Building Consumer Trust and Delivering Brand Value in an Era of Disillusionment
Susan Riley, Head of Brand for Stylist, shares how brands can authentically tap into the shifting priorities of Millennial and Gen Z women to foster meaningful relationships and drive real value in a time of heightened consumer anxiety
Susan Riley is the head of brand for Stylist, a British lifestyle magazine for women that launched in 2009. She also leads Think Stylist, Stylist's insight consultancy, which identifies new trends and behaviors for Millennial and Gen Z women and shares its findings with brand partners.
An experienced journalist and editor, Susan is an expert storyteller who has delivered innovative content, campaigns, and events to UK women for over two decades. She is adept at translating trends, reading the room, and identifying new ways for brands to connect seamlessly and meaningfully with women.
The Continuum sat down with Susan to discuss some of the insights she and her team recently gathered and what these insights mean for brands. We discussed the “joy gap” that many consumers feel as they pay more for basic needs and spend less on fun, the anxieties women have around money and financial planning, and how consumers are turning to brands for trust and comfort.
You’re now in a role where you offer advice to brands and marketers, but you came at it through a career in journalism. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got here?
I've been a journalist for 25 years. I got a degree in English literature and then came to the London media scene. I worked on magazines covering TV, teen magazines, and many women’s publications. I used to work for a publication called More, which targeted young women in their late teens and early 20s. It was there that I first worked with Lisa Smosarski, who was the launch editor of Stylist. When I left More, she noted that we’d work together again. A few years later when she was approached to launch Stylist, she asked me to come with her. That was 15 years ago, and I’ve been with the brand ever since.
What made Stylist different from the other women’s magazines in the UK at the time?
First, it was free. Our CEO at the time was Mike Soutar, who some people may now know from The Apprentice in the UK. He created the term freemium to mean that we would produce a high-quality product that would be given away for free.
The content was also different. We were a lot more overtly feminist than magazines here had been to that point. We don’t do celebrity gossip. We don’t talk about diets or how to lose seven pounds in two weeks. We just won’t talk about women’s bodies in that way. We were purely print at the beginning, and it was very much about the eclectic mix of aspirational lifestyle content—fashion, beauty, travel, interiors—that was always beautifully curated and published amongst features that touched on cultural, political, socio-economic, and psychological issues. It was very empowering. In our first issue, we talked about boardroom quotas for women and what needed to be done. It was a breath of fresh air, and we won many awards in those first few years.
“People are looking for more insight, reasoning, and understanding of why they're doing what they're doing.”
Has the magazine’s focus or message changed since the early days?
I don’t know that the focus has changed, but how we talk about things has definitely evolved. For example, female entrepreneurship has always been an important pillar for us, but the way we talk about it has changed. When we launched, shows like The Apprentice were huge, and everyone was talking about side hustles and being a “SheCEO.” The prevailing message was very much from the Sheryl Sandberg form of thought that had women leaning into almost masculine energy.
Honestly, it was almost encouraging people to burn themselves out to achieve things on other people's terms, and we were a little bit guilty of echoing that at times. I remember once we did a feature on how to launch a side hustle on your maternity leave, which felt really empowering at the time. But looking back, it only encouraged more productivity.
Now, we are more focused on the anti-productivity movement. Obviously, we acknowledge the ambitions of our audience, but we don't want it to be at their own cost. We are now as equally focused on the power of rest in the hopes of getting women to understand that their health and mental well-being are as important as their success.
Your role has changed many times since you joined Stylist. Can you tell us about that evolution?
I started as the deputy editor, I was acting editor three different times, and then I became the editor. I think I’ve put to bed 600 issues of Stylist. A phenomenal amount of content and creativity went into that. Plus, in that time we launched digital, email, social, and created an app. After a decade of editorial, I've moved on to become head of brand. I think of this as more of a storytelling role; I’m looking at our brand on a larger scale and how we work [with brands] to give them the editorial authenticity we have. We also launched Think Stylist, which is very exciting.
How do you set the brand voice for Stylist in a way that allows it to change with your audience and the time?
