As I’m typing this from my perch up here in the Napa Valley we just had a teeny earthquake that shook my computer around - AND we’re experiencing our first drizzly rainfall of the season. So it’s a banner day here in wine country 🍇 🍷

I have a fuller September marketing guide on my LinkedIn and Instagram.

✔ Google has handed brands a new way to organically capture recurring traffic - did you know that?

Like most of us, you probably rely on Google to bring readers to your brand blog and then over to your online store (if you haven’t started or updated your blog for awhile now is the time to jump in).

A great way to encourage readers to come back is to have them add your site to their Google Preferred Sources List. Many brands and publications do this via a discreet pop-up at the bottom of a post or landing page.

You can add a simple snippet of code to your site to have an official Google-styled “Add to Preferred Sources” button. When readers click it, they are guided through a quick flow to add your domain to their Google Search profile, before returning right back to your page. You can also add it through a deep link that functions just like any other link that you might add to copy on your website.

Why you should do this: By adding your site to a reader’s Preferred Source List you’re creating a de facto content subscription that steers them to your site time and again.

💔 Following Dolly Parton’s passing on August 25, 2026, there’s been a noticeable surge in sales of butterfly-themed products and memorabilia.

Because the butterfly was Dolly’s signature personal symbol and the literal logo of her Dollywood theme park, fans have turned to butterfly-centric merchandise as a tangible way to honor her legacy.

Retailers, boutique brands, and independent creators have reported massive activity:

• 🦋 Immediate Merchandise Sellouts: Pop-culture retailers and independent music shops reported selling out of all physical Dolly merchandise—with a particular focus on butterfly-emblazoned items—within 24 hours of her death being announced.

• 🦋 Charitable Jewelry & Apparel Collections: Brands have launched or expanded butterfly-themed collections. These collections have seen overwhelming consumer interest, with portions of the proceeds being directed to her beloved literacy charity, the Imagination Library.

• 🦋 Etsy and Custom Goods Influx: Platforms like Etsy have seen a sharp increase in demand for butterfly shades, themed hoodies, and handmade Dolly-inspired decor.

• 🦋 Tribute Promotions: Local businesses, bakeries, and craft shops have actively used butterfly graphics and products to frame their tribute sales, often seeing high traffic from mourning fans looking for physical keepsakes.

• 🦋 9/25 Has officially been declared Dolly Parton Appreciation Day in Manhattan - but not to be out done by the Big Apple, the entire Golden State of California has declared 9/25 Dolly Parton Day as well … new this morning Cocke County Tennessee has also declared the date as DPD - I have a feeling there will be more states, cities and countries to follow …

✔ Pinterest released it’s 2026 Hobbies List last week and top trends include equestrian pursuits, gardening, painting, tarot and astrology, home cafe, DIY magazines, and collecting.

Not exactly new, but follows the trend that’s taking us all back to the time before Apple introduced the iPhone.

If you’re a brand that doesn’t offer knitting kits or tarot cards don’t despair → use this trend report as an inspiration guide for content.

A skincare business for example can deduce that interest in sensory hobbies is high and that people can use skincare and makeup as a way to express their creativity, and unplug. For example:

The Kitchen Witch and Cosmic Reset section demonstrates that consumers enjoy potions, herbalism and rituals. Brands can highlight ingredients such as adaptogens, mushrooms, and other extracts.

Apothecary style displays with amber glass and vintage inspired artwork fits in with this trend well. By selling a ritual - masks and serums can be seen as screen-free activities that help customers unplug.

Weekend Equestrian begs for skincare that helps customers protect their skin while out romping through the countryside on horseback. Content with luscious photography featuring outdoorsy attire and “fresh-off-the-trail” flushed, dewy skin are winners.

Other ideas for capitalizing on this trend? Host a quilting bee; Product Bedazzling Party (or contest on social media); or holiday wreath making event.

✔ FYI if you’re sick of seeing AI pin results populating your Pinterest queries you can turn them off by following these steps:

1. Open Pinterest and go to your Profile.

2. Open your account Settings or tap Refine your recommendations.

3. Locate the GenAI Interests tab.

4. Toggle the items or categories to the Off position (they are turned on by default).

✔ Google Trends reported a surge in home decor search themes this past week

As with every Autumn, the weather turns cooler and people spend more time indoors contemplating their homes. It’s no surprise that home decor is a big focus on Google search trends.

The top searches included art deco and included bathroom accessories; chrome furniture and accessories; Teal and Magenta wall paint colors; rattan accent chairs; leather arm chair; pink couch, ceiling paint different from wall paint; neon beige color; warm greige paint colors; greige couch; greige wallpaper; limewash paint in black, followed by beige; bouclé furniture; boucle couch cover.

In keeping with Pinterest’s reports above Vintage is a top search for the year with vintage braided rugs and vintage wood coffee table topping the trending home furnishing items in 2026.

✔ State Fairs are a new target for beauty and fashion brand popups

E.l.f recently hosted a “real dill”- themed pop-up at the Minnesota State Fair showcasing their pickle inspired lip balms. The result: about 64,000 attendees passed through the pop-up - checking out e.l.f wares for about eight minutes each. Other brands to create pop-ups include Levi’s, Lucchese, and Wegmans.

✔ Sephora announced its TikTok Shop - Sephora Drop Shop

The shop will feature exclusive monthly curated picks from Sephora partner brands. “Each featured brand will have a dedicated moment to bring its products to life, tell its story and connect with new audiences” they announced yesterday.

✔ Target is looking for creators to help launch it’s new Beauty Studios - the goal is to leverage each creator’s relationship with their followers.

Their point of view on the subject: Target is looking for real distinction from creators, telling the audience at LTKCON “if you can't say what you do that couldn't be made somewhere else, you don't have a business yet”.

✔ Google Pics is taking on Adobe and Canva

Are you’re addicted to Canva - I certainly am … the ease of use and accessible pricing are key points that I love about it. However Google is rolling out an AI-first Canva rival starting with Google Pics. I think the AI-first element may make the product less appealing than Canva because certain platforms (like Substack, Pinterest, and Instagram) actively downgrade content made with AI.

✔ Bedazzling is back, but instead of belts and sweat pants people are gilding their plastic drink cups and product containers.

Once upon a time, way back in the 1970’s and ‘80s if you mentioned “Bedazzling” you conjured images of this machine being used by (somewhat eccentric) gals with long nails and big hair.

But the term "bedazzle" has existed since the 1590s, the Bedazzler cleverly co-opted the name when it made its famous stapler for rhinestones 50 years ago.

The new bedazzling and bejewling craze is a way to (waste time and landfill space - JK) touch grass ie: unplug by embracing creativity and self-expression (and then film it and post it on social media - ha ha JK).

Even if the realities are a bit hypocritical and in some cases dangerous, it’s fun IMO. The result is a cute trend that any brand can easily make their own → buy a bedazzling kit on Amazon and apply rhinestones en masse to your product.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

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I love Target - I want to establish that point from the get-go. Everyone knows you can find really fun, well priced items for your closet, home, kitchen cupboards and more. There’s discovery in every department - including their beauty and self care sections.

Shopping for beauty at Target however, is an exception. Trying to find particular products can become really frustrating when an item you’re looking for - say an eyebrow pencil - has been placed on a swingy peg at ankle level and you’re forced to bend into Downward Facing Dog in order to see it. And then you’re only able to glimpse it in this upside down position for a second or two, because inevitably, your glasses fall off just as a mom with a shopping cart loaded with 25 items and trying to wrangle 2 kids needs to come through.

So you move out of the way, get your glasses back on, and happen to spot an interesting lip care brand that you’ve seen influencers extolling the virtues of on Instagram - so you wander over. The display looks as though store personnel have been ignoring it for weeks - empty testers, and only one or two shades in a seriously-never-going-to-work-for-your-skin-tone huddle sadly at the back of its 12 inch section.

Other shoppers wander nearby looking for a particular brand they saw on a TV show, you happen to be standing near the brand’s display (which for no particular reason is behind locked doors) so you wave the shoppers over. They look relieved and dismayed at the same time - oh if only they could find someone with a key?

Is it worth the struggle to save a few dollars? To me - no, I’d rather go to a local beauty boutique like Citrine, Lemon Laine, Wren & Wild, Aillea, the Detox Market, or Credo - however there aren’t many of these in my area in the Napa Valley. We have world class spas, and Michelin Star restaurants at every turn, but not much in the way of great independent beauty.

We do however have a number of BlueMercury (owned by Macys) stores in our area - which, while not independently owned, understand that careful curation and personal service are necessary elements of a successful beauty shopping experience.

If you ask a question about a product at BlueMercury the salespeople don’t usually stand in front of you and read the packaging over to get the answer (or worse, Google the product on their phones while you wait - I can do that myself thanks) they have a good understanding of each line, who it’s best for, why it’s been selected for the store, ect.

At Whole Foods, (at least in its Napa store) skincare gets a substantial, beautifully maintained section with knowledgable and interested staff nearby. It’s next to the vitamin and wellness section so they naturally co-exist as a wellness story. Cosmetics are much more limited and it’s clearly a deliberate choice. Rather than trying to compete with Ulta (which is just across the street) Target or Bluemercury (both in the same shopping center) across every beauty category, Whole Foods leans into the areas that fit naturally with its health-and-wellness authority. The result feels “chosen for you” rather than incomplete.

There are Sephora and Ulta here, which, at some locations, are not the best with customer service - but at least store designers make the shopping experience a little more workable with flattering lighting and clean, wide aisles.

So all this preamble is to say that Target’s announcement from last week has many in the beauty industry raising their beautifully coiffed eyebrows - myself included.

Target ended its relationship with Ulta last month - in its place the mega retailer announced Wednesday that it’s creating unique Beauty Studios in more than 600 Target stores and will launch them on September 10th, 2026.

These Beauty Studios will have on offer more than 1600 products from about 90 brands - many of them from founder-led or internationally based companies.

Most interestingly, the concept includes beauty advisors offering customized attention; central discovery tables; and highly curated, seasonal selections rather than simply aisles of inventory.

The curation trend of course is key - sales at Target have fallen off over the past few years, while retailers like Sephora continue to grow and gain market share. Ulta has grown from an $8.6 billion business in 2021 to $12.4 billion in 2025 - and just raised its outlook for 2026.

While over at Target overall sales have slipped from about $109 billion in 2022 to $105 billion in 2025, with its beauty department bucking the downward trend. Target beauty sales actually grew from roughly $12.5 billion in 2023 to $13.2 billion in 2025 and are currently growing at a high-single-digit rate - despite the difficulties I mentioned above.

So just judging from the numbers, Target is working to capture dollars from the booming specialty-beauty market while protecting one of the healthier categories inside its own stores.

We’re months away from knowing whether the addition of about 60 new brands (90 brands, ⅔ of which are said to be new as per official press releases) to the store’s burgeoning stock is going to be a great strategy for Target - and if, in about 6 weeks, those dedicated sales people aren’t in fact pulled away to stock shelves in the grocery area, leaving the studio section unmanned most of the time.

While the Target Studio illustration (below) shows space for about 40 brands tops - it’ll be interesting to see how the other 60 Target Studio brands are displayed throughout the department.

The numbers aside, what strikes me about this development is the promise of specialized curation and personal service, qualities most of us would associate with a local specialty beauty store.

Amanda Nusz, senior vice president of merchandising, essentials and beauty at Target told Allure last week:

“A lot of time and energy has been spent with the consumer working on what we believe is going to make us compelling in our next chapter of beauty … This allows us to curate an assortment and an experience that allows people to explore beauty in more inspiring spaces.”

It’s important to note that much of Target’s curation focuses on well established brands, rather than emerging brands waiting to be discovered.

Names such as Beautyblender, Briogeo, Dyson, First Aid Beauty, IGK, Joico, Mario Badescu, Nioxin, Ouidad, Paul Mitchell, St. Tropez, StriVectin, Sunday Riley, Supergoop!, TULA and Wella, along with fragrance names including Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish are well known. Several of these were already available through the old Ulta-at-Target arrangement. Sunday Riley, for example, had an entire Ulta Beauty at Target assortment. Most of these brands are widely available on Amazon and through other large retailers.

Even some of the names that feel like emerging brands are already established elsewhere. SARELLY, which Target is highlighting as one of its founder stories, has a substantial physical-retail footprint in Mexico, including Sephora, Ulta Beauty, Liverpool, Costco and specialty beauty stores. Target may be a significant U.S. expansion for it, but it isn’t the brand’s first encounter with physical retail.

Buff Beauty is a founder-led category-building newcomer. Some of the other less familiar names are CHROMA, Gróa, Kayura, MIXIK SKIN, Modern Magic, Remilia, Smooch Body and Volo.

For independent beauty retailers Target Studio creates issues other than competition for consumer dollars. Small stores are usually the ones that act as de facto incubators by sourcing, introducing, and educating about new, unfamiliar brands.

Yet as those brands grow, independent retailers can find themselves with decreasing leverage to keep them. Bigger accounts bring bigger orders, wider exposure and more predictable volume. Meanwhile, independent stores might struggle to meet minimums year round or gain access to the larger names their customers are asking for.

Indie Brands and Retailers: Don’t Try to Out-Target Target

If you run an independent beauty store, Target Beauty Studio should probably reinforce the value of doing the things a mass retailer has the hardest time delivering consistently.

• Know your assortment intimately. Don’t read the package back to a customer who asks a question. Know why you brought the product into the store, who loves it and who probably won’t.

• Introduce people to things they wouldn’t have found themselves. That’s one of the reasons customers visit a great independent store in the first place.

• Give your assortment a point of view. Founder-led, treatment-oriented, ingredient-driven, design-conscious or difficult-to-find brands give your staff something worth explaining.

• Don’t duplicate endlessly. Target can carry dozens of solutions to the same problem because breadth is part of its proposition. An independent retailer has the luxury of saying, These are the four versions we think are worth carrying.

• Merchandise beautifully. Put products where customers can see them, reach them, test them and understand why they belong together.

And most importantly, know your customers. You do not have to cover every category to feel like a serious beauty destination. Strong retail concepts often have a very clear center of gravity:

• Whole Foods credibly owns skincare, body care, clean ingredients and wellness-adjacent beauty.

• CVS: convenience plus health/pharmacy authority.

• Lemon Laine and Citrine: curation + intimacy + knowledgeable people.

• Bluemercury: upscale curation and personal service at larger scale.

• Credo: strong point of view, standards, education and curation, while scaling high-touch specialty retail.

• Sephora and Ulta: enormous assortment + discovery + expertise + services.

