Not Everything Is Wellness

Catching up with Maryam Tantawy, VP of Marketing, Love Wellness

Thought Enthusiast is an editorial project from AdHoc, a New York experiential agency exploring the people, ideas, and cultural currents shaping what’s next.

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Maryam Tantawy is a marketing leader with over 15 years building luxury beauty and wellness brands, from global conglomerates to high-growth independents. A self-described "third culture kid," she brings a lifelong fascination with culture and subculture to understanding what makes people fall for a brand.

This week, we caught up with Maryam to talk about wellness clubs, Knicks games, and what happens when every brand wants to be a lifestyle.

How to Market to the Marketer

I see marketing in everything. You’re seeing ads everywhere. You’re seeing products everywhere. So you can’t turn off that instinct. It’s cool to understand, but as a consumer, it’s human nature that if something resonates with you, it could be fulfilling a necessity. But then which brand of food do you want to align with and support? I’m still a consumer, and that’s where my marketing hat turns off. It’s all about what brands align with my values or feel like they understand me.

I love the idea of getting into the brain of the consumer. I love studying so I can understand what she’s looking for, what’s important to her, and what she wants to hear from a brand. So even if it’s not necessarily my taste, I immerse myself in her mindset. And I think when it comes to campaigns, it’s translating her world in a way that makes sense for the brand. Maybe my taste takes a step back sometimes. I’m not into this, but I know exactly what’s going on in the mindset of the woman who is, and who our customer is.

The Search for the Perfect Product

A category that’s really important to me is curly haircare. For a very long time, I couldn’t find the perfect product. I still can’t find the perfect product, but I’m starting to hone in on a curly haircare that’s helped me style my hair. We weren’t catered to for a very long time. Coming from Egypt, coming from a different culture than here, and being embedded in this idea that your hair should be straight and sleek. In the early 2000s there were no curly hair products, and if there were, they were not that great. We just had to burn our hair. A lot of times, I remember growing up, a haircare brand would launch curly haircare products and then discontinue them.

These days, I’ve been buying a lot of Jones Road, which I really appreciate because Bobbi Brown is a makeup artist, but she’s not one to ever tell you that you need to hide, conceal, or change the look of your face. She’s like, “I don’t believe in contour.” I love that about her and I love her products. It’s very minimal coverage. She’s like, “You should look like you, always.” I love that philosophy.

Cardi B as the North Star

Maybe I’m a purist, but wellness goes way beyond your outward appearance. Your outward appearance is a result of being well and taking care of yourself. But, I have an issue with fragrance brands or skincare brands touting that they’re for wellness. It’s about taking care of your health versus slapping a cream on. Healthy skin is great, but being healthy inward is so much more important. All the brands see there’s a wellness trend right now. People want to be the healthiest version of themselves, so you see brands leaning into it. But that’s not authentic.

In culture, especially in music the most authentic people are the ones that inspire me. Not the ones that are polished and PR-ready. The ones who pick up their camera, get on TikTok or Instagram, and are just speaking their mind. You can eventually tell how raw someone is because they make mistakes. People are willing to forgive people that are human. Cardi B is one that comes to mind for me.

Sorry, I’m Luteal

What we’re seeing is that the term “wellness” has evolved so much. When I was at Hum Nutrition, this was 2019, it used to be your vitamins and your supplements. Now it’s fragrance, it’s skincare, even some of these tech devices are considered wellness. Where I see it going, and you’re already seeing the start of this, is the experience of wellness becoming a thing. All of these wellness clubs that are popping up all over the city. It’s going to continue evolving into an experiential thing. The way we eat, the music we consume, it’s everything now. I feel like it’s going to continue being instead of products we consume, the environments we’re putting ourselves in.

Men especially have an interesting mindset when it comes to wellness. When marketing to men about wellness, it’s all about optimizing yourself. For women, it’s more about feeling like yourself again. It’s a different mindset. I know that’s very binary, but men want to optimize their performance, and longevity is huge for them. It’s not that it isn’t for women, but I think women are more inward-looking and want to be more in tune with their bodies and listen to, “Why do I feel off today?” Maybe it’s related to our cycles. Our body changes in 28 days.

Beauty and the Knicks

A lot of beauty pop-ups look exactly the same. It’s either a flower market or a coffee shop. I don’t want to say lazy, but I think it’s easy. Girls love matcha and beauty, so the formula becomes: let’s combine the two. The sad thing is that people forget about most of these pop-ups a week later. What would be cooler to see is brands building their own personality. Build a pop-up around that.

I think about Red Bull. They’re an energy drink, but they were like, who are we as a brand? We’re these risk-takers. Let’s find this super niche stunt sport and just lean into it. The coolest brands are carving their own niche, versus brands that don’t have a strong sense of their own personality. A great example of this is that Saie Beauty is the official beauty brand of Madison Square Garden. I watched an interview with the founder, and I think she was just at a Knicks game and was like, “Why are there no beauty brands being marketed in here?” I love that idea of finding a whole avenue to be discovered.

AdHoc’s campaigns live in the spirit of creating experiences with an emphasis on the unconventional, unfounded, and new to build things that feel culturally embedded and considered rather than overbranded and boring.