Tencel

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

24.02.2026

BONFIRE OF THE INANITIES: enshallowfication

Depth is the new hotness. But we're going to have to fight for it.

Full story

13.02.2026

THE CULTURAL OMNIVORE

let's get harder to categorise

Hey. It’s me, Mother omnivore, dropping back into this series to share my weird/wonderful of the week. ICYMI, series catch-up here: Full story

06.02.2026

The Cultural Omnivore // Colin Nagy

004: it's Instagram + Threads' brand strategy boss

You know, when I picture a proper omnivorous polymath brain, I think of Colin. He’s built and experienced so many interesting things. In work, in life, and in his prolific writing. He’s with us today talking dabbling, flow states, emerging... Full story

30.01.2026

The Cultural Omnivore // Anna Newton

003: A modern publishing powerhouse, writing to us from the British seaside

I’m sure today’s Cultural Omnivore needs little introduction.I know I’ve been following Anna’s evolution for more years, across more platforms, than I care to admit. She’s a strategic/creative juggernaut who transcends all the usual labels. Anna publishes her perspectives on... Full story

28.01.2026

You want to be 'interesting'? Baby stop dabbling

A field guide: saying nope to enshallowification

TL;DR: Depth is sexy, omnivores, thinkers, and eccentrics are cool and extreme individuality is the move. Strong forces are keeping us in the shallows. But I found a cheat code. Full story

21.01.2026

The Eccentric is SO back

May we see them, may we be them

TL;DR: the return of extreme individuality Full story

16.01.2026

The Cultural Omnivore // Pamela Dow

002: Dispatches from the deeply mysterious, deeply chic heart of British public life

The Cultural Omnivore is a new series that kicked off just last week. We ask the same set of Qs to the most interesting people we know. To find out where their attention went this week - high, low, old,... Full story

14.01.2026

So you wanna be a THINKER now? Good luck with that.

We learned what to think, not how to think

TL;DR: Deep is the new sexy and we all wanna think for ourselves in a world that won’t stop thinking for us. But do we even know how? Full story

09.01.2026

NEW SERIES: The Cultural Omnivore

001: Let's get harder to categorise

In these forbidding, shallow times, when so many of us seem to be yearning for a bit more depth, and to think for ourselves in a world that won’t stop trying to think for us, I’m reading a lot about... Full story

05.01.2026

DEPTH CHARGE

I have rare things -> I have rare thoughts

TL;DR: Deep is the new sexy. We’re a bit out of practise. Full story

22.12.2025

THE YEAR IN YEARNING: 2025

What we wanted. What we bought. Who we wanted to be.

TL;DR: We’re desperate to think for ourselves in a culture that won’t stop trying to think for us.Hi!I’ve been waiting all year for this.If you want to know what a society fears at any given time, look at its horror... Full story

03.12.2025

IMPERSONAL SPACE

Mandatory friendliness in shops. Monstrous.

“Please I beg of you, don’t do that to me.” The internet’s having a field day with Target’s leaked 10-4 corporate memo. There’s been ridicule, incredulity, a bit of existential sadness, some ennui.Ever since this past Spring when I wrote... Full story

28.11.2025

The Shopping Novels

What the authors knew before the sociologists

Full story

21.11.2025

2025 word of the year: parasocial

pointing the finger at the individual again

Quick end of week thought. Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2025 is PARASOCIAL. Because: “in 2025, the “chronically online“ developed unreciprocated parasocial relationships with YouTubers and influencers who they feel they know, becoming invested in all the twists... Full story

19.11.2025

PANIC AT THE DISCO(UNT)

Black Friday, when thinking is dangerous.

It’s happening again. The little tightening in my chest that comes every year around this time. Still a week ‘til Black Friday, and already the email subject lines are screaming and the push notifications vibrate my phone across the table.... Full story

14.11.2025

CULTURAL VENTRILOQUISM: whose life are you living?

As creepy as it sounds.

TL;DR: Why do we think other people know better?This morning I was in a coffee queue behind a woman who seemed anxious. She was trying to remember what someone had told her she should order. I know this because I... Full story

07.07.2025

BONE IDLE: low-octane summer

How come brands are celebrating people doing NOTHING?

In and out of this heatwave, the sun is (in Lena Dunham’s words in this month’s British Vogue) totally bleaching my thoughts. It’s hard to think about much of anything.Which is apt…given what I want to talk about with you... Full story

26.06.2025

Cool Girls Don't...Self-Optimise

OPTIMISATION FATIGUE?