• Benefit BrowBars: specialization + service + demonstration.

• Target Beauty Studio: trying to incorporate pieces of nearly all of these inside a mass merchant.

A small independent retailer can own sensitive skin, natural fragrance, clinical skincare, founder-led brands, luxury clean beauty, or whatever genuinely fits its customer.

That’s a point of view that contrasts nicely with Target, which needs to serve the person buying a $7 mascara, and the person looking for prestige skincare, and the teenager chasing a viral lip product, and the salon-hair shopper, and the fragrance customer → all inside the same department. A smaller retailer doesn’t.

An independent retailer can remember what someone bought last time, know that she hated the texture of one sunscreen but loved another, tell her with all honesty when she doesn’t need the expensive serum she’s holding, call her when the fragrance she loved finally comes back into stock, and create a relationship that makes someone choose your store even when Target is five minutes away.

One of America’s largest retailers has decided that the next opportunity in beauty involves more curation, more expertise, more discovery and more personal service - ie: what small specialty retailers already do well.

For independent beauty, the answer isn’t to become more like Target, it’s to become exceptionally good at everything Target wishes were easier to do at scale.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

• Interest in Pumpkin Spice Lattes have declined year over year according to Google data.

• Matcha lattes are currently gaining interest - pushing out chai and pumpkin spice flavors.

Of course it would be silly to think that warming autumn drinks are going anywhere, but it might surprise you to find what’s taking PSL’s place this year.

Cider is gaining traction this Fall - and according to Google the top trending drink is “tequila apple cider” … didn’t I tell you that gourmand themes are growing up?

Other cider flavors include pumpkin cider and more open ended queries into cider cocktail ideas.

For coffee drinks there’s heated interest in banana flavored blends (up 300% in the past 30 days):

• Banana Bread Coffee

• Banana Syrup

• Banana Bread Syrup

Other popular flavors are:

• cardamom latte (+300%)

• peanut butter latte (+80%)

• hazelnut latte (+60%) - I’ve been enjoying this one myself this week :-)

• pecan crunch latte is up +190% so far in August

• caramel apple iced coffee

And as we’ve talked about before, some of us want summer to linger longer, while others are ready for sweaters and snuggly blankets in late July. This is a trend that’s growing for some reason.

According to Google Trends, searches for “when do pumpkin spice lattes come out” usually spikes every August - and over the past month, it has increased +510%

• 2006-2013: peaked September and October

• 2018-2023: Search interest consistently peaked in the last week of August

• 2023 and 2024: Search interest was highest in the second-last week of August

• 2025: Search interest peaked the last week of August

So, if you’re planning an Autumn open house or trunk show, consider offering your guests Tequila Cider or Banana Bread Lattes.

Wanna do your own comparisons? Google Trends aka Google Explore gives you great insight into what American consumers are looking for and interested in.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

When I saw these numbers last week from Circana reflecting solid growth in the fragrance and skincare categories in the first half of 2026, I was amused … happy of course because I work in marketing for beauty brands … but also thought the timing was interesting.

When I moved coasts a few months ago my entire collection of fragrance had to be tossed. It’s very hard to pack perfume bottles into shipping containers and not worry that the bottles will be broken and leak out onto clothing or artwork and ruin them. Perfume is also flammable - so just use your imagination there.

So just recently I’ve been trying to figure out what to replace my East Coast bottles with out here in wine country … it’s a different vibe on the West Coast, obviously, so many, many fragrances need to be scouted.

So my moving drama aside, 2026 is proving to be a really sweet year for brands selling little luxuries like fragrance.

New first-half U.S. beauty data reported this month shows fragrance continuing to perform strongly despite weak consumer confidence in the economy overall.

Mass-market fragrance sales are up 15% - an uptick that began several years ago has become structurally embedded in US culture.

There has been a good deal of innovation designed to make fragrance easier to discover and collect: minis, discovery sets, body mists, hair perfume, layering fragrances, dupes, gourmand fragrances, celebrity fragrances, niche fragrance brands and fragrance wardrobes.

In 2024, mini and travel fragrance units were growing at twice the rate of the overall fragrance category → younger shoppers were driving body mists and dupe culture.

By the first half of 2025, new fragrance brand launches accounted for nearly one-third of prestige fragrance’s dollar growth.

As of August 2026 brands are still piling their pretty bottles onto fragrance counters. For example L’Oréal launched NYX over the summer with modestly price-pointed hair-and-body mists specifically aimed at Gen Z, citing the launch timing on fast-growing mass fragrance market.

So there’s a consumer fueled feedback loop we can learn from here:

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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but I graduated from San Francisco State University after 6 short years studying English literature, poetry, short story writing, and fiction writing. I really never wanted to leave. August Coppola (Frances Ford Coppola’ s brother, Father of Nicolas Cage, Uncle to Sophia Coppola) was dean of the College of Creative Arts when I was there - I had instructors like Ethan Canin (Emperor of the Air) and Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun) making things fun and challenging - why would I leave that and head out into a job market?

Bear with me - this will have relevance in a minute or so...

In my life I’ve logged countless hours dissecting sentences in pursuit of meaning, parsing adjectives to understand the author’s true message. I currently spend weekends sinking into novels with the total, consuming devotion of an archaeologist who’s suddenly discovered a lost city.

With all this fiction based puzzle parsing you’d think I’d find product and brand descriptions to be as interesting as reading the owner’s manual for my 26 year old truck.

Ahhh but here’s the quandary - with the option to “improve text with AI” jammed onto every selling platform from Shopify to Squarespace, I see clients writing product descriptions that read like the opening paragraph of a steamy romance novel. Many, many adjectives - not many facts. And they’re launching their products into cyberspace without any safety tether to anchor them to Google. And because new customers can’t find them without heavy PR and social media support, their pages fail to do the one thing they're actually meant to do: sell passively.

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Well, it’s almost the end of August and it seems like we’re just ripping along into Autumn and Holiday. Have you gotten your marketing plan set up for the end of the year, or are you still considering adding more pieces to it? These days, changes seem to pop out of nowhere and it’s great to stay flexible. Here are some of the more interesting marketing headlines from the past few days that might give you a burst of inspo:

→ Holiday shopping is becoming a much longer AI-assisted research process

Google published new holiday-shopping AI related research last week that’s actually relevant for independent brands.

→ Online shoppers who use AI during their purchase journey encounter an average of more than 12 touchpoints, versus about 4 for non-AI users.

→ 75% of Google AI users say AI allows them to search more naturally, including highly specific questions and visual searches.

Tip: Your product pages need to answer common questions customers might actually ask an AI assistant: Where is this made? What does it smell or feel like? Is it the best choice for sensitive skin? Would a man like it?

Your brand website and product pages need to plainly explain what the products are, who they’re best for, what the ingredients are in straight terms (not flowery language), what makes them different from similar brands … and other common questions that shoppers might ask in person.

Keep it imaginative but on-point: product descriptions that read like dishwasher manuals aren’t what I’m suggesting → however product profiles that seem to get lost somewhere in a flower field won’t make sense to a (relatively stupid) machine, ie: “An elevated sensory experience inspired by the natural world” doesn’t tell a (again, a relatively stupid) machine much if you never get around to mentioning that your candle smells like cedar and is made with a proprietary bee and soy wax blend.

Consider that in the AI era you’re now writing product copy for at least two audiences:

1. Your target market which may be women in their mid 40’s;

2. AI … which I like to characterize as her know-it-all tween daughter who frequently misinterprets information but insists she’s right no matter how many times you correct her.

» Related Read: How Brands Turn Products Into Micro-Media Assets in 2026 «

→ So, AI can find you a 60” velvet sofa, but being a silly machine it doesn’t know if it’s stylish or not.

This week, ClickZ published an interview with Sebastian Pflumm, VP of Search and Discovery at Furniture.com. Pflumm makes the point in the article that an AI agent can be great at suggesting the functional part of a product, ie: reporting dimensions, price, materials, color, scent, availability and other needs, but it can’t settle on something as personal as a shopper’s taste. See my comments above.

Prior to his role at Furniture.com, Pflumm spent more than a decade advising brands in the retail and consumer space at McKinsey - so this isn’t a new frontier for him. He recommends a brand perform enough structured groundwork and PR to ensure that there’s common knowledge of a company floating around the internet for machine models to draw a broad picture of your brand from. This will lend context to what AI recommends and provide better brand recognition to those shoppers behind the queries.

→ Brand building can be romantic

This is def. giving You Got Mail vibes. It is also underscoring the current trend in which lifestyle brands are no longer just product designers, manufacturers, retailers, and influencers → they’re also entertainment companies.

The apparel brand Rhone recently launched A Love Letter to NYC, a campaign inspired by the romantic comedies of 1990s New York.

Rhone’s CMO Bethany Evans has described the company as reaching an inflection point after years of focusing heavily on performance marketing. As the company expands through retail and wholesale, it’s putting more emphasis on upper-funnel brand building.

The Love Letter to NYC campaign stretches across video, social, print, direct mail, outdoor, retail, Citi Bike docks, a photo booth, and an integration with The New York Times’ Connections game.

Tip: Independent brands should consider the thinking behind Rhone’s move: Performance marketing answers “Where can we find someone ready to buy?” Brand marketing answers “Why should anyone remember us when they’re ready to buy?”

→ DTC isn’t dead, but the old DTC formula is

Glossy and Modern Retail held a State of DTC discussion on August 12 against a telling backdrop: once-celebrated direct-to-consumer companies are struggling. Their framing for the event was centered around the notion that direct-to-consumer isn’t disappearing → but it’s evolving.

For years, DTC marketing was no more complex than: acquire customer through Facebook or Instagram ad → send customer to website → optimize conversion → repeat.

That was never a reliable brand strategy, and I have always recommended to my clients that they work with Main Street retailers and market with a Big Tent mindset.

The old marketing model was a distribution and customer-acquisition system that made sense during a period when digital advertising economics were very favorable - and that’s no longer the case.

The model that emerged from the talk looks much messier, but healthier: DTC + wholesale + retail + PR + creators + search + AI discovery + physical experiences + community = marketing

→ The evolution of beauty retail is experiential

Heathrow Airport and travel retailer Avolta have brought back their Redefine Your Beauty campaign across all four Heathrow terminals. The campaign combines shopping with personalized beauty treatments, interactive brand activations, exclusives, and gifts-with-purchase.

For a boutique, spa, candle company, jewelry maker or skincare brand, a five-person workshop, scent consultation, styling appointment, repair clinic, meet-the-maker afternoon or holiday wrapping bar makes a shopping experience memorable.

Tip: Retailers should give customers a reason to visit their store, rather than merely another place where merchandise happens to be available.

→ The creator economy is less glamorous than it looks

New CreatorIQ research surveyed more than 5,000 creators and found that about 67% earn less than $10,000 annually from content creation, and less than 5% of those surveyed earn more than $100,000. For about 63% of the respondents, creating content isn’t even their primary source of income.

Tip: This reinforces the case for looking below celebrity and mega-influencer level. A brand may find genuinely knowledgeable creators who have highly relevant audiences and are still treating content as a side business. Product seeding, modest paid partnerships and longer-term ambassador relationships may be far more realistic than the influencer industry may suggest.

→ Ugg is recruiting art students rather than conventional fashion influencers

Modern Retail reported this week that footwear and apparel brand Ugg is launching a college ambassador program called Ugg Creative Lab. In support of back-to-school shopping, Ugg is working with students at Pratt Institute, Central Saint Martins and Seoul’s Hongik University. Students will create work interpreting Ugg products through their own creative disciplines.

→ Also this week, Sophia Petrillo’s Thrift Store Bag sold to a women in West Virginia for an amount that could easily afford a median priced house in that state.

I’ll take any opportunity to write about the Golden Girls so I absolutely discussed the marketing lesson of this amazing story on my blog here.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

So - I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been here in St Helena for a few months - reacquainting myself with Northern California after so many years away.

Down In the valley they’ve been harvesting early-season grapes for sparkling wines, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. The process fills the air with a gorgeous, softly sweet - distinctively fruity - bouquet that I wish someone would make into a candle or a room spray.

When I was growing up, the Napa and Sonoma area was a quiet backwater dotted with a smattering of vineyards amid sprawling cattle ranches and orchards. As a kid in the 1970’s I came up here for horse shows - and let me tell you, it was rural - very pretty but nothing approximating the wine and spa culture that inhabits the area today.

Why did it change? Well, that brings us to today’s subject - the 50th anniversary of one of history’s breakout PR events. Loosely outlined in the film Bottle Shock (starring my favorite actor, the late Alan Rickman) the Judgement of Paris, as the event is now known, gets its name from the one lone article written about it at the time - a four paragraph blurb buried on page 58 of Time Magazine, crowded into one inside column alongside an Armstrong Tire advert. Not a great clip by conventional standards, but WOW what an impact.

There are PR campaigns with seven-figure budgets, celebrity ambassadors, carefully orchestrated press previews and media lists containing hundreds of names.

And then there was the Judgment of Paris.

The idea behind the event was simple: grab a few bottles of wine from France - and a few from California - toss in a sprinkling of French wine experts, schedule a blind tasting on a sleepy Monday afternoon - and invite the press in to cover it.

The result that no one saw coming.

On May 24, 1976, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier and his American colleague Patricia Gallagher gathered some of France’s most respected wine authorities at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris. The occasion was a blind tasting comparing prestigious French wines with a collection of largely unknown bottles from California.

It was supposed to be an interesting little event pegged to America’s Bicentennial. It was pretty successful :-)

This year marks its 50th anniversary, and while the story has been repeated so many times that it has acquired its own mythology (the winning vintages are in the Smithsonian Institute for goodness sake!) its retelling here in a PR context is hugely useful to anyone trying to get attention for a smaller brand.

Let’s make a note of this one crucial fact: The Judgment of Paris wasn’t the brainchild of a seasoned marketing wiz or a massive think tank. It was put together by an independent wine shop owner kicking around ideas with his staff.

It Began With a Very Good PR Peg

Steven Spurrier was an Englishman selling predominantly French wine in Paris and running L’Académie du Vin, a wine school that catered heavily to English-speaking wine lovers.

Since Spurrier spoke English, American winemakers passing through Paris had begun bringing California bottles for him to taste. As it turned out, the wines were really quite good.

At the time, this was by no means conventional wisdom. Fine wine effectively meant French wine, and California, known for its cotton crops, rolling cattle ranches, and peach orchards, barely (well, didn’t) registered with the European wine establishment.

Patricia Gallagher, an American who ran Spurrier’s wine school, had visited Napa in 1975 and came away particularly impressed by its Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons. She suggested holding an event in Paris to bring them some attention.