The audience is the key thing there. Stylist has always done a large amount of reading the room. Much of our content starts with conversations that we’re having with our friends. In fact, some of the best covers I've ever worked on started as conversations in a pub with my friends. If it's what real women are talking about, then it deserves spotlighting and debating. Our audience wants to know what their peers are thinking. They want to feel that validation.
The women that Stylist speaks to are changing so fast and questioning lots of things that they maybe didn't question before. They’re going on this quite speedy and thought-provoking journey, and I think the brand is kind of at the forefront of that.
“They’re afraid of making a mistake, so they’re just kind of standing on the periphery and not taking full financial agency. But they want more education, they want more empowerment, and they want more help. It seems obvious, but there’s an opportunity for financial brands to dig in here.”
Think Stylist is an insight consultancy that spun off from the work you’ve done on the magazine and with partner brands. Can you explain how that came about and what you do?
I think that it's a natural evolution of Stylist. Our content has always been fueled by insight. We've always done a lot of insight work around any big topics that we’re talking about, and we're constantly temperature checking and conducting censuses and surveys. We would always talk to our brand partners about what our audience wanted. This allows us to do that in a more far-reaching way.
I also think it’s the byproduct of the challenging post-COVID times that businesses and brands find themselves in. People are looking for more insight, reasoning, and understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. We were finding that insight was becoming a big part of the briefs and conversations we were having around content partnerships and that it made the creative side even richer.
We also had a model for this. Stylist is part of DC Thomson. Among their other brands and titles, they publish Beano, a children’s magazine. Beano has a hugely successful insight company called Beano Brain, which uses its extensive knowledge of Gen Alpha to help brands. Stylist knows our audience better than anyone, so we realized we could do the same thing.
This is a very financially challenging moment, and there’s a growing feeling of anti-consumerism. Think Stylist is all about how we can help other brands speak to women with purpose and storytelling at a time when it’s not all about products.
Do you have an example of how a brand partnership might use the insights that Stylist or Think Stylist develops?
One of our big pieces of thought leadership from a few years ago was called “Women at 30.” We recently updated it by speaking to women who are 25, 30, and 35. I worked to pull out the dominant themes that we heard.
I dubbed one of them “duped adulthood.” We found that women had a lot of plans or dreams that hadn’t materialized yet. They’d hoped to have their own home or a family or earn a bigger salary by their age, and none of it was materializing. They inherited these milestones from Boomers and Gen X, but we're not in the same world. A few years ago, there was a statistic that cited Gen Z individuals have something like 86% less buying power in their 20s than Boomers did. So, you've got this kind of feeling of disillusionment. This generation doesn’t see the point of moving up the career ladder, buying a house, and saving for retirement.
For them, it’s about resetting milestones. Maybe they have an attitudinal milestone, or perhaps they’ve just gotten out of an abusive relationship and are financially stable on their own and want to celebrate that. A lot of our audience sets physical and mental challenges for themselves, like running a marathon or meditating every day.
Pandora, the jewelry company, loved the idea that women were marking their daily achievements. They built a campaign around it, which was all about celebrating your own successes, featuring women wearing Pandora jewelry with “me stones” as opposed to milestones as a way to reframe adulthood for them.
How do you choose what topics to do deep-dive research on?
I stay ahead of the news agenda. That, and I sit in on so many meetings, particularly editorial meetings, I really know what is being covered. I also know what's resonating from our social and digital platforms, the topics that are coming up in our focus groups, and the conversations that we're having with women whenever we have events.
Our most recent report is called F Word: The new money mindset of millennial and Gen Z women. This really came from an ongoing study that Think Stylist has been doing with women aged 25-45. We didn’t ask them about money specifically; we asked them what their biggest challenges were, and money kept coming up in the conversation.
In the UK, we’re having what people are calling a cost of living crisis. I kind of hate that term, but what it basically means is that life is even more expensive today. Our research over the years shows that money is not how this generation marks success. Nonetheless, earning more has become a big priority for our audience, and not being able to afford the life they want has become their biggest fear.
One interesting finding is that spending styles are just kind of swinging between these two polar opposites. On the one hand, you have many scary things happening in the world, and the price of everything is shooting up. People are quite anxious and focused on saving. At the same time, you’ve got this post-COVID, You-Only-Live-Once mentality that says you’ve got to grab life by the horns.
