THE MEDIUM IS THE MEH-SSAGE

final word: meh-gorithm

THE MEDIUM IS THE MEH-SSAGE featured image

The Truman Show (1998) ends when Truman realises his whole life has been a TV show and his whole world is a set

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at all sorts of ways this algorithmic drag towards anti-remarkable-ness we’re seeing in fashion, movies, architecture, film, literature, music, more, is affecting the way we live/think/dress/shop. We’ve looked at how life under... Full story
10.02.2025

Podcasting again

Beth joins Peter Spear for a conversation about RISK and CULTURE

Podcasting again featured image

Beth took the hot seat for US mega-ethnographer Peter Spear’s industry-fav podcast, That Business of Meaning.

10.02.2025 Pattern Recognition

MEH-GA BRANDS

They're supposed to be our cultural lightening rods

MEH-GA BRANDS featured image
TL; DR: When the world's biggest/most valuable brands are struggling like this, you know something's wrong. Full story
07.02.2025 Pattern Recognition

ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE

Junk food for ya mind?

ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE featured image
TL;DR: Just like ultra-processed foods grab us by the tastebuds with data-calibrated salt/sugar/fat and shiny packaging, ultra-processed content grabs us by the brain stem. Both leave us hungry again soon, craving more. Full story
03.02.2025 Pattern Recognition

THE OBSESSION ECONOMY

This is your brain on algorithms

THE OBSESSION ECONOMY featured image
Happy new week. After Ana posted my Meh-ocene piece on The Sociology of Business a few days ago there are a lot more of us here. The Sociology of BusinessMeh-ification, the plot thickens?In this Thursday’s guest post, we welcome Beth... Full story
30.01.2025

We guest-edit Ana Andjelic’s THE SOCIOLOGY OF BUSINESS

Ana hands the mic to Beth...

We guest-edit Ana Andjelic’s THE SOCIOLOGY OF BUSINESS featured image

The Sociology of Business: Beth’s meh-ification theory takes centre stage on the world’s most widely-read brand strategy newsletter

28.01.2025 Pattern Recognition

SPEAKEASIES AGAIN?

la resistance

SPEAKEASIES AGAIN? featured image
TL; DR: Speakeasies were hidden Prohibition-era bars where people could escape surveillance. In order to drink. We’re seeing the rise of places where people can escape surveillance. In order to think. Full story
20.01.2025

Ana Andjelic’s podcast episode dedicated to Beth’s theory

Meh-ification...the plot thickens!

Ana Andjelic’s podcast episode dedicated to Beth’s theory featured image

Beth’s Meh-fication theory is given a special episode of Ana Andjelic + Rei Inamoto’s podcast Hitmakers

10.01.2025

Podcasting again…AFTER WORK DRINKS

A very interesting conversation

Podcasting again…AFTER WORK DRINKS featured image

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

30.12.2024

On stage again

Talking brand-building at Europe’s biggest clean beauty event

On stage again featured image

Beth speaks on the main stage at The Natural Health Expo alongside leaders from some of the most progressive beauty brands of our generation.

30.11.2024

Podcasting…cultural fluency + why it matters

From London to Brooklyn

Podcasting…cultural fluency + why it matters featured image

Ed Cotton invited Beth onto his epic podcast, Inspiring Futures, to talk about the work Tomorrowism does, for who, how…and why

 

Reimagining an icon for a new generation

Services

  • Brand repositioning
  • Brand platform
  • Audience mapping + sizing
  • Brand design
  • Brand TOV, values
  • Brand activation/behaviours
  • Company culture/engagement

"World-class cultural understanding, strategic vision and design excellence. If you want to build a brand that matters, call these guys.”

Briony Garbett, CMO

"They’ve invigorated the whole organisation with new focus, energy and hope. That’s priceless. I’m excited for the future we're building.”

Jonathon Brown, CEO

The project

Royal favour from the Princess of Wales more than a decade ago catapulted Seraphine onto the global stage, leading to global category domination, with flagship boutiques from Beverly Hills to Paris.

But pregnancy culture is always evolving, and a new generation of mothers in their late 20s and early 30s weren’t engaging with Seraphine in anything like the same way their older friends and sisters had. With fresh investment and new C-suite line-up, it was time for the brand look forward, not back.

We repositioned Seraphine as a culturally-fluent, aesthetically-intelligent creative powerhouse – the aspirational lifestyle authority for a generation of women who are all-in on their transition into motherhood, but refuse to compromise their personal style during pregnancy.

Brand repositioning: an ambitious reimagining of the brand’s future, building new strategic foundations to support the brand through its next stage of growth. Brand platform: a new organisational vision + brand platform that challenges traditional maternity tropes and expectations: life changing style. Audience mapping + sizing: Tomorrowism’s proprietary global audience mapping, sizing and segmentation approach, merging machine learning with cultural anthropology. Brand design: new logomark and a more elevated, more confident, more differentiated brand world + visual/verbal codes. Brand behaviours: a fresh set of signature acts and deeds that put Seraphine where the heat is in its category. Company culture/engagement: cross-business education and embedding to support the success of this org-wide reset.