Then she supplied the thing every good PR idea needs:

They Had A timely hook.

1976 was the 200th anniversary of American independence. ahhhh Vive l’Amérique!

Why not use the Bicentennial to introduce French wine authorities to some of the best wines being made in America? C'est une super idée!

So, Spurrier traveled to California, selected six Chardonnays and six Cabernet Sauvignons, and invited prominent French wine authorities to taste them. His Académie had enough credibility that they accepted.

It was, at first, just a clever promotional tasting … but then … drum roll please … and this means everything …

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This first week of August has been a week of “getting down to business” in terms of setting up for the Fall and holiday retail season for many of us. Summer has been a series of distractions for me personally (probably for most of us) … between shifting coasts (East → West) and setting up a new office out here in the Napa Valley, my writing and associated content creation has been (somewhat) shuffled onto the back burner.

My personal processes aside, we’re starting to see more hard data and expert predictions on where the lifestyle brand industry is heading for the next few months.

Below, check out highlights from the Glossy survey, the rise of brands-as-entertainment, Pinterest wants your pins to be shoppable, and 2 new trend reports covering the decor industry see some interesting changes for holiday.

1. Holiday marketers are looking beyond discounts

Glossy surveyed 90 brand and retail professionals and found that 76% expect holiday revenue to increase, while 81% plan to keep discounts roughly in line with last year.

According to Glossy research, brands are putting together clever bundles, gifts with purchase, loyalty perks, seasonal exclusives and complementary brand partnerships rather than running sales all season.

One particularly interesting wrinkle: marketers say they plan to use fewer traditional gift guides this year, even though gift guides remain their historically best-performing holiday tactic.

Laura Brodie, Ritual’s chief growth officer, argued that gift guides may become even more valuable as AI search increasingly draws from curated recommendations and “best of” content.

Why it matters: Small brands shouldn’t assume competing this holiday translates to shouting 30% off louder than everyone else. Bundling, gift-with-purchase offers, exclusivity, and strong gift-guide placement will protect margins while creating urgency for your customers.

2. Heritage beauty brands are returning to their hero products

Glossy also reported that established beauty brands are increasingly refreshing and reactivating their best-known products rather than relying exclusively on an ever flowing stream of new launches. Nars, for example, created a New York pop-up around its longtime Orgasm blush, leaning into memory and recognition with the message “Remember Your First.”

Why it matters: The new-product treadmill is costly and draining. Smaller brands should look closely at the product customers already associate with them and ask whether it deserves a stronger story, updated campaign, new format, or seasonal revival.

3. Brands are becoming entertainment companies

Some lifestyle companies are creating content that functions as entertainment first and advertising second. Innisfree recently worked with comedian Tommy Brennan on playful man-on-the-street interviews in New York. Their Daily Defense sunscreen was present, but product education wasn’t the entire performance.

Why it matters: Brands are moving from isolated posts toward recognizable content properties. For a smaller company, that doesn’t require a full scale production. Consider a recurring founder interview, customer-confession series, weekly ritual, store diary, or behind-the-scenes videos.

4. Pinterest is tightening the connection between inspiration and shopping

Pinterest reported 640 million monthly active users, an 11% year-over-year increase, and second-quarter revenue grew 18% to $1.18 billion. The company is actively working to position itself as an AI-supported visual discovery and shopping platform.

In pursuit of that goal, Pinterest appointed a new global head of content this week. The role oversees visual search, discovery, shopping, creator programs and brand-content partnerships, explicitly bringing content strategy closer to monetization and business outcomes.

Why it matters: Pinterest increasingly wants to close the distance between “I like this idea” and “I will buy this product”. Lifestyle brands preparing Autumn and Holiday material should be building searchable, savable visual collections now, not uploading a few festive Pins on December 12 and hoping for Christmas magic.

5. Two New Trend Reports Project Autumn and Holiday 2026

Have you been wondering what’s happening this Autumn and Holiday? Two new trend reports offer a picture of where things are headed. Key points from this week’s Apartment Therapy New/Next and the Trendalytics Fall Winter Home Decor Forecast reveal:

• Heritage is replacing generic nostalgia. Forget about looking vaguely vintage. Your customers are responding to traditional crafts and identifiable niche eras.

• Texture is becoming touchable.‍ ‍Your customers are craving the feel of linen, wool, natural fibers, soft upholstery and skin-friendly materials as much as color.

• The next version of maximalism is grounded.‍ ‍Organized chaos in the form of burgundy, plum, moss, brass paired with dark woods that provide richness and warmth.

• Imperfection is becoming aspirational.‍ ‍Forget the fussiness of traditional style → worn patinas, gleefully collected rooms, and slightly undone styling are pushing back against polish and stodgy lines.

• Emotional comfort is the key ingredient above all.‍ ‍Even as color and character return, consumers are still seeking sanctuary, stability and sensory reassurance.

• Ralph Lauren Christmas as a genre is a huge thing with consumers.

Why it matters: Lifestyle brands can incorporate these trends through layered product photography, richer seasonal color, tactile props, atmospheric lighting and copy that emphasizes craftsmanship, provenance, comfort and sensory experience. The goal is not to reproduce a decorating trend literally, but to translate its mood into a recognizable brand point of view.

The takeaway for your brand:

• Rebuild around recognizable products.

• Create recurring content instead of disposable posts.

• Offer value without immediately sacrificing margin.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

If you feel yourself mentally doing the Cha Cha throughout the month of August then you’re probably on the right track.

August is a month when, as a marketer for a lifestyle brand, you must shake off the beach sand, and make a sharp marketing pivot out of sundresses and daiquiris directly into chunky knits and hot toddies.

I’m guessing that you’ve been…

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For years I’ve been shooting products for clients → mostly from the beauty, baby, and decor industries (usually selling both DTC and BTB). One prevailing mantra has always, dominated throughout these brand types: style and create artwork that’s light, airy and absolutely saturated with color.

It’s a great look - for beauty brands it evokes a spa feel; for kid’s products it gives clean, orderly, and current; for decor it can make a design look positive and upbeat.

The Psychology behind High-Key Product Photography

Bright photography is a low-risk artistic choice: High-key lighting = soft shadows and clean backgrounds that evoke a sense of:

• Clarity and Honesty: Light and bright tells the viewer that a brand has nothing to hide, thereby fostering trust.

• Mood Enhancement: Bright, sunlit visuals make products feel joyful.

• Perceived Value: Clean, airy imagery subconsciously connects with luxury and sophistication.

• Cognitive Ease: Soft light and minimal shadows reduce visual clutter, allowing the brain to process the product’s features faster (in this era of endless schooling this fact alone may be the style’s undoing).

• Pure Whites: Give the sense of hygiene, purity, and cleanliness → an ideal look for selfcare, healthcare and food.

This sense of cognitive ease may just be exactly the reason your brand should look into chiaroscuro as a brand direction. When a viewer scrolls through social media or even on Amazon, they see endless homogenously depicted products… light, bright backgrounds, and colorful props…. and if you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of products on the market these days, all propped and shot in replicate. When consumers see them, their brain locks in image after image, immediately computing that it’s seeing nothing new or notable, and moving on.

The Psychology Behind Chiaroscuro (Low-Key Lighting) Photography

Food photographers have long incorporated dark backgrounds like linens, slate, and countertops to highlight the drama of select dishes. Baked goods in particular seem to come alive with a more dramatic lighting scheme.

And notable beauty brands like Rituel de Fille, Heretic Parfum, Mui Mui, and Prada use the style beautifully,

Chiaroscuro is a mouthful, but worth getting to know. The word comes from Italian: chiaro means light or clear, and scuro means dark. It offers a dark and dramatic style that evokes mystery, and immediately grabs the viewer’s attention. The reason? A deeply shadowed, low-key photo triggers depth perception → the viewer immediately perceives emotional gravity and stops to examine what it’s seeing:

• Attention and Focus: Your eyes innately hunt for light in the dark. A single illuminated point on a product commands immediate, uninterrupted focus.

• The Perception of Value and Luxury: Dark framing mimics fine art and those high-end jewelry displays you drool over on 5th Avenue - your brain computes that the item is important and crave-worthy.

• Tactile Realism: Dramatic light to shadow effects highlight texture, inviting the viewer to feel the product.

• Intrigue and Narrative: Obscuring parts of a product in shadow invites curiosity, prompting your brain to fill in the missing details and engage deeper with the brand story.

Chiaroscuro Lighting is Unique

Chiaroscuro art began as a painting technique popularized by artists like Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Caravaggio who used a strong directional light source to make figures emerge from darkness.

There are a lot of lighting styles and cultural movements that can be confused with chiaroscuro lighting. Here are the key elements of the style:

• One dominant light source, often coming from the side

• Large areas of deep shadow

• A small, carefully chosen area of illumination

• Strong dimensionality and texture

• A dark or subdued background

• A mysterious, cinematic mood

In the image above, the bottle and hand receive the strongest light, while the woman’s hair, shoulder, and much of the background disappear into shadow. That directs the eye immediately to the product and gives the scene an old-master, intimate quality.

It is different from simply making a photo dark, like the one on the far right above. Chiaroscuro lighting is intentional: the area of focus is placed strategically so that the shadows shape the subject and tell the viewer exactly where to look. It is darkness with excellent management skills.

Why employ chiaroscuro lighting

• Depth: It tricks the eye into seeing flat paint as solid, round objects.

• Focus: Bright light pulls your eyes directly to the most important person or product.

• Mood: Heavy shadows add deep emotion, intrigue and beguiling mystery to the scene.

Chiaroscuro is Not Goth

I think some look at darker, directional lighting as a hallmark of Goth and say to themselves “oh, no - that’s not my brand”. While you may or may not want the Goth vibe, it’s important to note that Chiaroscuro is not Goth. Here are the differences:

• Chiaroscuro is the tool used to create dramatic light and shadow.

• Goth is a subculture centered on music, fashion, and dark themes.

• Chiaroscuro is a Renaissance painting technique using strong contrasts between light and dark to create 3D volume.

• Goth is a 1980s post-punk subculture rooted in specific music, alternative fashion, and a macabre aesthetic.

• Chiaroscuro features directional light beams, deep un-lifted shadows, heavy dimensional sculpting, and intense focal points.

• Goth features black clothing, pale makeup, religious imagery, Victorian lace, leather, and macabre themes.

• Chiaroscuro’s mood is dramatic, theatrical, luxurious, high-end, mysterious, and deeply artistic.

• Goth’s mood is melancholic, rebellious, romanticized darkness, spooky, anti-mainstream, and counter-culture.

They do connect, but only superficially. Goth aesthetics frequently use chiaroscuro lighting to look more cinematic, mysterious, and moody. But, you can look at a photo of a bright neon-lit Goth club scene, and next to it see a chiaroscuro lit photo of a luxury Ferrari or a simple bowl of fruit.

Here is the exact prompt that I used to makeover the sample product shot above on the right into a chiaroscuro styled shot on the left:

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We’re getting into that time of year that requires caffeinated thinking → back-to-school followed by the Autumn and Winter holidays. The marketing wheel is spinning faster now - do you feel it?

And did you also notice that school is starting earlier than ever this year? (In Arizona the kids were at their desks on July 15!) Most of us (rightfully) believe that holiday creep is a corporate conspiracy to get us to spend more - but how did those wily devils get the schools to go along with it too? ;-)

Turns out it’s not a marketing ploy after all → contemporary school schedules account for longer days off during the school year (like a week for Thanksgiving in some districts); snow days; and a longer prep time runway for standardized testing - that sort of thing. (Not a corporate conspiracy).

But, since they’re doing it anyway, it’s a great opportunity for brands and boutiques to take advantage.

According to the NRF, 32% of all shoppers started their Back to School shopping in June, with Millennials and Zoomers spending the most.

So, what are people buying this year? Nostalgia has a lot to do with style choices:

Fashion: Wide-legged premium denim jeans are reportedly the hottest item for clothing. Also in demand: conversation boosting T-shirts, cute tops, low profile shoes, chunky sweaters and any other stylish item that pairs well with jeans. Returning to Y2K inspired fashion, small shoulder bags have made a return. Sneakers/ trainers/ tennis shoes are consistently important - their adaptability to so many looks, durability, and common sense comfort help the category experience a more concentrated BTS lift throughout July, August and September.

Decor: Create the perfect dorm room with cute bedding, air purifiers, inspirational artwork, (those Hang in there Baby posters come to mind) makeup mirrors, small appliances like refrigerators, desks and laptops.

Beauty: Lip liner sales are up this year again along with glosses and lip treatment products. Tinted lip oils and balms, gentle gel cleansers, hydrating hand sanitizers, deodorants, and mists are doing well. Gentle starter skincare that is unscented and easy to use is also very popular. Premium Oral Care products that approach gum health like skincare feel like an affordable luxury.

Toys and Gifts: According to Circana, those of us aged 15 and older have lifted sales of various toys by 111% since 2020 and overtaken the 10–14 age group. Globally, North America’s 15+ toy consumer market is twice the size of Europe’s and four times the size of Asia’s.

What can you do as a brand to maximize your BTS opportunities this year?

Try not to look at the season as one mystery novel to race through - instead take it chapter by juicy chapter.

Surveys show that price conscious consumers are buying things as they go along this year, rather than investing in everything for their kids in one fell swoop.

For the first day of school parents are stocking up on supplies like notebooks and backpacks, then shifting to a great outfit for picture day along with trendy makeup; followed by cold weather gear when that hits in various parts of the country.

Tips for making the most of BTS

Strategy and Timing

• Start early: If you haven’t already, launch marketing campaigns asap.

• Omnichannel presence: Connect online ads, social media, blog posts, and physical store displays so customers see the same message everywhere.

• Mobile optimization: Make sure your website loads fast and works well on phones since a majority of parents shop on mobile devices. Phones and tablets drive roughly 76% to 77% of total retail and e-commerce website visits.

Consider Who’s Influencing Purchasing

• Many polls show that children heavily influence the brands that go into shopping carts. Not surprisingly 58% of parents say that kid’s preferences have the most influence on what they buy for BTS. Kids are exposed to a variety of brands and products for weeks through friends and media, and school-provided supply lists shape more than half of purchases. With younger children, parents set the budget and make the final decision.

• If teens are your target market they’ll often buy things themselves using their own money from after school jobs or allowances. They’ll be influenced by their friends and be more focused on trendy outfits, cool notebooks, hip tech accessories, and specific sport gear.

Offers and Content

• Bundle products: Group popular items together at a lower price to increase the total amount people spend.

