Urban Outfitters

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

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

It’s yesterday. It’s late. I’m tired. I’m setting my phone’s alarm clock before reading myself to sleep. But first I just check my feeds one last quick time. And I see her. Suddenly the outfit I’ve hung on the back... Full story

09.06.2025

THE PERSONALITY INDUSTRY: buying yourself into being

Know thyself -> buy yourself

This weekend I walked and talked with a dear friend, listening as they explained what’s going on with their new relationship (via their partner’s attachment style), updated me on some big career stuff (via their Human Design profile), and rationalised... Full story

03.06.2025

WISDOM SIGNALING

New fear unlocked: wisdom anxiety

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

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

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.

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?

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

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?

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

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

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?

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

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.

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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.

The icon's next chapter

Services

Brand blueprint
Ongoing strategic advisory
Company culture/engagement

“A trusted and valued advisor during
two of our most turbulent trading years”

Emma Wisden, Managing Director

The project

UO is the world’s biggest, and oldest, youth-focussed fashion and lifestyle retailer. It’s also the most authentic to its generation: 90% of its own people are under the age of 30.

We plugged in over a period of two years to support the evolution of UO’s brand strategy in response to a fundamentally changing category landscape. Our work underpinned the brand’s cultural and commercial growth, and store expansion, across Europe.

Brand blueprint: a culturally-responsive rearticulation of the brand’s strategic foundations and core values. Ongoing strategic advisory on progressive, culturally-fluent brand behaviour across UO’s fashion, home, and beauty businesses. Company culture/engagement: cross-business consultation, education, and embedding of future-facing strategic vision.

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

THE PERSONALITY INDUSTRY: buying yourself into being

WISDOM SIGNALING

Why is reading so damn cool right now?

The new architecture of a trend?

THE FUTURE IS FERAL

Fashion's most persistent lie

The West Village Girls hit a nerve

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN?

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT?

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE

About us

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

For young people, by young people

The Body Shop

Changemaking Beauty

Medik8

The Best Skin Of Your Life

Accessorize

A return to craft

Tencel

Weaving the Future

Wallapop

Making second-hand the first choice

News

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

THE PERSONALITY INDUSTRY: buying yourself into being

WISDOM SIGNALING

Why is reading so damn cool right now?

The new architecture of a trend?

THE FUTURE IS FERAL

Fashion's most persistent lie

The West Village Girls hit a nerve

IS THE TREND CYCLE FINALLY SLOWING DOWN?

Tomorrowism in Vogue Business

RICH IN GOODS, RAGGED IN SPIRIT?

GETTING DRESSED IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Part 2: HIGH ON HOPE

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

FORGET WHAT YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT BRAND STRATEGY

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

THE EXTRAORDINARY COST OF BEING UNREMARKABLE

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

CULTURAL FLUENCY + AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE = your unfair advantages

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

OUR APPROACH + SERVICES