I was clearing out a drawer this week (boring, moving house soon) and found my husband's Apple Watch under some papers, dead of battery. He used to love that thing. I call out to him should I put it on... Full story

18.06.2025

The Lipstick Index is cooked

An elegant old theory about consumer culture meets our chaotic new reality

Early Monday morning I was walking down the street in Paris, cafe au lait in hand, full of pain au chocolat, already feeling a bit hot and bothered, when my phone pinged with the media announcement that Leonard Lauder had... Full story

13.06.2025

UNCERTAIN PEOPLE BUY MORE STUFF

Manufactured Inadequacy

TL;DR: As growth flattens, brands are working harder to get their audiences to spend. How do they (ok, we, I) do it? By making you feel shit about yourself. It’s yesterday. It’s late. I’m tired. I’m setting my phone’s alarm... 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. LinkedIn

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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

Weaving the future of the 21st century fashion system

Services

Brand blueprint
Brand platform
Cross-company engagement and embedding

“Tomorrowism’s work is our framework for the future - our most important tool and ammunition in our mission to build a stronger, clearer, presence in fashion culture.”

Harold Weghorst, Global CMO

The project

Tencel has for 40 years been the most groundbreaking, progressive fabric technology business on the planet. Its fabrics are among the most sustainable ever invented.

We were appointed to help Tencel’s global leadership team to recontextualise this category-leading B2B supplier business into a powerhouse consumer brand that ‘fashion people’ understand, seek out, and respect.

Brand blueprint: an ambitious re-imagining of the brand’s strategic foundations and core values. Brand platform: a new organisational vision, attitude + culture-facing brand platform. Cross-company engagement: consultation, education and embedding.

Image credit: Reformation x Tencel

BONFIRE OF THE INANITIES: enshallowfication

THE CULTURAL OMNIVORE

The Cultural Omnivore // Colin Nagy

The Cultural Omnivore // Anna Newton

You want to be 'interesting'? Baby stop dabbling

The Eccentric is SO back

The Cultural Omnivore // Pamela Dow

So you wanna be a THINKER now? Good luck with that.

NEW SERIES: The Cultural Omnivore

DEPTH CHARGE

THE YEAR IN YEARNING: 2025

IMPERSONAL SPACE

The Shopping Novels

2025 word of the year: parasocial

PANIC AT THE DISCO(UNT)

CULTURAL VENTRILOQUISM: whose life are you living?

BONE IDLE: low-octane summer

Cool Girls Don't...Self-Optimise

The Lipstick Index is cooked

UNCERTAIN PEOPLE BUY MORE STUFF

Who we are

Beth Bentley

Chief Strategy Officer

Mark Thompson

Chief Creative Officer

Paul Bentley

Managing Director

What we do

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

----------------------------------------------- FORGET WHAT YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT BRAND STRATEGY

----------------------------------------------- THE EXTRAORDINARY COST OF BEING UNREMARKABLE

----------------------------------------------- CULTURAL FLUENCY + AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE = your unfair advantages

----------------------------------------------- OUR APPROACH + SERVICES

Our work

Lyst

Don't Shop Around

Seraphine

Life Changing Style

Radley

Stylish Thinking

Jessica McCormack

Beyond The Obvious

Heal’s

Where Design Lives

M&S

Anything But Ordinary

Urban Outfitters

For young people, by young people

The Body Shop

Changemaking Beauty

Medik8

The Best Skin Of Your Life

Accessorize

A return to craft

Weaving the Future

Wallapop

Making second-hand the first choice

News

BONFIRE OF THE INANITIES: enshallowfication

THE CULTURAL OMNIVORE

The Cultural Omnivore // Colin Nagy

The Cultural Omnivore // Anna Newton

You want to be 'interesting'? Baby stop dabbling

The Eccentric is SO back

The Cultural Omnivore // Pamela Dow

So you wanna be a THINKER now? Good luck with that.

NEW SERIES: The Cultural Omnivore

DEPTH CHARGE

THE YEAR IN YEARNING: 2025

IMPERSONAL SPACE

The Shopping Novels

2025 word of the year: parasocial

PANIC AT THE DISCO(UNT)

CULTURAL VENTRILOQUISM: whose life are you living?

BONE IDLE: low-octane summer

Cool Girls Don't...Self-Optimise

The Lipstick Index is cooked

UNCERTAIN PEOPLE BUY MORE STUFF

Tomorrowism in Vogue Business

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FORGET WHAT YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT BRAND STRATEGY

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

THE EXTRAORDINARY COST OF BEING UNREMARKABLE

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

CULTURAL FLUENCY + AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE = your unfair advantages

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

OUR APPROACH + SERVICES