• Student and teacher discounts: Offer special deals for college students and teachers to build loyalty.

• Helpful content: Share checklist guides, style tips, or gift guides to make shopping easier for families.

Related Reading:

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

While it was a dependable ritual, looking back at the photos it’s hard to tell one year from another - which is probably why lately Autumn is starting to seem a bit canned.

So. Let’s be honest. We’ve reached peak saturation with the traditional autumn marketing playbook. For the last several decades, lifestyle brands and boutiques celebrated September in entirely predictable fashion. Wildly enthusiastic blurs of bright orange pumpkins, sunflowers and mums sprinkled with bright autumn leaves explode from just about everywhere.

But with increasing popularity, Halfway-to-Halloween’s shadow is casting a dim view of this traditional algorithmic Autumn. Consumers are instead turning to a moody, cinematic escape.

Enter Dark Academic Mysticism, or what is being called Gothic Poetcore. This season, top-tier legacy houses and agile indie brands alike are flipping the traditional Fall script on its head. The result is an aesthetic that feels intellectual, shadow-heavy, and deeply tactile.

Think heritage plaids, heavy cable knits, and a color palette grounded in Transformative Teal and Plum Noir.

It’s all about the romance of the unplugged life, packaged into lifestyle commerce.

For boutique founders and small marketing teams, this is your competitive advantage. You don’t need a luxury house budget to capture this mood; just try to understand the psychological craving behind it. Consumers aren’t buying products this autumn, they’re buying a shield against artificial noise.

What to Stop Doing Right Now

Before you click publish on your Autumn campaign, look at your content calendar and ruthlessly cut the following legacy tactics. If your marketing feels like a replica of 2022, your audience will scroll right past it.

• Stop using ultra-bright, shadowless lighting. Ditch the aggressive ring lights and over-exposed product photography. If your visuals look like they were shot in a brightly lit pharmacy, you are killing the mood.

• Stop overdoing the “bright orange” pumpkin aesthetic. Pumpkin spice has transitioned from a seasonal treat into a corporate cliché. Lean away from neon oranges and primary yellows. See my photos above :-)

• Stop posting generic, fast-paced video transitions. Fast cuts, frantic trending audio, and hyper-caffeinated “get ready with me” energy do not align with this trend.

• Stop relying on purely digital storytelling. Sending just another automated discount email or static product ad grid feels empty to a digitally burnt-out audience.

• Stop using generic, cheerful “Fall captions.” Phrases like “Pumpkin spice and everything nice” or “Sweater weather is finally here!” feel lazy and algorithmically generated.

What to Do Instead

• Embrace Chiaroscuro lighting. Use single-source, directional lighting that allows deep, rich shadows to frame your products. Your imagery should look like a still from an indie film or a classic oil painting.

• Pivot to the new moody neutrals. Ground your visual grid in deep chocolate brown, charcoal, and Transformative Teal, using sudden, controlled pops of tomato red or deep plum to draw the eye.

• Lower the frame rate and slow down. Film raw, ASMR-style videos that focus on the physical weight and sound of your product—the scratch of a fountain pen, the heavy thud of a ceramic candle vessel, or the texture of a knit.

• Inject tangible, analog touchpoints. Slip a heavy, beautifully textured postcard with a custom micro-poem into your shipping boxes. Give your customers something physical to hold, pin to a corkboard, or collect.

• Write like an author, not a marketer. Trade short, emoji-stuffed captions for micro-narratives. Tell a story about a foggy morning, the scent of old paper, or the feeling of isolation in a cozy room. Treat your captions like brief, editorial entries.

Here’s how to audit your current assets and pivot your strategy before the first leaf drops:

The Back-to-School Vibe: Haunted Ivy League

Back-to-school marketing has evolved past bright primary colors and yellow school buses. For 2026, it is all about an elevated, “prep-school” aesthetic mixed with vintage mystery.

• The Look: Think heritage plaids, crisp collared shirts under prep school sweaters, structured tailoring, and vintage-inspired silk ties.

• The Marketing Spin: Brands are staging campaigns that look like moody film stills from boarding school mysteries. Instead of organized student messaging, marketing focuses on intellectual curiosity and a pen-pal aesthetic.

The Color Palette: Transformative Teal & Plum Noir

The standard pumpkin-spice oranges are taking a back seat to a deeper, more romantic, and unpredictable color playbook.

• The Palette: Deep eggplant; moody, grounding plums; chocolate brown; and Transformative Teal acts as the season’s new strategic neutral. These are accented by sudden pops of tomato red and controlled fuchsia pink.

• The Marketing Spin: Visual feeds are shifting from ultra-bright, “vibecoded” lighting to rich, cinematic, shadow-heavy lighting that emphasizes the deep, emotional value of these tones.

Sweater Weather: “Shrink-Wrapped & Tactile Coziness”

For 2026, sweater weather marketing leans heavily into the physical texture and the emotional reassurance of getting cozy.

• The Look: Heavy cable knits, oversized cocoon silhouettes, fitted sweater vests layered over long-sleeved blouses, and “shrink-wrapped” designs where garments are clasped close to the body.

• The Marketing Spin: Because consumers are craving analog, sensory experiences, brands are utilizing macro videography to showcase the actual weight and fuzz of the yarn. Live streams and creator-led short-form videos don’t just show the outfit; they focus on the sound and feel of the material—playing up the “sensory evaluation” of clothing.

Unusual Activations: Collectibles & Immersive Analog Hubs

Lifestyle brands are ditching generic digital ads for tangible, tactile marketing.

• Collectible Physical Hype: Try creating limited-edition, highly aesthetic physical “mascots” or desk toys. Think along the lines of the Starbucks Bearista or custom blind-box figurines dressed in your brand’s signature look or logo to drive secondary-market hype.

• The “Soho House-ification” of Pop-ups: Retailers are launching short-term physical spaces styled like dark, cozy libraries or record lounges. Instead of just selling products, they offer an environment to write letters, listen to vinyl, and experience “undistracted engagement” away from screens.

Here’s a cheat sheet of how this might look across lifestyle niches:

The beauty of Dark Academic Mysticism is its versatility. You don’t need to launch an entirely new product line to participate; you simply need to change the lens through which you present your current inventory. Here is how to apply the trend across different lifestyle niches:

• Beauty & Apothecary: Move away from the hyper-glossy, “clean girl” minimalism of summer. Pivot your visuals to matte, velvety skin finishes, blurred deep plum or black-cherry lip stains, and metallic teal eyeliner accents. Frame your product photography against dark wood or textured stone, making creams and oils look like ancient, luxurious remedies rather than mass-market cosmetics.

• Fashion & Apparel: It is all about “shrink-wrapped” layering and tangible weight. Style structured, preppy elements like vintage collared shirts and heritage plaids under fitted sweater vests. When creating video content, use macro lenses to zoom in on the literal fuzz of heavy cable knits, the weave of wool, and the crisp edge of a collar. Let the viewer feel the weight of the garment through the screen.

• Candles & Home Decor: Transition your fragrance notes away from overly sweet, synthetic bakeries. Lean into atmospheric, rich scents like old book pages, worn leather, damp earth, tobacco leaf, and smoked vanilla. Swap out clear glass and white ceramic vessels for matte terracotta, deep teal clay, or dark tinted glass that casts moody, dancing shadows when lit.

• Food & Beverage: The autumn palate is shifting from sugary pumpkin lattes to bitter, complex profiles. Highlight dark chocolate, spiced plum compotes, and botanical-infused teas. In your food styling, ditch the bright marble countertops. Utilize dark linens, rustic tarnished silverware, and moodier plating that makes a simple afternoon tea feel like a secret society ritual.

• Travel & Hospitality: Stop marketing your spaces as summer-adjacent outdoor hangouts. Rebrand your boutique stays or local destinations as “unplugged writing retreats.” Focus your imagery on cozy library corners, record players, fireplace nooks, and mist-covered morning views. Frame isolation not as loneliness, but as a luxury.

Budget Friendly and Workable Activations for Small Teams

• The “Poet-in-Residence” Campaign: Co-market with a micro-influencer or local writer. Have them write short, nostalgic, typewriter-style poems or micro-fiction pieces inspired by your autumn collection. Share these as static images on Instagram, text graphics on Substack Notes, or printed cards tucked into shipping boxes.

• The Sensory Evaluation Video: Ditch high-production slick ads. Have a team member film raw, iPhone-quality ASMR-style videos. Focus purely on the sensory sounds of your product: the strike of a match when lighting a candle, the rustle of a heavy knit sweater being unpacked, or the scoop of a thick face cream.

• The Digital “Analog Hub”: If a physical pop-up lounge is too expensive, build a digital archive. Create a branded Spotify playlist of ambient dark academia jazz or vinyl rips. Send it out to customers with a beautifully designed, downloadable desktop wallpaper or a printable vintage-style reading tracker.

The Bottom Line: Grounded, Calm and Curated this Autumn

In a digital landscape currently flooded with fast, hyper-optimized, AI-generated art, the lifestyle brands that win Fall 2026 will be the ones that feel grounded, tactile, and unhurried.

You don’t need an enterprise budget or a massive creative agency to pull this off. By making simple pivots like slowing down your video pacing, darkening your color palette, and leaning into the sensory details of your products, you can create a brand universe that offers your audience exactly what they are looking for: a beautiful place to retreat for a moment.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

When I was growing up, women over “a-certain-age” were pitied, condescended to, and roundly expected to just “let themselves go”. Hmmm … has it changed that much?

Well, it has → since the 1970’s women have opened businesses and clawed their way up the corporate ladder en masse; dedicated themselves to exercise and healthful diets; spiffed up their wardrobes; invested in cosmetics, skincare and hair products; booked solo vacations; bought homes and houses full of furniture; taken business trips; and become obsessed with decor and art.

All the while those same groundbreaking women have been pouring big bucks into the economy. According to data released by the Federal Reserve, as of 2026 Boomers and Gen Xers have the highest disposable income and financial stability of any other generation, making them the lifestyle industry's most lucrative market.

If it’s been happening all along, why are we all of a sudden talking about it?

CoverGirl got people posting and chatting last week when the brand acknowledged that its former pursuit of the younger consumer may have led it away from the more lucrative demographic.

“CoverGirl made the mistake of seeing the success of the indie brands and the interest of the younger Gen Z consumer” and deciding, in effect, “We need to do that too,” Gordon von Bretten, president of Coty’s consumer beauty division, told Bloomberg.

Since Coty acquired CoverGirl and more than 40 other beauty brands from Procter & Gamble in 2016, CoverGirl has lost market share, relevance and top-of-mind awareness, von Bretten acknowledged.

Now CoverGirl along with a slew of other brands are attempting a significant reset.

The 45+ Consumer Paradox

For years the intentional dismissal of the needs and desires of Gen X and Boomer markets have ruled.

I suppose you could say the idea stems from the Rule of 7: ie: a potential customer must encounter a brand's message at least 7 times before making a purchase.

Developed in the 1930s, the Rule of 7 emphasizes that repeated exposure through omni-channel marketing builds familiarity, trust, and brand recall.

So as a brand once you’ve spent a few million chasing customers around the web, social media, through the mall, and down Main Street, you probably want them to stay with you for a bit.

Marketers reasoned that a young customer potentially had decades of purchasing ahead of her. If you win her loyalty early, the thinking goes, a brand will keep her purchasing from you for life. But will they? Turns out no … read below*.

Marketing gurus counseled their clients to believe that consumers over 45 had already laminated their weekly shopping lists to include just one brand of toothpaste, lipstick, shampoo, skincare, ect. Why waste money trying to persuade someone who would never switch? (Shades of Jack Weinberg’s paranoid “never trust anyone over 30” come to mind).

At the same time, brands worried that visibly targeting older customers would make them appear old themselves. No beauty company wanted to be labeled a “grandma brand.” No fashion company wanted younger shoppers to conclude that a product was meant for their mothers.

The result in 2026 is a peculiar commercial paradox.

Consumers over 50 account for more than half of consumer spending in the United States, yet less than 10 percent of marketing dollars have been aimed at them, until recently.

The Numbers Are Becoming Impossible to Ignore

The current shift is not entirely the result of brands developing a more enlightened view of aging - they’ve simply come to understand that the economic argument is too large to dismiss.

Gen X, generally defined as people born between 1965 and 1980, is currently in its peak earning and spending period. According to NielsenIQ and World Data Lab, Gen X spent an estimated $15.2 trillion globally in 2025 and is projected to remain the world’s highest-spending generation through 2033. Its annual spending is expected to reach $23 trillion by 2035.

In beauty, Gen X spending is projected to increase by another $80 billion between 2025 and 2030. Gen X women also influence spending by their children, their partners and, increasingly, their aging parents. NIQ describes them as the “CFOs of three generations.”

Research released by Visa Business and Economic Insights on July 8, 2026 estimates that Baby Boomers hold at least $93 trillion in assets.

When Cultural Influence Gets Confused With Customer Value

Gen Z is culturally influential, highly visible online and responsible for accelerating trends across beauty, fashion, food, entertainment and retail. Younger consumers can make a product famous before breakfast.

But the ability to create attention isn’t the same as the ability to create profitable customer relationships.

Gen Z shoppers have more product choices than any previous generation. They discover products through TikTok, creators, online reviews, Reddit, resale platforms and algorithmic recommendations.

*In beauty, Gen Z is known to move quickly from one viral product to the next without developing strong loyalty to any single brand. CoverGirl executives specifically cited this constant product switching as one of the challenges of pursuing younger customers.

Yeah, But Boomers Aren’t Permanently Locked In Either

As I mentioned above, one of the oldest assumptions in marketing is that mature customers are too set in their ways to acquire.

But Gen X and Boomers tend to offer higher retention once a brand earns their business. Research cited by Harvard Business School found brand repurchase rates of approximately 65 percent among consumers ages 60 to 74, compared with 40 percent among consumers ages 18 to 39.

But that’s not to say that Boomers blindly purchase the same products forever.

A large analysis of grocery purchases found that consumers of all age demographics were no more likely to favor established brands than newer brands.

However, Gen X and Boomers don’t suffer fools gladly - they’ve been through the revolving door of miracle serums and magic potions and can instantly recognize cheap marketing ploys when they see them.

Lean into this terminology: Aspirational Longevity in the Era of Reinvention

Longevity is no longer something to be pitied - it’s something to aspire to.

A beautifully dressed 65-year-old woman can inspire a 30-year-old woman without pretending to be 30. Authority, originality and personal style travel very well across generational lines.

