Prior to the onset of COVID-19, Maven Intelligence, Australia’s first strategic brand agency powered by AI, chose to analyse 150 leading wellness trends, to understand how they were driving and shaping consumer behaviour—and what market opportunities this would offer brands.

Utilising the power of AI, we analysed open-source data—petabytes of it—through natural language processing, to understand the depth and nature of the emotional engagement consumers have with different wellness topics.

Why measure emotional engagement?

When you can identify what people truly care about, you can predict how they will behave. And, what people engage with online, reveals a lot about what they deeply care about.

It reveals the qualities they are looking for when making purchasing decisions.

Why Wellness?

According to The Global Wellness Institute, wellness is a rapidly growing market that is worth a whopping US$4.5 trillion.

It is a surging market force that could be a key opportunity for many brands, which is why the Institute wanted to better understand how wellness was shaping consumer behaviour.

The Global Wellness Institute’s 2019 and 2020 Global Wellness Survey provided a starting point for our research. When combined with our own strategic brand research, a key list of 150 narratives was established.

Why should brands embrace wellness in a post-COVID world?

The Global Wellness Institute states that the ‘wellness economy’ is currently seeing 6.4% growth, which is nearly twice as fast as global economic growth. The staggering economic power of the ‘wellness economy’ calls for further investigation, and many brands are intrigued to better understand how they can capture the various audiences which wellness has engaged.

In our research, the key aim was to assess how many of narratives or leading trends were merely fads, and how many had the genuine depth of engagement needed, to change consumer behaviour.

Why does this matter to brands?

Our contemporary world is now dominated by brands; the best known become iconic, and deeply desired by their consumers.

Consumers have a powerful emotional connection to iconic brands. When brands align authentically with their values, and with what consumers care deeply about, brands successfully build desire.

And, brand desire is critical in order to turn the attention paid for through marketing, PR and advertising, into meaningful engagement.

When your brand can find narratives with deep engagement, you can uncover vital strategic opportunities to align with these ideas and engage people who share their values or interest.

By authentically connecting with core wellness themes, brands can grow their market share and engage their market strategically and at a deeper level.

This first-of-its-kind research, which was conducted just prior to COVID-19 changing the landscape of many industries, reveals a playbook to help brands quickly capture consumer desire and re-enter the post COVID-19 world ready to lead the market.