Beautiful Thinking.
I’ve spent many years in the world of health and beauty branding, and over the past decade I’ve watched something fascinating happen: the rise of wellness as a new space. Healthcare clients want to occupy it, while beauty clients are migrating their brands and innovations into it.
Now, at INNOCOS in Geneva, it became clear that this isn’t just a trend. It’s the emergence of a whole new category – beauty, wellness, and longevity converging into one future-facing industry.
Geneva was the perfect setting. Long known for its healing alpine air, pioneering spas, and medical expertise, it felt natural to gather here. Yet there’s an irony too – it’s also one of the few places where life can legally end. That tension sharpened the question behind every session, what does it mean to live longer, and better?
One idea that really resonated was the JoySpan (coined by Joël Palix). While longevity science talks about extending years, there were moments when the future painted felt a little bleak: dashboards, diets, and diagnostics. But what about joy? Good food, late nights, wine with friends – these are part of the richness of life. As an industry, we need to balance healthspan with joyspan: protecting people’s health without stripping away what makes life worth living.
The women’s health sessions struck a powerful chord. Too much medical research has been built around the male body, treating women as “little men”(coined by Anna Erat (MD, PhD, IDP INSEAD)). This gender bias is not just outdated, it’s dangerous. Women’s health is the cornerstone of longevity. From hormones and muscle health to brain and skin, the future of this category must put women at the centre, not the margins.
Another theme I couldn’t ignore was the risk of longevity washing. Just as greenwashing once undermined sustainability, there’s a danger of overblown claims, conflicting studies, and consumer confusion undermining trust here. Already, longevity is often dismissed as snake oil. Unless the industry comes together with clarity, simple language, and united storytelling, we risk losing credibility before this category even matures.
What excites me most is the way the walls between beauty, wellness, and healthcare are collapsing. Whether it’s botanicals enhanced by modern bioavailability science (as Pascal Houdayer of Boiron highlighted) or protocols that connect skin, gut, and mind, the winners will be those who design programmes, not just products.
We saw how AI, biomarkers, and personalised diagnostics are reshaping what’s possible. But science alone isn’t enough. The challenge is translation, how do we turn data into desire? How do we take complex dashboards and methylation clocks and make them stories that motivate, inspire, and feel human? This is where brand strategy is crucial.
And I am particularly excited to see how the following industry trends are dominating the longevity conversation:
As I left Geneva, one thing was clear – longevity is not about adding more years. It’s about adding better years. But if we strip away pleasure or lose trust through hype, we risk building a joyless, mistrusted industry.
The opportunity for us as brand leaders is to unite rigour with romance, science with story, care with joy. That’s how we will help shape this new category – one where health, beauty, and wellness finally converge to serve people not just longer lives, but better, more joyful ones.