For many women, the years between 50 and 70 are an Era of Reinvention.

Many are changing careers, planning long awaited travel, leaving marriages, forming new relationships, moving to new cities or returning to interests postponed during long years of caregiving.

This creates vast opportunities across beauty, fashion, interiors, travel, fitness, education, wellness, food and personal services.

Anti-Aging is no longer working, it’s evolved into Skin Longevity

For decades, skincare marketing was built around combat. Women were told to fight wrinkles, reverse time, erase evidence and defend against visible aging. Woman in their 20’s flocked to get Botox because visible aging is the enemy and must be held off at any cost.

That attitude is evolving as many brands now replace “anti-aging” with terms like skin longevity, vitality, and resilience.

What Smaller Lifestyle Brands Should Learn

You may not see a plethora of Gen Xer’s and Boomers in your Instagram feed, but they’re still probably the most valuable demographic in your customer database.

Small brands should focus on women of different ages in polished, aspirational settings; provide genuine education; explain materials and ingredients; and feature customers who look stylish and interesting rather than generically “age appropriate.”

Most importantly, and I can’t stress this enough, avoid making age the entire story - that’s where brands stumble. A 60-year-old probably won’t be drawn to a candle with senior citizen styled branding. They want a product that will make their house smell wonderful.

That may seem confusing, I mean, isn’t that what this whole article is about?

No, Aspirational Longevity marketing is about making products, branding, and spaces that appeal to the Reinvention Market. Forget nostalgia ads and plastering images of Cher and Meryl Streep across your social feeds. Bring Boomers and Gen Xers into the conversation by:

• Naming a self care, design, or travel dilemma or issue.

• Give your answer.

• Explain what that answer changes.

• Show your customer what to do next.

Read more

Somewhere along the way, show up for your brand has turned into become the brand – whether you want to or not. It’s been suggested that you should:

Post your founder story, then film and narrate your morning routine. Later, share a shipping meltdown, followed by crying in the car (while make sure the lighting is good). Tell people what you believe, then tell people what you ate. Tell people why you started your company, how your grandmother inspired the scent notes, and why your dog is technically the Chief Emotional Officer.

For some founders, this is natural. They are warm, magnetic, good on camera, and comfortable turning their life into content.

For others, it feels like a hostage situation with a ring light.

When you build a brand entirely around one human being, the business inherits that person’s mortality, fragility, aging process, bad moods, and potential for a spectacular public flameout.

When you think about it, building a “faceless” brand isn’t hiding - it’s building an asset that can be scaled, protected, and eventually sold without you being held hostage by your own creation.

If you need proof that being the face of your own brand could potentially be a ticking time bomb, look no further than the 2010s and the high-profile “founder deletions” that followed.

A few cautionary tales, lightly fictionalized but probably familiar:

There is the founder who became the customer service department.

At first, her videos worked. People loved seeing the person behind the brand. They commented, asked questions, praised her honesty, and felt like they “knew” her. Then something shifted. Customers started expecting personal responses to every DM. A delayed package was not a shipping issue, it was a betrayal. A product reformulation was not a business decision, it was “you changed.” The warmth that built connection became a trapdoor into over-access.

There is the founder whose opinions became the product.

She had a point of view, which was part of the appeal. But the more she posted, the more people reacted to her, not the collection. A joke landed wrong – then a personal belief irritated part of the audience. A tired offhand comment became screenshot material. Suddenly, the brand was no longer being judged by the product, the quality, the scent, the formula, or the design. It was being judged by whether people liked her that week.

There is the founder who outgrew her own company.

Her audience started following for her personal life, her taste, her advice, her house, her clothes, her routines. The products became props in the founder’s world rather than the main reason people showed up. This can look like success until the founder wants a break, wants to sell the company, wants to hire a team, or simply wants the brand to stand on its own two feet. A business built entirely around one person can be very hard to hand off.

And then there is the founder who burned out.

This is the one I see small brands flirting with constantly. The founder is told to be vulnerable, educational, entertaining, consistent, polished, casual, responsive, strategic, and real. She is supposed to be on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, email, Substack, YouTube Shorts, and maybe a podcast because apparently sleep is for brands without ambition. No wonder so many founders resist!

I have good news! Your brand doesn’t have choose between being faceless, or you popping into every post – there is a middle ground.

The best solution is usually not to hide the founder completely. People still want to understand who started the company, why it exists, and what standards guide it.

A founder can appear selectively.

She can write weekly blog posts and sign her name in email blasts. She can be quoted in product launches, and explain the standards behind the brand. She can tell the origin story on the About page and appear in a few thoughtful photos rather than endless daily videos. She can show her taste, thinking, and values without turning herself into a full-time content creator.

Think of it as “founder presence,” not “founder performance.”

That small distinction gives a brand room to breathe.

Five Workable Alternatives for Small Budgets

So, how do you humanize a small brand, build trust, and drive sales without turning your own face into corporate collateral? You don’t need a multi-million-dollar marketing budget to pull this off. You just need to shift the spotlight to one of these alternative pillars.

Option 1: The “Ensemble Cast” (Employee-Generated Content)

Instead of anchoring the brand to one executive, anchor it to a collective corporate culture. Audiences actually trust everyday employees significantly more than they trust untouchable CEOs.

• Anthropologie’s storytelling comes from the artists and makers inside the store experience. In 2026, People Magazine profiled Anthropologie display artist Meghan Curran, whose TikTok videos showing handmade store displays went viral and led to customer workshops where people could help create future installations. The magic was not “look at our CEO.” It was “look at the hands, skill, imagination, and process inside this brand.

• Instead of hiding behind an anonymous logo, Alo turns their entire Los Angeles headquarters into a content machine. They treat their social media, marketing, and design staff as permanent brand ambassadors—frequently filming “HQ office outfit checks,” trend challenges, and behind-the-scenes office chaos that makes the corporation feel like an elite, aspirational friend group.

The Small Brand Execution (Low Budget / Low Time):

For a small brand, this doesn’t mean every employee needs to become an influencer. (Please don’t make your part-time shipping assistant learn trending audio unless she wants to). Instead, build a few light ambassador lanes:

The maker: shows how things are created, wrapped, finished, sourced, tested, packed, styled, or merchandised.

The recommender: shares “staff picks,” gift ideas, favorite pairings, or how they use the products at home.

The explainer: answers practical customer questions in a calm, useful way.

The curator: shows what is inspiring the collection, the display, the color palette, the scent direction, or the buying choices.

The behind-the-scenes guide: gives people access to the work without turning the founder’s private life into the content calendar.

For a small shop, this could be one employee, one freelancer, one maker, one retail associate, one longtime wholesale partner, one favorite customer, or even the founder’s adult daughter who already has better lighting instincts than everyone else in the room.

The key is not to force a “cast.” The key is to let the brand have more than one human doorway.

Option 2: The “Unhinged Mascot” (The Standalone Character)

If you want a brand face that never has a PR crisis, never asks for a raise, never leaves for a competitor, and can be played by literally anyone on your team, build a mascot.

A standalone brand character can work, but this is where things can get hokey fast.

There is a fine line between “memorable brand personality” and “why is a raccoon in sunglasses telling me to buy linen napkins?”

Duolingo is the obvious modern example. Duo the owl became a social media character in its own right, and Adweek has covered how the brand expanded its mascot universe beyond Duo, including a YouTube Shorts series built around Lily that reportedly drew 10.5 million views and 100,000 new followers in its first run.

But Duolingo is also a cautionary note. In 2026, Business Insider reported that Duolingo was recalibrating its once “unhinged” marketing approach, with its CMO acknowledging the risk of escalating shock value and shifting toward creators, Reddit, WhatsApp, blogging, and user-generated content.

That is the lesson for small brands: a character should not become a gimmick that constantly needs to top itself.

For a lifestyle brand, a character can be subtle. It does not need to be The Hamburglar for hand-poured candles.

It could be:

• That recurring illustrated shop cat who makes gift recommendations.

• A “house muse” who introduces seasonal edits.

• Your alter-ego (fictional) hostess who curates tabletop, candles, linens, and pantry gifts.

• A garden-club voice for a botanical skincare brand.

• A recurring “studio notes” persona that speaks for the creative process without pretending to be a real person.

The safest version of this strategy isn’t a mascot – it’s a recurring editorial device.

Small brands should ask three questions before building a character:

1. Does this character deepen the brand world, or does it distract from the product?

2. Can we sustain this for a year without wanting to throw the character into the sea?

3. Would this still feel appropriate in an email, on packaging, in a gift guide, and in a customer service moment?

If the answer is yes, it may be worth testing.

If the answer is no, step away from the owl costume.

Option 3: The Mirror Model (Customer-Led Content)

This may be the most practical option for small brands, especially those with beautiful products and loyal repeat buyers.

Customers are often more persuasive than founders because they are not trying to sell the product in the same way. Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising study found that 88% of global respondents trusted recommendations from people they know more than any other channel.

That does not mean every brand needs a giant UGC machine. But you can discipline yourself to become more intentional about searching out, collecting, organizing, and reusing customer proof.

Amazon has used this kind of logic in its own small-business advertising. Its “Ads That Work as Hard as You Do” campaign elevated small business owners and showed their products reaching customers directly, making the story less about Amazon and more about the people selling through its platform.

A small brand can borrow the principle without the Amazon-ness of it all.

• Show the bride who gave your candles as welcome gifts.

• Show the customer who keeps your balm in her hiking bag.

• Show the shop owner who reordered your soaps four times because customers kept asking for them.

• Show the interior designer who uses your pillows in every guest room.

• Show the mother and daughter who buy the same scent every December.

• · Show the boutique buyer unboxing the line, styling the shelf, and explaining why she chose it.

This does not have to be complicated. Start with one recurring feature:

• Customer Table

• Where It Lives

• Shop Owner Pick

• Real Shelf, Real Home

• Why They Reordered

• Gift Notes From Customers

• Seen In The Wild

The trick is to move from random reposting to a repeatable editorial series.

A random customer photo is nice. A recurring customer-led feature becomes a brand asset.

Option 4: Make the product process the face

For many founders, especially in beauty, home, apparel, stationery, food, flowers, candles, and gift, the richest content is not the founder’s face. It is the making.

• Hands tying a ribbon.

• The first pour of wax.

• A messy test batch.

• Those rejected label colors.

• Inspirational fabric swatches on the table.

• Your new retail display before, and after.

• The packing station during holiday chaos.

• Scent notes beside the raw materials.

• Products in the place they were designed for.

This is far from faceless - it’s human content without making one person the center of the story.

Process content also gives small brands a more sustainable rhythm. You do not have to invent new opinions every day. You document what is already happening.

The founder can still narrate occasionally, but the main character becomes the work.

Option 5: Create a rotating “brand chorus”

The most durable small-brand visibility system is usually a chorus, not a solo.

• The founder appears sometimes.

• ·Employees appear sometimes.

• Customers appear sometimes.

• Products appear often.

Retailers, collaborators, makers, designers, suppliers, stylists, photographers, and longtime fans all become part of the brand voice.

This is not messy if you create structure. A simple monthly rhythm might look like this:

1. Week one: founder note or product philosophy.

2. Week two: behind-the-scenes process.

3. Week three: employee, maker, or retailer pick.

4. Week four: customer story or community feature.

That gives the brand a human presence every week without requiring the founder to become a daily personality account.

It also protects the business. If the founder is tired, traveling, private, grieving, overwhelmed, camera-shy, or simply not in the mood to become “content,” the brand does not go silent.

The small brand version

If you have limited staff, time, and budget, do not try to build all of this at once. Instead, pick one lane for the next 30 days.

• If you have a team member with good energy, test an employee ambassador series.

• If you have great customers, build a customer-led feature.

• If your process is beautiful, document the making.

• If your brand has a strong sense of humor or a whimsical world, test a subtle character or recurring editorial voice.

• If you are the founder and you are willing to appear occasionally, create boundaries before you start. Decide what you will share, what you will not share, how often you will appear, and what role your presence plays in the brand.

Remember, founders should not be emergency content generators – they are the source of standards, taste, values, and direction.

A founder-free visibility starter plan

For the next 4 weeks, try this:

1. Choose one recurring series name.

2. Collect ten customer comments, reviews, photos, or stories.

3. Film five pieces of process content while work is already happening.

4. Ask one employee, maker, retail partner, or collaborator to share three favorite products or one behind-the-scenes detail.

5. Write one founder note that explains a brand belief without turning into a confessional.

6. Create a simple permission system for customer content.

7. Save everything in a folder so you are not hunting through DMs like a raccoon in a filing cabinet.

8. At the end of the month, look at what worked -> not just likes, but also saves, replies, email clicks, product questions, wholesale inquiries, and customer language you can reuse.

That’s how a smaller brand builds a human presence without putting one person on stage forever.

The bottom line

You don’t need to hide as a founder – and you don’t need to become the mascot, spokesperson, customer service department, influencer, therapist, trend forecaster, and emotional support human for the entire brand.

A founder’s reluctance to be the face of a brand may not be insecurity, it’s probably a strategy.

Great marketing makes a brand trusted, remembered, and easy to recognize without requiring one person to perform every day for the algorithm.

Stepping out of the spotlight isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a structural masterclass. By decoupling your face from your business, you aren’t hiding from your customers – you’re building a resilient, sustainable foundation that can outlive your daily involvement.

Give yourself permission to close the front-facing camera, put the phone down, and go back to doing what you love: building your business.

All illustrations by Summerizze via Unsplash

Paid Subscriber Download: The Founder-Free Visibility Menu

For paid subscribers, I’ve included a bonus download with 20 plug-and-play content prompts for brands that want to feel more human without making the founder the entire show.

These prompts are designed for small lifestyle brands with limited staff, limited time, and no desire to turn the founder into a full-time influencer. Use them for Instagram captions, Reels, email sections, blog ideas, customer features, retailer spotlights, behind-the-scenes posts, or quick content planning when your brain has left the building but the algorithm has not.

The prompts are divided into practical categories, including employee-led content, product process, customer stories, retailer features, and “founder-lite” notes, so you can build a more human brand presence without putting one person on stage every day.

Read more

McKinsey’s 2026 consumer report points to four major forces shaping retail now:

→ A tech-driven path to purchase;
→ The health revolution;
→ The experience economy;
→ The resourceful consumer …

That last one matters enormously for lifestyle brands. Your customer is comparing, checking, wish-listing, reading honest reviews, watching creator videos, and deciding which item actually earns its place.

The headline for Summer’s mood is not “consumers are cost conscious.” It’s consumers are more discerning than they used to be. Big difference. One is a pricing problem. The other is a positioning problem.

