According to WellToDo, the wellness industry is now worth over a staggering $4.2 trillion. As the industry continues to evolve from what was once a discrete lifestyle concept to the mainstream, wellness in all its forms, whether that be fitness and healthy eating to beauty and wellness tourism, remains one of the world’s biggest and fast-growing spaces and offers an opportunity for businesses to embrace. In 2018, we tried out mindfulness, were introduced to adaptogens and learnt what moon milk is, but what’s coming for the industry next year? Having been working in wellness for nearly 20 years, taking Alpro from niche to a category leader, we know this space at Richmond & Towers. Here are the new health and wellness trends that brands need to watch out for 2019. LIIT (Low-intensity interval training) It may produce quick results, but high-intensity exercise can be dangerous. Over the years, the go hard or go home mentality has meant that gentler activity has increasingly been deemed pointless. The collective enthusiasm for pushing our bodies to their limit in workout after workout has been of recent concern, with some experts advising that, rather than elevate our fitness levels, HIIT (high -intensity interval training) could prove counterproductive. Experts have called for evidence-based guidelines for high-intensity training, including the setting of a weekly upper limit for gym-goers as from a physiological perspective, our muscles need time to recover and adapt to intense exercise. Sauna 2.0 Gaining major momentum in the wellness community at the moment are infrared saunas. Like a sauna, but with a different heating system, that provide different health benefits to the traditional sauna, such as soothing muscles and joints, better detoxification and deeper relaxation. Always ahead of the curve, our latest digital campaign with Vega saw a selection of Instagram influencers head to one of London’s newest infrared sauna spots, Glow Bar, the week of its launch. Saying no to food waste While we’re increasingly conscious of the food wasted in our homes and by supermarkets, waste by restaurants is still largely overlooked. Figures from the government’s food waste advisory body, Wrap, state that the problem costs UK businesses over £2.5m every week. Next year, we’ll start to hear more about organisations like Too Good To Go and Love Food Hate Waste, which are trying to tackle our food waste issues. Plant-based is here to stay 2018 was the year plant-based went global. 30 years ahead of the game, Alpro coined the term plant-based eating and leading the conversation again this year, we launched the UK’s first-ever Plant Power Day with Alpro, a day dedicated to putting plants first. A third of the population now have meat-free or meat-reduced diets, demonstrating plant-based eating is going nowhere in 2019.
Brand engagement agency R&T (Richmond & Towers) has been appointed by Brooklyn Brewery to oversee its social media presence in the UK. Following on from a successful year of leading UK PR for Brooklyn Brewery – which saw the launch of its new pilsner – R&T has won the brand’s… Read more
Are you ready to dive into the latest consumer behaviour trends? With the world around us continuing to evolve at pace, it’s more important than ever to keep up with what consumers are thinking, feeling and doing right now – and take a step back to consider the effect this… Read more
Get set to read up on the latest (and tastiest) goings on in the fast-evolving world of PR and social media. November has been a juicy month, so we recommend you grab yourself a snack and a cuppa (or suitable drink of choice depending on the time you’re reading this,… Read more
With more than 700 million scrollers perusing their feeds each month, Instagram is currently the social platform that can arguably boast highest rate of engagement. And with that comes a powerful opportunity for brands to harness and connect to the audiences they are trying to reach. However, as always, there is a watch-out. For example, if an influencer has hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of followers it does not necessarily mean that a campaign will be more effective than if a brand works with an influencer with fewer followers. Indeed, a recent Forbes article suggests that once an account reaches a certain size, it actually receives less engagement from its followers. The perceived wisdom is that this is because users just simply aren’t as prepared to interact with a celebrity as with someone they can relate to. And it is also why we enlisted the support of five very carefully selected influencers for a ‘Me & Tonic’ cocktail competition with our client Franklin & Sons, producers of a range of handcrafted premium tonics, mixers and soft drinks. Amplifying the growing trend for good quality, premium mixers, we wanted to challenge five influencers to create their own ‘Me & T’ serve with Franklin & Sons, using not just gin, but other spirits as well. The five serves were then showcased at an event at the Hilton’s 146 Paddington venue this week, with the winning cocktail put on the prestigious menu and credited to the winner. Our five specially selected lifestyle, food and drink influencers all had proven strong followings, but importantly they had also previously made it known they were fans of Franklin & Sons. We asked them to document the journey of their cocktail creation to their followers utilising a hamper of beautiful and carefully chosen gifts. A photo showing your product, whatever it may be, will not suffice as successful campaigns also need the influencer to tell a story to encourage engagement. Here’s just a selection of the results to date: Food Goblin – 15.3k followers Hey! Dip Your Toes In – 11.2k followers Kitchen With Cumbers – 10.8k followers The.Londoness – 19.1k followers
Brand engagement agency R&T (Richmond & Towers) has been appointed by Brooklyn Brewery to oversee its social media presence in the UK. Following on from a successful year of leading UK PR for Brooklyn Brewery – which saw the launch of its new pilsner – R&T has won the brand’s… Read more
Are you ready to dive into the latest consumer behaviour trends? With the world around us continuing to evolve at pace, it’s more important than ever to keep up with what consumers are thinking, feeling and doing right now – and take a step back to consider the effect this… Read more
Get set to read up on the latest (and tastiest) goings on in the fast-evolving world of PR and social media. November has been a juicy month, so we recommend you grab yourself a snack and a cuppa (or suitable drink of choice depending on the time you’re reading this,… Read more
A recent tweet from Madalyn Parker, a web developer for a Michigan-based chat software company, went viral. Madalyn made the bold decision to not just take time off to focus on her emotional wellbeing, but to also be honest with her colleagues about it. Her boss’s sympathetic response to her email explaining this was so overwhelming she took a screenshot and put it on Twitter. The tweet has now received more than 50,000 likes and retweets and has re-ignited the important discussion about our personal battles with emotional wellness. Statistics released by the Mental Health Foundation have indicated that one in six workers are affected by conditions like anxiety and depression in the UK alone – and yet, in spite of the debilitating effects that come with mental health issues, we still don’t take the time off work when we need to. It is hard to be honest about mental health in the typical workplace. In situations like this, it is easier to pass it off as ‘not feeling well’ but as has been made abundantly and wonderfully clear by this CEO’s response, things are changing. Working in a place that understands the needs of its staff can make all the difference. Being in a supportive environment, somewhere you know you can have fun and enjoy office life, significantly lowers the chances of emotional exhaustion, thus reducing knock-on effects at work and everywhere else in your life. Richmond & Towers recently took part in a companywide ‘Wellbeing Month’ involving free yoga classes, massages at lunch, informative nutritional seminars, and a daily salad and smoothie bar. Gestures like these – no matter what field you or your company are working in – reassure anyone suffering from a mental health condition that it’s okay to speak up and that they’re in safe hands.
Brand engagement agency R&T (Richmond & Towers) has been appointed by Brooklyn Brewery to oversee its social media presence in the UK. Following on from a successful year of leading UK PR for Brooklyn Brewery – which saw the launch of its new pilsner – R&T has won the brand’s… Read more
Are you ready to dive into the latest consumer behaviour trends? With the world around us continuing to evolve at pace, it’s more important than ever to keep up with what consumers are thinking, feeling and doing right now – and take a step back to consider the effect this… Read more
Get set to read up on the latest (and tastiest) goings on in the fast-evolving world of PR and social media. November has been a juicy month, so we recommend you grab yourself a snack and a cuppa (or suitable drink of choice depending on the time you’re reading this,… Read more