Imagine you're staging a dinner party in a garden you've spent years cultivating. Not the kind where you stress over the menu or worry if the lighting is Instagram-perfect. The kind where guests arrive and immediately feel like they've entered another world, where the lavender smells like childhood summers, the wine tastes like a secret, and no one wants to leave. That's what the best brands feel like now. Not funnels that push you toward checkout. Not campaigns that scream for attention. But universes you choose to stay in because they've made you feel something you didn't know you were missing. In 2026, the brands winning aren't the ones selling hardest. They're the ones entertaining best. This week, we're exploring what it means to be a director, not a marketer. To build a world, not a workflow.
In this blog
💛 Why the traditional funnel stopped working (and what consumers actually want now)
💛 The 4 dimensions of brand universes, and how Loewe, Rhode, Flamingo Estate, and Jacquemus built theirs
💛 The director mindset: How to stop selling and start world-building
Quick favour: Share this with a founder who's ready to abandon the funnel and build something magnetic. This is the start of a 3-week series on the future of brand building.
Picture a pink hacienda on a Los Angeles hilltop. Inside, there's no TV, no microwave. Just a kitchen where olive oil is pressed from 150-year-old trees, honey harvested from LeBron James' rooftop bees, and every product is made because the founder personally needed it to "wake up and go to bed."
This is Flamingo Estate. And it's not a beauty brand. It's a belief system.
Or imagine a French designer who stages fashion shows in lavender fields and salt marshes, turns lemons into brand iconography, and makes oversized AI-generated bags roll through Paris just to make people smile.
This is Jacquemus. And it's not a fashion label. It's a dreamscape you can wear.
These brands, along with Loewe, Rhode, and others rewriting the rules, have something in common. They've stopped trying to move people through a funnel. They've started building worlds people choose to inhabit.
And in 2026, that's not just a strategy. It's the strategy.
So what does it mean to build a brand universe instead of a brand funnel? Over the next three weeks, we're going to explore that question through research, conversation, and a practical playbook. But first, let's understand what's actually changing.
The cultural moment
Why the funnel stopped working.
The numbers tell a story:
58% of consumers face daily moderate-to-extreme stress
They're burned out by "human slop" (generic, recycled advice) and "AI slop" (context-free content)
They seek "Comfort Zones" and personal boundaries to protect their peace
But they also crave transformation; they just don't trust brands to deliver it
The traditional funnel assumed a linear journey: awareness → consideration → purchase → loyalty. But in 2026, nothing about how people discover, desire, and dedicate themselves to brands is linear.
They might fall in love with a brand through a founder's unfiltered TikTok, then ghost it for months, then come back when a friend texts them a product recommendation, then become a vocal advocate without ever making a second purchase.
This isn't broken consumer behaviour. It's just... real human behaviour.
The brands that win aren't trying to control this chaos. They're creating worlds so magnetic that people orbit them naturally.
What is a brand universe?
Four dimensions of world-building
A brand universe isn't about how many Instagram followers you have or how much you spend on ads. It's an ecosystem built on four dimensions:
1. SENSORY Not just what your products do, but how they feel.
Flamingo Estate uses botanical formulations, chamomile, eucalyptus, sage, not because they're trending, but because they "wake up your senses in a world glued to screens." Richard Christiansen, the founder, describes his brand as existing for "radical pleasure." Every product is something he personally uses to wake up or go to bed.
Rhode (Hailey Bieber's skincare line) uses food language, Glazing Milk, Vanilla Cake Tint, Strawberry Glaze, to make luxury feel like a "little treat" rather than a clinical transaction. It's the café culture aesthetic applied to skincare.
2. EMOTIONAL Moving from transactions to relationships.
Rhode didn't launch and then try to build trust. Hailey Bieber spent years sharing unfiltered "Get Ready With Me" videos before the brand even existed. By launch, her community felt like they already knew the products. They weren't buying from a celebrity, they were buying from someone who'd already been their beauty co-pilot.
Jacquemus does this differently: Simon Porte Jacquemus shares his personal life, his partner, his dachshund, his lunch, making luxury fashion feel approachable. His engagement rate (4.7%) is 3x the luxury average because people feel like they know him.
3. SYMBOLIC What does owning/using your brand signal about someone's identity?
Loewe, under creative director Jonathan Anderson (who recently moved to Dior), positioned craft and durability as the new markers of premium status. The brand's annual Craft Prize celebrates artisan makers globally, sending a message: We value things that last, things made by human hands, things with stories.
This isn't just marketing. It's a value system. And consumers who share that value system want to identify with it publicly.
4. SOCIAL Your community is the infrastructure, not the audience.
Rhode's success came from 62% micro-influencer strategy, not mega-celebrities, but real people with small, engaged followings. 50% of those creators stay with the brand year over year. They're not paid ambassadors; they're true believers who happen to have platforms.
Jacquemus' surrealist installations (lavender field runways, AI-generated bags in Paris) don't just generate press - they generate user-generated content. Fans recreate the aesthetic, reference the moments, make the brand part of their cultural vocabulary.
Exhibition view, LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize 2022
COURTESY: Dahye Jeong and LOEWE FOUNDATION
The director’s mindset
You're not a CEO. You're an auteur.
Here's the shift: Stop thinking like a marketer. Start thinking like a film director.
Your brand isn't a series of campaigns. It's a cinematic universe where your customers are the protagonists. Your job isn't to force them into a seat (the funnel). Your job is to provide:
The script (your worldview, your belief system)
The lighting (your aesthetic, your sensory codes)
The mission (the transformation you're guiding them toward)
And then? You let them live in it.
Jonathan Anderson said it best: "The very idea of codes is obsolete because people get bored in 24 hours. You need to entertain people."
Not educate. Not convince. Entertain.
Loewe does this through irreverent campaigns (Aubrey Plaza teaching pronunciation, Taylor Russell with a makeup brush and stiletto). Rhode does it through meme-able products (the phone case that broke the internet). Flamingo Estate does it through celebrity soil-digging (LeBron's rooftop bees). Jacquemus does it through surrealist spectacle (oversized lemons on beaches).
They're not just selling products. They're creating moments people want to participate in.
Over the next three weeks, we're going deep into this new paradigm:
→ Next week: An intimate conversation with a founder navigating one of wellness's biggest tensions-building a brand that's aspirational without being toxic, transformative without being prescriptive. How do you create a sanctuary that's safe for modern women?
→ Week 3: The practical playbook. Twelve principles for building your own brand universe, with case studies from the brands rewriting the rules, plus a look at what's coming next + access to my free masterclass on brand building 🔥
But for now, sit with this question:
Are you building a funnel or a universe?
A funnel tries to move people toward a destination.
A universe gives people a place they want to stay.
The brands winning in 2026 understand the difference.
💛 See you next week.
Let's stay connected
Hi! I'm Paula Ironside, and I'm so glad you made it here. I'm the founder of Hunter & Florence (my newly launched baby 💛), a strategic brand consultancy based in Oslo working with wellness and beauty founders across Europe.
My thing? Helping brands build with cultural intelligence and authentic positioning, structure and soul, not cookie-cutter DTC formulas.
Every week, I'm publishing deep dives like this one: cultural frameworks, brand strategy breakdowns, positioning tools you can actually use. If you want these insights delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe below.
And if you're a founder or work in this space, genuinely, send me a DM. I'd love to hear your story, your ideas, or explore ways we could collaborate. Community first, always.
Have a lovely day
xx P