1. The mood is “resourceful luxury”

While your customers are searching for delight, the purchase has to feel justified. This is the moment for little luxuries with emotional utility: the candle that turns a chaotic kitchen into an evening ritual; the moisturizer that calms angry summer skin; the hand soap that makes a guest bathroom feel considered; the linen dress that says “I tried” without requiring shapewear and prayer.

Deloitte describes a similar spending paradox: consumers are making trade-offs, but they are still preserving high-emotional-value spending and reallocating money toward experiences and purchases that feel essential to their quality of life.

What this means for lifestyle brands: Don’t sell product. Sell the role it plays.

Instead of: New summer candle collection.

Try: The candle collection for when the house is technically a mess, but at least one corner can smell like you have your life together.

The first description has little to do with your customer and everything to do with your brand; The second is emotional positioning with a relatable wink that speaks directly to a consumer’s desire to create a sanctuary at home.

2. The mood is “trust me, but prove it”

Customers are increasingly allergic to puffery. Every brand says it is clean, conscious, intentional, luxurious, founder-led, ethically made, community-driven, and obsessed with quality. At this point, those words have been through the marketing dishwasher way too many times.

In beauty especially, peer validation is becoming just as important as influencer exposure. A 2026 Allure reader survey found that customer reviews slightly outranked professional influencers and celebrity video reviews as shopping influences, with 42% citing customer reviews and 41% citing influencers or celebrity reviews.

For lifestyle brands this means the new credibility stack is: Founder expertise + customer proof + consistent visuals + useful education + third-party validation.

Not one viral post. Not one influencer. Not one “as seen in” logo from 2017 that has been doing Olympic-level lifting on your homepage.

Brands should be actively collecting and reusing proof across all touch points: customer reviews, retailer feedback, before/after stories, press clips, founder notes, product-in-use photos, FAQs, and behind-the-scenes details.

3. The mood is “less algorithm, more atmosphere”

Lifestyle brands are not just competing on product anymore. They are competing on feeling. The best small brands are becoming little worlds: a visual rhythm, a voice, a point of view, a recurring set of references, a recognizable way of showing up.

This matters because social media is saturated. Sprout Social’s 2026 trend report notes that brands are prioritizing resonance and community over virality, after years of extremely high posting volume across consumer-facing industries.

What this means for lifestyle brands:
A brand should feel recognizable even when the logo is covered.

That means consistency across all touchpoints:

→ Website
→ Email
→ Packaging
→ Social captions
→ Retail displays
→ Invoices
→ DM replies
→ PR pitches
→ Founder interviews
→ Product photography
→ Shipping inserts
→ Customer service tone

This is where smaller brands can win. Big companies often have more budget, but smaller brands can have more soul. Soul, inconveniently, does not come in a Canva template pack.

4. The mood is “wellness, but make it livable”

The wellness conversation is softening. People are tired of being optimized to death. They want to feel better, but they do not necessarily want a 19-step morning routine, a cold plunge, a mushroom elixir, and a wearable device that judges their REM sleep like a disappointed aunt.

The PHA Group’s 2026 wellness trends report points to the rise of community fitness and the idea that wellness feels more doable when it happens with other people. Meanwhile, even mainstream beauty coverage is picking up on the fatigue around complicated routines and the desire for more basic, consistent self-care.

What this means for lifestyle brands:
Wellness messaging should move away from intensity and toward support.

For skincare: calm, repair, protect, simplify.
For candles: reset, transition, ritual, atmosphere.
For home decor: grounding, comfort, beauty in daily life.
For apparel: ease, softness, wearability, repeat use.
For food/gift: pleasure, generosity, everyday celebration.

The winning phrase is not “transform your life.” It’s more like “Here’s one small thing that makes today feel better.”

5. The mood is “aesthetic proof of taste”

Design still matters. Maybe more than ever. There is a reason Consumer Packaged Goods are borrowing from fashion, beauty, and editorial styling. Vogue recently described the rise of highly aesthetic wellness-adjacent CPG brands, where products like water, tea, and protein desserts are being positioned almost like fashion accessories through packaging, influencer placement, and lifestyle storytelling.

This is very relevant for candles, skincare, soaps, accessories, home goods, stationery, baby products, and gourmet brands. Consumers are buying the product, yes, but they are also buying the signal: I have taste. I notice details. I curate my life.

What this means for lifestyle brands:
Your product has to be photographable, but not fake-looking. The new visual sweet spot is:

→ Editorial but useful
→ Aspirational but not sterile
→ Pretty but not precious
→ Polished but not corporate
→ Human but not messy for the sake of messy

The “just tossed on a marble counter with a croissant” era is not fully dead, but it may need a wellness check ;-)

6. The mood is “community over audience”

A following is not the same as a community. A following watches. A community responds, contributes, recommends, defends, shares, and returns.

A recent Verge interview about the creator economy described a shift from simple brand deals toward more durable creator-led businesses, where human connection, brand protection, and long-term value matter more than isolated sponsored posts.

What this means for lifestyle brands:
The smartest small brands will stop asking, “How do we get more followers?” and start asking:

→ What do our best customers have in common?
→ What do they want to talk about?
→ What do they want to learn?
→ What rituals do they already have?
→ What would make them feel included?
→ What would they proudly share with a friend?

For a skincare brand, this could be a sensitive-skin summer survival series. For a candle brand, it could be seasonal scent rituals. For a kids’ apparel brand, it could be repair, reuse, and family creativity. For a home decor brand, it could be small-space hosting, shelf styling, or “make the room feel finished” advice.

Community is not simply a platform, it’s a recurring conversation, dependably built over time.

7. The mood is “AI is everywhere, but personality is the moat”

AI has made content easier to produce, which means the internet is now knee-deep in perfectly formatted beige sludge. The brands that are winning now aren’t the ones that publish the most → they’re the ones with a distinct point of view.

This is where founder-led brands have a huge advantage. Expertise is becoming more valuable, not less. Nespresso’s CMO recently emphasized the importance of deep expertise in marketing and creator partnerships, noting that specialized knowledge builds credibility and helps marketers see stronger opportunities.

What this means for lifestyle brands:
Use AI for structure, repurposing, research, and speed. But do not outsource the taste, the judgment, the founder perspective, or the lived experience.

The current marketing advantage is not “we use AI.” (Everyone uses AI on some level - even if it’s simply for spot removal and filter adjustments). The advantage is: you know us, and we still look like us.

What small lifestyle brands should do now

The playbook is pretty clear:

→ Clarify the emotional job of each product.
→ Make every touchpoint feel consistent.
→ Collect proof constantly.
→ Use your founder voice more.
→ Build around rituals, not just launches.
→ Create content that helps, not just content that announces.
→ Make the customer feel smart for choosing you.
→ Stop chasing every platform trend unless it supports the world you are building.

The best small-brand marketing right now is not louder. It is more specific, more useful, more human, and more repeatable.

Or, to put it plainly: less confetti cannon, more candlelight.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

This time last year we talked about “phygital” marketing (the blending of physical and digital experiences into one neat packet of branding); regenerative branding; founder-led storytelling; optimizing for bots; micro-communities; diary style content.

So guess what? In 2026 those trailblazing initiatives have mushroomed into Connectioneering; Pretzel Funnels; a return to QR Codes; and Third Space development.

What’s Actually Working (and What You Can Ignore)

After years of algorithm chaos and celebrity overload, consumers are gravitating towards products developed by companies that feel human. The irony of 2026 is that while giant brands are spending millions trying to appear authentic, small brands already are authentic. Their challenge isn’t manufacturing personality. It’s simply letting people see it.

Here are the trends worth paying attention to:

1. Human Beats Perfect

Founder stories, behind-the-scenes videos, imperfect photos, and genuine opinions stand out more than heavily produced campaigns.

What’s working:

• Founder videos

• Voice notes and casual reels

• Customer stories

• Studio, workshop, and “day in the life” content

• Showing mistakes and experiments

Small brands shouldn’t try to look like Estée Lauder. They should look like themselves.

2. From Community to Connectioneering

I’ve talked a lot about building community around your brand → taking it one step forward is the wave of the future.

Connectioneering, originally meant to focus predominantly as a design trend, is the intentional nurturing (or engineering) of relationships.

Instead of asking, “How do I get more followers?” it asks, “How do I create opportunities for people to connect with me and with each other?” That’s the key distinction:

For a small lifestyle brand, Connectioneering might look like:

• A candle company hosting a monthly “Book Club & Bonfire” night.

• A skincare founder introducing customers to a local yoga instructor.

• A children’s apparel brand organizing free mending workshops.

• A Substack writer connecting paid subscribers with each other through chats or office hours.

• A boutique owner introducing customers to each other who share similar interests.

In other words, community is the thing people see; Connectioneering is the architecture behind it.

This idea isn’t entirely new. Historically, brands often acted as gathering places. Think of:

• General stores in small towns.

• Garden clubs sponsored by seed companies.

• Tupperware parties.

• Girl Scout troops and cookie sales.

• Sewing circles and quilting guilds.

These concepts aren’t just genius distribution channels from back-in-the-day, they created meaningful social connections.

What’s interesting is that after years of chasing algorithms and scale, Summer 2026 feels like a return to this older model. People are lonely, digitally exhausted, and looking for “third places” outside work and home. Small brands are uniquely positioned to provide them.

3. Forget the Funnel. Think Pretzel.

Many marketers imagine customers move neatly from awareness to purchase in a straight line. However, the realization that the “Rule of 7” is becoming more widely accepted.

Consumers discover brands by browsing through shops, scanning magazines, scrolling social media, searching generically on Google, ask specific questions on ChatGPT, seeing it on a friend or in a movie, forgetting about the product, see it again in an email, and then finally buying weeks or months later.

The customer journey looks less like a funnel and more like a pretzel.

Notice that community surrounds the entire system. People don’t simply enter at the top and exit at the bottom. They weave in and out, and relationships create shortcuts.

What this means for small brands:

• Every piece of content matters.

• Not every post has to sell immediately.

• Brand awareness compounds over time.

• Email, PR, Pinterest, AI search, social media, and events work together.

• Community creates shortcuts.

The strongest brands aren’t trying to force customers through a funnel. They’re creating enough helpful content and meaningful touchpoints that customers can enter the journey anywhere.

4. Micro-Events Are the New Pop-Ups

Experiential marketing isn’t just for giant brands anymore. Even small retailers are investing in events and experiences.

Summer Events might include:

• Summer picnic nights

• Flower arranging workshops

• Candle pouring events

• “Meet the founder” evenings

• Girls Night Out and Sip-and-shop collaborations

• Wellness mornings with yoga instructors

People crave experiences because experiences give them stories.

5. Search Is Bigger Than Social

People increasingly search TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram, ChatGPT, and Google before purchasing. Social platforms themselves have become search engines.

That means every post should answer questions:

• How do I use it?

• Who is it for?

• Why is it different?

• What problem does it solve?

• What ingredients or materials are used?

Educational content ages far better than trendy content.

6. AI Search Optimization (AEO/GEO) Is Even More Real

Consumers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI assistants for recommendations. Research suggests that AI recommendations can drive subsequent searches and visits to brand websites.

As a result, brands are restructuring their websites with clear schema markup and conversational data so their products can be easily found and recommended by AI assistants.

To improve visibility create:

• FAQ pages

• Buying guides

• Ingredient pages

• Founder stories

• Comparison posts

• “Best for…” articles

The brands that explain themselves clearly are the brands AI systems can understand and recommend.

7. Nostalgia Is Everywhere

The 70s and 80s are having another moment, especially among Millennials, who are now the highest-spending generation.

Expect to see:

• Heritage-inspired packaging

• Cottage and folk aesthetics

• Vintage fonts

• Americana

• Handmade craftsmanship

• “Summer camp” and slow-living themes

Consumers are looking for comfort, not futuristic perfection.

8. Long-Form Content Is Making a Comeback

Short-form videos aren’t disappearing, but people want depth again. Great formats to invest time into include:

• Substack essays

• Founder newsletters

• Blogs and Guest Posting

• Podcasts

• YouTube

• Carousel posts

The trust built by a five-minute read often beats the attention gained from a five-second Reel.

9. Collaboration Is Replacing Competition

Smaller brands are discovering that partnerships outperform expensive advertising.

Summer collaboration ideas:

• Candle company × florist

• Soap maker × boutique hotel

• Skincare brand × yoga studio

• Jewelry brand × photographer

• Kid’s brand × bookstore

Shared audiences make marketing dollars stretch farther.

10. Small Brands Are Rediscovering Analog Marketing

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Summer 2026 is that old-school tactics are working again. Consider:

• Printed Postcards and Brochures

• Events

• Samples

• Printed lookbooks and PR kits

• Local partnerships

• Retail signage

• Handwritten notes

Digital is crowded. Marketing emails mostly land in spam filters or abandoned email accounts. Mailboxes and real-world experiences aren’t.

The Summer 2026 Playbook

If you’re a small lifestyle brand, you don’t need:

❌ More platforms
❌ More AI-generated content
❌ More trends

You need:

✓ More personality
✓ More expertise
✓ More community
✓ Better search visibility
✓ More partnerships
✓ More real-world touchpoints
✓ A point of view

Ironically, the brands that feel the most human are becoming the most future-proof.

Below are 4 Summer Marketing Frameworks for Lifestyle Founders with Actionable Ideas You Can Put Into Play Before June Ends.

Read more

In one of my favorite British comedies, Amandaland, the main character Amanda desperately wants the life of a six-figure lifestyle influencer. Newly divorced and supporting two teenagers, she takes a job at a local kitchen and bath design company.

To her boss, it’s employment. To Amanda, it’s a “collab.”

While Amanda and her employer may disagree on the terminology, she’s right about one thing: collaborations are everywhere.

Beauty brands collaborate with beverage companies. Fashion brands collaborate with video games. Candles collaborate with artists. Influencers collaborate with retailers. It seems like every week brings another unexpected partnership designed to generate headlines, social media buzz, and long lines of eager customers.

The concept of co-branding dates back decades, if not centuries. One of the most influential examples arrived in 1949 when Pillsbury partnered with General Electric to launch the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. The partnership was brilliantly simple:

Pillsbury supplied cake mixes and recipes. General Electric supplied their new modern electric Stratoliner range. Together they created a national event that demonstrated how two complementary products could sell more effectively together than separately.

The campaign became a cultural phenomenon. It expanded audiences, increased product adoption, and proved that two non-competing brands could share marketing costs while driving sales for both businesses.