“People want to be reassured. They want to be cocooned during this quite hostile environment. If a brand can provide some level of comfort, whatever that looks like, that will resonate with consumers.”
What were some of the insights from that report that you think will resonate with brands?
Many people changed habits for financial reasons but have found that it is quite empowering to do so. Some of the women changed the supermarket that they shop in or their route to work to cut out expenses. One woman stopped wearing makeup. All of these changes started with fiscal reasons but evolved into a point of self-discovery. I think there’s a way for brands to go on that journey and become part of these new habit-forming changes.
There are also many exciting opportunities in the more practical ways women see money. There’s a real lack of confidence for many women when it comes to making financial decisions. They’re afraid of making a mistake, so they’re just kind of standing on the periphery and not taking full financial agency. But they want more education, they want more empowerment, and they want more help. It seems obvious, but there’s an opportunity for financial brands to dig in here.
In fact, the study found that women don’t have relationships with financial brands. About 77% said they didn't feel their bank was helping them thrive. People are looking for brands that make a personal impact and help them flourish at the moment.
You mentioned earlier that there’s a rise in anti-consumerism sentiment. How can brands—that essentially sell a product—continue to connect with customers during this moment?
It’s about showing that you know what consumers are going through as opposed to being oblivious. We asked our audience to name the top three things they have in mind when shopping for things now. The first was value, the second one was quality, and the third was usefulness. Is it going to have an impact on my life or save me time? I think brands need to demonstrate all of that. If something's expensive, we need to help consumers understand why it's worth it and what difference it will make in their lives.
The fourth important piece of their decision-making was comfort. People want to be reassured. They want to be cocooned during this quite hostile environment. If a brand can provide some level of comfort, whatever that looks like, that will resonate with consumers.
One of the trends that came out of our research was that during these harsh financial times, it’s not just the big spend items like posh holidays that go; it’s all of the little things that people are starting to cut back on that are actually quite dangerous during a mental health epidemic. We saw people cutting out seeing family because the cost of trains is sky high. We saw people cutting out their singing lessons or their dancing lesson or even their baking because the cost of ingredients is high. Over time, those tiny ways in which people look to save money suck the joy out of their lives. Our research showed a joy deficit. Brands need to be thinking about what people are having to go without and how they can provide consumers with those things in some way.
Finally, I think trust is an important issue that brands should take time to understand. Everyone's working their butts off and not feeling any reward which leads to disillusionment and a lack of trust. I would say that establishing, harnessing, and leveraging trust are some of the most important things that brands can do right now. Think Stylist is able to get this insight because of all the trust Stylist has built up over the years. The women we speak to trust us implicitly. We create a safe space for them to share their thoughts and feelings, and they trust that we care about them. That’s what other brands need to build.
“Everyone's working their butts off and not feeling any reward which leads to disillusionment and a lack of trust. I would say that establishing, harnessing, and leveraging trust are some of the most important things that brands can do right now.”
A lot of brands are very focused on data, but that seems different than these deep dives for insight. Why do you think it’s important to look more closely?
Every company has data coming out of their ears, but the important thing is the interpretation of data and what you do with it. A lot of the data that brands have is really quite functional. It’s what people are looking at, what they’re spending on, where they’re spending.
I’ve always been more interested in the emotional journey. I want to know their priorities, fears, ambitions, and pain points. For me, it’s about fusing journalistic storytelling with data, speaking to these women directly, and continually learning more about them.
What are some of the other issues that you think Stylist and Think Stylist are going to dive into next?
I want to drill deeper into the issue of why people trust brands and what they expect from them. I’m also interested in the push/pull between us investing all this time, energy, and money into wellness and yet feeling continually burnt out, stressed, and more disenfranchised than ever. Health is at the intersection of everything right now for people, whether that's the food they eat, the exercise they do, the habits they build, or the way they spend money. I want to get into this for our audience and also really look at how mental health issues have been growing since the pandemic. I don't think people have been considering the long-term impacts of what we all collectively went through. Gosh, I mean, I always have so many ideas, and there are so many topics to dig into.
March 4, 2025
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