Over the years, similar partnerships followed:

• Bonne Bell and Dr Pepper’s Lip Smackers in 1975

• Ford’s Eddie Bauer Bronco in the 1980s

• McDonald’s and Coca-Cola

• Nike and Apple

These collaborations all shared a common trait: They were practical and natural.

Each collab had an objective was straightforward: reach more customers, increase sales, and create value for both brands.

Today’s collaborations often follow a very different playbook.

How Collaborations Have Changed

• Modern collaborations are less about utility and more about culture.

• Instead of helping consumers solve a problem, many partnerships exist to create a moment.

• Where traditional co-marketing emphasized mass availability, today’s collaborations often rely on scarcity. Rather than putting products into every household, brands create limited-edition drops designed to sell out quickly and generate fear of missing out.

• Where partnerships once lasted years, today’s collaborations can appear and disappear within weeks.

• Where partnerships once depended on logical pairings, today’s brands often seek out surprising combinations. A luxury brand collaborates with a fast-food chain. A beauty brand partners with a canned water company. A fashion label creates products for a video game.

The stranger the pairing, the more attention it attracts - and that’s the point!

The collaboration economy (or Collabonomics as dubbed by professor Devon Lee back in 2008) has evolved from straightforward co-marketing into a form of cultural storytelling.

But that raises an important question.

If You’re a Small Brand, Should You Even Bother?

The answer is maybe.

As an evolving brand you may read about high-profile collaborations and figure they’re simply out of reach for the size and capability of your company.

But the fundamentals that made the Pillsbury and General Electric partnership successful in 1954 are still the same fundamentals that drive successful collaborations for brands of all sizes today.

• Shared audiences help grow a brand.

• Shared storytelling adds interest and intrigue.

• Shared marketing costs help lift both brands.

If you’re a founder running a candle company from your basement, or a skincare startup working to get attention in a crowded market, those principles can work really well for you.

The Collaboration Filter

Before approaching another brand, ask yourself these questions.

1. Do We Share Customers?

Not demographics. Customers.

Demographics are those cold, hard statistics used to identify target markets; while warmed up, breathing customers are the real people who actually buy and connect with your ethos.

Demographics represent who might buy your product, but customers represent why they care and do buy your products:

When a skincare company and a candle company share demographics, they simply look alike on paper. When they share customers, they share a specific human ritual, emotional state, and lifestyle choice.

The differences in how these companies should view this overlap highlight the distinction between data and behavior:

Shared Demographics: Superficial Alignment

Shared demographics only prove that both products appeal to the same general segment of the population.

• The Viewpoint: “Our target market is women aged 25–40 with high disposable income.”

• The Business Focus: Media buying, ad targeting, and pricing strategies.

• The Limitation: A person in this demographic might buy skincare for clinical acne treatment and candles solely to cover up pet odors. The purchases are entirely unrelated.

Shared Customers: Behavioral Synergy

Shared customers reveal a unified psychological profile (psychographics) and a synchronized daily routine.

• The Viewpoint: “Our customer values sensory self-care, mindfulness, and turning their home into a personal sanctuary.”

• The Business Focus: Co-branding, experiential marketing, and product ecosystem alignment.

• The Reality: The customer lights the candle specifically to set the mood while applying the skincare face mask. The products cross-pollinate to create one cohesive evening wind-down ritual.

Viewing this overlap through the lens of shared customers rather than demographics changes how both companies operate:

• Product Development: Instead of just matching aesthetic packaging, the brands can align scents and ingredients. For example, a lavender-infused night cream pairs intentionally with a chamomile and lavender relaxation candle.

• Joint Marketing: Instead of running separate ads to the same demographic, the brands can collaborate on a “Nighttime Ritual Box” → this targets a single customer’s specific routine.

• Content Storytelling: The marketing shifts from selling individual product features (clean ingredients or soy wax) to selling an aspirational lifestyle (how to create a spa day at home).

2. Is There a Story?

Your key to a successful partnership is the ability to develop a captivating narrative. Examples might include:

• Summer Self-Care Ritual

• Garden Party Essentials

• Weekend Cabin Escape

• Holiday Romance

Customers, editors, influencers, and retailers all need a reason for the partnership to exist.

3. Can Both Partners Promote It?

One reason collaborations are less than fulfilling for both partners is that one brand does all the heavy lifting while the other sits back and waits for results. A true collaboration means both parties contribute to the promotion effort. That could include:

• Email marketing

• Social media content

• Photography

• PR outreach

• Event participation

• Retail activation

4. What Is the Goal?

Many collabs feel exciting but lack a measurable purpose. Before launching anything, decide whether success means:

• Sales

• Email subscribers

• Media coverage

• Retail introductions

• Community growth

• Social engagement

5. Could You Launch It Within Two Weeks?

Small brands have limited time and resources and the best collaborations are often surprisingly simple and flow naturally.

If the project requires months of meetings, custom manufacturing, complicated contracts, or extensive inventory commitments, it may be too much trouble for the effort.

The easier a collaboration is to execute, the more likely it is to happen.

The Small Brand Collaboration Playbook

The good news is that most collaborations don’t require custom products or extensive research. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Create a Simple Bundle

• A candle company teams up with a tea company to create a tea scented home fragrance.

• A soap company teams up with a linen company to offer retailers and customers a staycation they can appreciate.

• A skincare company partners with a day spa to offer a special treatment.

Build a Seasonal Gift Set

Seasonal collaborations create a built-in story, especially during Autumn and the Winter holidays.

These partnerships often appeal to gift guides, media coverage, and retailers because they solve a specific consumer need, and can be offered as an exclusive at your most important retailers.

Host Events Together

One of the most overlooked collaboration strategies are the events around launching collabs. You can pool your customers to lift both brands and make a series of events a smashing success.

• Instagram Live conversations

• Workshops

• Retail pop-ups

• Trunk shows

• Webinars

• Community gatherings

The event is part of the product!

Need a PR Lift Quick? Swap Content Instead of Products :-)

Usually the simplest collaboration is a creative one in which instead of developing a special product, you create content - thereby swapping audiences.

Let’s use the concept of a small skincare brand teaming up with a dermatologist of wellness expert to explore this idea further:

To create a mutually beneficial content swap, a collaboration must position both the skincare founder and the wellness expert as equal peers. Instead of a transaction, it should feel like a meeting of minds that introduces each person’s audience to the other’s expertise.

The strategy below focuses on linking external skincare with internal wellness to create a complete self-care routine.

1. The “Inside-Out” Digital Zine or Guide

Create a beautiful, co-branded digital guide (PDF or Substack exclusive) focused on a specific seasonal transition or wellness goal.

• The Content: The skincare founder writes a section detailing a targeted, topical skincare routine. The wellness expert writes a matching section detailing complementary breathwork, nervous-system-regulating exercises, or dietary habits.

• How Both Benefit: Both creators host the guide on their respective platforms (websites or email newsletters). To download it, users must opt-in, allowing both brands to grow their email lists with highly engaged, qualified subscribers.

2. The Newsletter “Masterclass” Takeover

The founder and the expert completely swap writing duties for one week on their respective email newsletters or Substack publications.

• The Content: The skincare founder writes an educational piece for the expert’s newsletter about the science of skin barriers and how chronic stress physically manifests on the face. Simultaneously, the wellness expert writes a piece for the skincare brand’s newsletter about mindfulness techniques that lower cortisol and boost skin radiance.

• How Both Benefit: Email subscribers are notoriously protective of their inboxes. By showing up as a deeply educational guest author rather than an ad, both parties tap into a warm, highly trusting audience.

3. A Co-Hosted “Sunday Ritual” Audio Series

Collaborate on a private, two-part audio series or a shared podcast episode published on both of their channels.

• The Content: Part one is hosted on the skincare brand’s channel, where the founder interviews the expert on how sleep cycles impact skin cell turnover. Part two is hosted on the wellness expert’s channel, where they interview the founder on the meditative, sensory benefits of a slow skincare routine.

• How Both Benefit: Audio allows both personalities to show off their authentic authority. Listeners seamlessly cross-pollinate between channels to get the full “two-part” story.

4. Shared “Routine Stacking” Video Guides

Produce a joint video series for social channels (like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts) that utilizes the concept of “habit stacking.”

• The Content: Short, split-screen or edited videos showing a unified routine. For example, the wellness expert demonstrates a 3-minute morning lymphatic drainage or facial massage technique, while the skincare founder demonstrates the exact serums and slip-agents needed to perform it safely without tearing the skin.

• How Both Benefit: It shifts the content away from “buy this product” to “here is how to master this skill.” Both creators gain authority, and the video inherently requires tagging and sharing to both audiences.

Think Community Before Virality

The goal of a collab for a small brand is about creating meaningful introductions.

The best collaborations don’t necessarily generate huge headlines → they introduce your brand to people who are likely to become customers and they strengthen relationships and build trust with your existing customers.

A great collaboration should make your marketing feel larger than the size of your budget.

The Real Lesson From 1954

For all the changes in marketing over the past seventy years, the core idea behind collaborations remains surprisingly consistent.

Pillsbury and General Electric weren’t chasing likes, they were solving a problem together and sharing an audience.

In 2026, small brands should do the same. A wildly successful collaboration introduces your brand to five hundred highly qualified new customers who will readily appreciate what you do.

That’s as valuable today as it was in 1954.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

June Marketing Outlook 2026: Quick Takeaways

• June is a planning month, not a slowdown

• Holiday preparation starts now

• Analog and community-focused marketing are gaining momentum

• AI visibility and branded search matter more than ever

• Father’s Day and summer rituals create immediate opportunities

• Brands that prepare in June tend to perform better in Q4

If you’ve been reading my writing for any length of time you know that I can get a bit shrill about marketing in June.

I know about all about those famed summer Fridays where everyone jumps on the Hampton’s Jitney or the Catalina Express and spaces out for a 4 day weekend - like every week until the end of August.

If you’re a small brand just forget this mentality in any real world shape or form (except perhaps on your social media feed) … while it lays down good vibes for your customers, it makes for fairytale thinking when it comes to improving your sales.

June and July is the most important time of year for your lifestyle brand’s survival -> it’s the set up for Fall and Holiday without which you’ll be left to flounder when it’s important. This is true for retailers and direct to consumer brands alike.

June is the ultimate optical illusion of the business year. On the surface, it feels like the slow, lazy start of summer. In reality, it is a high-stakes pivot point where summer execution, fall prep, and winter planning collide.

If you wait until August (or geez September, what are you thinking!?!) to start executing your holiday strategy, you are already miles behind.

Here are some of the tasks you’ll need to get busy with in coming weeks:

1. The Operational Imperative: Q4 Lock-In

• Finalize Holiday Production: Lock manufacturing quantities for November and December drops.

• Pitch Long-Lead Print: Mail physical lookbooks to lifestyle editors for gift guides.*

• Secure Packaging Supplies: Order custom boxes and ribbons before seasonal price spikes hit.

2. The Cultural Shift: Lean Into Analog Summer* and expect Analog Autumn to follow

• Create Print Inserts: Design a mini summer zine to ship inside June orders.

• Host Local-Activations: Partner with a local retailers for weekend pop-ups in key areas around the country.

• Plan events that help your customers get to know your brand IRL

*After a flirtation with digital, print magazines and catalogs are making a major comeback this year. For many, print catalogs or paper magazines feel more authentic than digital campaigns: According to a recent Harris Poll:

“For many households, the arrival of a catalog now feels like the unofficial kickoff of the [holiday] season: 41% [of Americans] say receiving a catalog makes them feel more connected to the retailer; that connection is even stronger among Gen Z (52%) and Millennials (50%). Americans don’t just glance at catalogs — they actively engage with them. Four in ten (42%) mark or circle items they’d like to give, while 36% mark items they’d like to receive. Many keep catalogs in their homes throughout the season (39%), share them with household members (39%), or use them to spark conversations about wish lists with kids or family (37%). Others use them as a source of creativity, with 34% drawing inspiration for holiday décor or wrapping ideas…What stands out most is how personal catalogs feel…58% of shoppers feeling more confident in the quality of items they see in a catalog than in online ads.”

3. The Digital Defense: SEO & Community Ownership

• Audit for Search Changes: Rewrite descriptions to emphasize real human testing and unique storytelling.

• Build Direct Channels: Launch a private SMS list or Substack for top customers.

• Clean the Data: Run a re-engagement campaign to scrub unengaged email subscribers.

4. The Quick-Win: Halfway to Halloween & High Summer

• Drop Moody Items: Capitalize on the early spooky trend with limited darker aesthetics.

• Batch Content Now: Shoot July and August imagery.

• Execute Father’s Day: Run high-converting, last-minute shipping promos in early June.

5. The Discovery Shift: Search Is Fragmenting

Google still matters but increasingly, customers are discovering brands through a web of AI summaries, social search, newsletters, and creator recommendations.

June is the time to make sure your brand is findable before Q4 research begins.

Action Items:

• Audit branded search results: Can customers actually find you, or do they hit unrelated results, marketplaces, or competitors?

• Strengthen entity signals: ensure your About page, founder story, retailer listings, and press mentions are consistent.

• Refresh evergreen content: update top-performing blog posts and buying guides before holiday search volume begins climbing.

• Seed AI visibility: publish original expertise, FAQs, and highly specific content that AI systems can cite and summarize.

6. The Retail Reality Check: Your Buyers Are Planning Too

Retailers are not sitting on a beach waiting for pumpkin season, June is when buyers assess:

• Holiday inventory gaps

• Reorders

• Visual merchandising ideas

• Event partnerships

• Staff education needs

Ask Yourself:

• What does your retailer need from you before they ask?

• Do you have updated imagery?

• Easy merchandising ideas?

• Event concepts?

• Sell sheets?

• Holiday storytelling?

Brands that make life easier for retailers tend to earn more visibility and better shelf placement.

Trend Watch: What Feels Hot Right Now

Analog Everything: As mentioned above, print, handwriting, tactile packaging, ritual, and slower experiences continue gaining momentum. This includes phone calls, printed brochures, IRL events and classes.

Soft Escapism: Gardens, nostalgia, folklore, coastal aesthetics, slow mornings, cottage rituals.

Early Holiday Signaling: Halfway to Halloween, moody launches, autumn previews, and seasonal anticipation.

Founder Visibility: Customers increasingly want to know who is behind a brand.

June Reality Check: What to Stop Doing

• Waiting for September to think about holiday

• Posting without a conversion path

• Treating social media as your only marketing channel

• Ignoring inactive subscribers

• Assuming customers will remember you by fall

Summer drift is real, and so is Q4 regret.

Key Dates in June

June 1: Global Day of Parents & National Cancer Survivors Day

June 3: World Bicycle Day

June 5: World Environment Day

June 5: National Donut Day

June 7: National Chocolate Ice Cream Day ~ food, candles, nostalgia, summer indulgence

June 8: World Oceans Day & Best Friends Day

June 14: Flag Day & World Blood Donor Day

June 15: Nature Photography Day ~ great for lifestyle and visual brands

June 16: Father’s Day (US & UK)

June 17: Eat Your Vegetables Day

June 18: International Picnic Day ~ great for candles, food, beauty, decor

June 19: Juneteenth

June 20: World Refugee Day

June 21: First Day of Summer

June 26: Take Your Dog to Work Day

June 27: Sunglasses Day

June Keys:

• June Flower: Rose

• June Bird: Dove

• June Birthstone: Pearl

• Top Father’s Day Gifts: Self care, personalized clothing, leisure equipment

• Top Graduation Gifts: Personalized items that mark time, that the recipient will keep forever.

June Birthdays & Anniversaries:

6/2: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 1953

6/6: Tetris is published 1984

6/9: Donald Duck makes his film debut // Les Paul’s Birthday

6/11: Jacques Cousteau’s Birthday

6/12: Anne Frank’s Birthday

6/15: Goodyear patents rubber vulcanization 1844

6/17: The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York 1885

6/18: Paul McCartney’s Birthday

6/22: Meryl Streep’s Birthday

6/24: Pablo Picasso opens his first exhibition 1901

6/25: The Diary of Anne Frank is published 1947

6/28: Henry VIII of England Birthday 1491

6/30: Albert Einstein submits Theory of Relativity 1905

Final Thought: Summer Is Not Intermission

The brands that win Q4 rarely begin in Q4. They build momentum in June (or earlier for many). While competitors space out and drift into vacation mode, smart brands use summer to sharpen positioning, deepen relationships, and lay the groundwork for the season that matters most. Sunshine is lovely my friends, and so are sales!

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

Related reading:

Your Brand Doesn’t Need a Men’s Collection to Resonate for Father’s Day

5 Reasons Founder-Led Brands Are Winning Hearts and Wallets, and 13 Lifestyle Brands Doing It Right

If You’ve Been Ignored by Best-Of Lists, This Is Your Moment: What Google’s March 2026 Update Means for Small Brands

I’ve been going through a big transition recently – I left my beloved Connecticut farm to spend time out in California (yes, I’m a California native but haven’t really been here in quite a while). As a result, I found myself feeling quite alone – not necessarily lonely – but set adrift, and stressed about it.

I happened to drive past a nearby park where dogs were happily chasing tennis balls and stopped in with my two fur-babies. Swapping stories with dozens of fellow pet parents (strangers, yes, but people I had something in common with) quickly transformed my sense of isolation into pure belonging.

Your small brand needs to build that exact same playground.

For a boutique business, a community is not a passive email list or a broadcast social media feed. It is a shared digital or physical space where your customers stop looking at you and start talking to each other over a common passion.

If you’re not in school, part of a mommy group, or working elbow to elbow with colleagues, making new friends as an adult can be challenging. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

For brands of all sizes looking to build lasting loyalty, the dog park vibe offers the ultimate blueprint for community. It is a low-stakes, high-connection environment where a shared passion (your brand + the problems it solves) instantly breaks the ice.

The beauty of a dog park of course is that it takes place IRL – which is important to note as we move forward with this analogy.

The Magic of the Shared Passion

At a dog park, you do not need an elegant introduction or a clever icebreaker. You simply look at a golden retriever and say, “How cute is he, what’s his name?” Here, adorable dogs are the social lubricant.

Your brand should serve as that exact same conversational bridge. When you bring people together around a niche interest - whether it’s a specialty coffee, sustainable fashion, or overcoming psoriasis - your becomes the dog.

Customers no longer must struggle with small talk. They already know they share a core value or passion with everyone else in the room or the forum.

Lowering the Barrier to Entry

Dog parks are successful because they require very little emotional energy to join. You just show up. You can actively participate in a conversation, or you can stand on the perimeter and simply enjoy being around like-minded people.

Your brand community should offer these same comfort levels:

→ For the Extroverts: Create active Discord channels, weekly live Q&As, or local meetups where they can drive the conversation.

→ For the Introverts: Allow space for watching and observing. Newsletters, view-only forums, and low-pressure events let them feel connected without forcing them to perform.

By removing the pressure to instantly fit in, you make it easy for lonely consumers to take the first step.

Incorporating IRL (analog activities) into Your Community Mix

Bringing community into active discussions about your brand is important. However, the great digital disconnect of 2026 makes IRL meetups is key.

While online forums provide excellent daily touchpoints, true human connection thrives on physical proximity. The dog park works because it is a physical ritual that people look forward to (as much as their dogs 😄).

Small brands can replicate this by turning digital followers into real-world neighbors. Host casual, localized meetups at parks, coffee shops, spas, and more. Do not make them high-pressure sales pitches or overly managed corporate events. Instead, keep them casual - like a weekend morning at the park.

When your customers meet face-to-face over your product, the relationship shifts from consumer-and-brand to friend-and-friend.

Choosing Your Digital Playground

Before launching, you must pick where your community will gather.

Shopify Native Apps: Best for seamless e-commerce integration. By using plugins like Mega Community or Appstle on your Shopify site, you can keep 100% control of your customer data. Customers use their standard store account to log in, meaning they can chat with other members and buy your products in the exact same session.

Substack Chat / Notes: Best for keeping everything in one place. It requires zero setup if you already use Substack. It works well for text-based, casual check-ins.

Slack: Best for professional, educational, or highly organized communities. You can create different channels for specific topics.

Discord: Best for younger audiences, audio-first interactions, or complex ecosystems with gamification.

WhatsApp / Signal Groups: Best for hyper-local or small, intimate founding member groups (under 150 people).

The 30-Day Launch Roadmap

Do not launch to your entire audience at once. Build the core culture first.

Days 1–10: Secure the Perimeter (The Seed Phase)

→ Identify your top 20 most engaged customers or readers.

→ Reach out to them personally to invite them into the private founding circle.

→ Set up 3 basic conversation channels (discussion threads): Introductions, Daily Wins, and The Core Passion (e.g., if you sell coffee, a “Brew Setup” channel).

Days 11–20: Plant the Grass (The Engagement Phase)

→ Post one conversation starter every single morning.

→ Ask open-ended questions: “What is everyone working on today?” or “What is your biggest roadblock this week?”

→ Tag founding members directly to ask for their specific input.

→ Never leave a member’s comment unanswered.

Days 21–30: Open the Gates (The Public Launch)

→ Announce the community space to your entire email list and social channels.

→ Position it as a benefit, not a pitch: A space to connect with people who love skincare, sustainable fashion, ect.

→ Host a simple, low-stakes launch event, like a 30-minute Zoom welcome call or a live Q&A in the chat.

Days 30 - 90: Get Real with Your Community

→ Plan meetups in convenient locations where most of your community members live. These can be coffees, spa days, wine tasting, or picnics. Anything that relates to your brand indirectly (or directly, but doesn’t feel like a time-share sales pitch works). Aim for monthly and see how it works for you.

The Ultimate Return on Investment

When you build a dog park inspired community, your product ceases to be just a commodity. It becomes the anchor of your customers’ social lives.

People do not leave communities where they feel seen, valued, and connected. By filling the modern loneliness void, your small brand creates an ecosystem of fierce loyalty that big-budget marketing campaigns simply cannot buy.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

Follow me on Instagram / Let’s connect on LinkedIn

Father’s Day and Mother’s Day Illustrate a Retailing Divide

While Mother’s Day triggers massive, high-budget, emotionally charged marketing pushes across almost every retail sector, Father’s Day historically receives significantly less fanfare, especially from female-focused companies

Retailers tend to treat Mother’s Day and Father’s Day quite differently:

• Mother’s Day leans symbolic: Marketing emphasizes high-margin, emotional, and symbolic luxury items like jewelry, flowers, and spa packages. These products lend themselves easily to sweeping, universal emotional campaigns.

• Father’s Day leans functional: Gifts for men historically favor practical utility with electronics, hardware tools, or basic apparel being pushed to shoppers. Women’s brands traditionally face a steep uphill battle trying to market functional dad gifts.

Fact: There Are (Probably) Products In Your Collection Dads Will Like

Father’s Day falls on Sunday June 21, this year → that gives us about 30 days to work out a strategy and get moving on it.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that gift guides for Dads are notoriously predictable and yawn inducing. Year after year, dads are bombarded with the same three themes: grilling accessories, tactical multi-tools, and grooming products packaged in aggressive, charcoal-gray bottles that smell faintly of gasoline and wintergreen.

In truth, modern fathers are looking for something different → they’re improving the vibe of their homes, prioritizing mental well-being, and seeking out daily moments of calm.

For boutique brands that specialize in beautifully formulated skincare and artisanal candles, ie products traditionally marketed to women, this shift represents a massive opportunity. You don’t need to reformulate your products or launch a masculine sub-brand to capture Father’s Day sales. You just need to use your imagination and change the narrative.

Here’s how small brands in the skincare, self-care, and decor industries can pivot their marketing to elevate a dad’s daily routine:

1. Shift from “Beauty” to “Ritual”

The word “skincare” can sometimes carry a clinical or cosmetic connotation that doesn’t resonate with every demographic. For Father’s Day, reframe your products around the concept of well earned self-care.

A botanical facial oil is a high-performance post-shave soothing agent. A clay mask is a deep-cleansing reset after a long week. By focusing on the functional benefits of your ingredients, such as the anti-inflammatory properties of jojoba or the skin-barrier protection of ceramides, you demystify the product and highlight its utility.

• Rebrand the Routine: Frame skincare as a high-performance “daily grooming ritual” rather than a beauty routine.

• Normalize Co-Sharing: Highlight products that couples or families can use together to reduce bathroom clutter. (More about this below).

• Focus on Ingredients: Emphasize raw, grounding elements like cedarwood, vetiver, clay, and charcoal.

2. Redefine the Role of Home Fragrance

Candles and home fragrance are often marketed as decorative items or mood-setters for a bath. To appeal to someone buying for the father figure in their life, reposition candles and scented reed diffusers as functional tools for focus and decompression.

• The Home Office Anchor: Position clean, woody, or resinous scents (think cedar, vetiver, amber, and tobacco) as the ultimate focus booster for his desk.

• The Evening Wind-Down: Frame the act of lighting a candle as a sensory boundary marker. A healthy alternative to cocktail hour, lighting a candle can be a literal signal that the workday is over and it is time to transition into personal or family time.

3. Lean Into the “Shared Ritual”

One of the most sustainable trends in modern wellness is the rise of the gender-neutral bathroom counter. I’m betting that many of your best products are already inherently unisex.

Encourage your audience to share their favorite rituals with the fathers in their lives. Highlight the simplicity of a streamlined, shared routine that cuts down on bathroom clutter while delivering high-quality results for everyone in the household.

Here are some ideas for social media:

Candle Brands

• Evening unwind ritual

• Reading + candle setup

• Porch nights

• Father’s Day breakfast tablescape

• “Dad’s quiet hour”

Skincare

• 3-minute shower routine

• Post-gym recovery

• Morning refresh

• Travel or golf bag essentials

4. Use Women as the Conversion Audience

Consider focusing your Father’s Day content so that it speaks to this narrative: I want to get him something thoughtful but not complicated. Shoppers, particularly women, are looking for clever product bundles, clear price points, and zero decision fatigue. Examples:

• Under $50 for Dad

• Ships Before Father’s Day

• For the Dad Who Says He Doesn’t Need Anything

5. Sell the Role, Not the Gender

Don’t worry if your collection doesn’t feel like it wandered over from the lumber aisle. Instead position products around how dads experience life. Examples include:

The Overworked Dad
– stress relief
– recovery
– evening wind-down
– better sleep

The New Dad
– exhaustion
– quiet rituals
– comfort
– self-care without calling it self-care

The Grandfather / Mentor / Father Figure
– memory
– appreciation
– legacy
– thoughtful gifting

Candles and skincare already do these jobs.

6. Expand the Definition of Father’s Day to Chosen Family Framing

As with Mother’s Day the concept of a father figure is fluid. Widen your potential audience for Father’s Day by including wording that speaks to someone who thinks fondly of not only their father but also:

• stepdads

• dog dads

• grandfathers

• mentors

• partners

This feels more emotionally intelligent than the standard tie-and-grill playbook. Chosen family framing performs particularly well socially because people like seeing themselves reflected in your message.

7. How to Activate This Strategy on Your Digital Fronts

Timing matters, here’s a practical runway:

3–4 weeks out (now): Awareness + storytelling on social media, blog posts, and newsletters

2 weeks out: Gift guides + bundles created on your website and incorporated into social messaging

Final week: Shipping urgency + local pickup + reminder content

If you are running your business across Shopify, Squarespace, or Big Cartel, you have the perfect ecosystem to execute this campaign seamlessly:

• On Squarespace: Create a dedicated landing page titled “Gifts for His Space & Routine.” Package a signature candle and a core skincare item together as a “Desk Reset Kit.” Ensure your checkout process includes a seamless, beautiful digital gift-note option.

• On Shopify: Use Shopify’s native product bundling tools to instantly create a discounted “Father’s Day Ritual Duo” without complicating your inventory. Leverage an app like HulkApps Product Options to let customers easily add a personalized, handwritten gift note right on the product page before clicking “Add to Cart.” Finally, swap your homepage banner to feature minimalist, gender-neutral lifestyle imagery of your candles on a clean, modern desk.

• On Big Cartel: Because Big Cartel thrives on simplicity and artist-first branding, use your Product Categories to create a temporary, dedicated “For Dad” or “Shared Rituals” tab. Since advanced bundling plugins are limited here, manually create a new, standalone product listing for your gift set at a flat rate. Use the Maintenance Mode feature the night before launch to build anticipation, and send a direct storefront link to your email newsletter list the next morning.

Don’t Sit Out This Father’s Day, Instead Elevate the Everyday

This year let’s move past the gimmicks. Dads don’t need more gadgets destined for the garage. They deserve the same high-quality ingredients, grounding scents, and thoughtful design elements that your brand delivers every other day of the year.

By shifting your messaging from target demographics to universal human rituals, you unlock an entirely new audience—without ever changing who you are.

Carolyn Delacorte is the founder of Boxwood Co — a trailblazing PR + marketing firm that’s served lifestyle brands in the food, beauty, decor, and baby industries for more than 28 years.

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