Diets, beauty and fitness: brands colonise daily routines

"Sit less. Move more. Exercise and above all, close your rings'. Apple's New Year's greetings to its community a few weeks ago sounded like a personal trainer's card. Yet the biometric ring attached to the Apple Watch that turns movement, pulse and sleep into daily goals has become a cult. Now the dynamic of gamification: take care of yourself and climb the charts. Meanwhile, for Valentine's Day, the world's most popular tech watch has issued a challenge on cardiac wellness. Numbers that become lifestyles and vice versa. Routines mapped step by step, app by app. Brands - of all sectors - are going beyond the logic of fitness to enter the broader one of health: smartwatch, sensors and rings translate physiological signals into advice. It is the challenge of the brand becoming a coach and of the new data-driven daily routines: contextual suggestions with a promise of measured and reassuring care. Welcome to the era of biomarketing, which maps the individual's performance such as sleep, stress, pulse, productivity and raises the bar towards new forms of 'egotelling', a neologism that exalts the telling of the self.

No more stories to tell, the company enters routines to measure. Data that give meaning to life, or at least try to. "In a perceived unstable world, people tend to regain control from their personal space. And this is why brands celebrate less self-acceptance by marking a decline in the narrative of body positivity, but offer us the inspiration to surpass ourselves. The new model of bio-fidelity is a continuous cycle of relationships. If you can fit into the routine, the person becomes loyal because the organisation becomes the architect of their balance,' says Stefania Siani, President of the Art Directors Club Italia.

From brand storyteller to brand coach, we could say. "Whereas the former sought to make the individual feel included as he is, the latter acts as a catalyst for change: it offers the individual the means to create an internal order, it helps him to become the architect of his own life. We no longer just sell a good or a service, but we seduce through the path that is taken. We think of beauty, food, fitness routines as a new customer journey personal. The use of sensors and biometric measurement creates a connection with data that validates the effort. The brand coach transforms consumption into an act of documented discipline, where gratification comes from constantly feeling in control of one's evolution. From why I value to why I become, is a formula that sums up the moment well,' argues Siani.

It is the glaring proof of extreme individualism marked by smartwatches, sensors and apps that translate physiological signals into 'gentle nudges'. A new form of personalempowerment or rather a delegation to platforms that enter our most intimate spheres of identity? "If you can measure your sleep, if you can calibrate your pulse, you are removing defects from the system, you are debugging your life. The brand coach creates a one-to-one relationship that appears as personalised care, but is in fact a sophisticated form of loyalty through branded routines. Platforms use sensitive data to reconstruct our lives according to canons of efficiency. The challenge will be to balance this aspect of utility with the preservation of human decision-making autonomy,' says Siani, who looks at emerging business models: value no longer lies in the product, but in the ability to engineer the user's daily behaviour.

In short, the product is the person. Striking a balance between useful service and constant surveillance. The opportunity for brands is to understand the need before the user expresses it and make creative use of it. The American wearable giant Whoop, valued at $3.6 billion, has made rest cool. Instead of celebrating the workaholics, it values those with a high recovery score. Nike with Why do it sheds light on the spark to overcome one's limits through sport. But the phenomenon is transversal: HelloFresh, a German meal-preparation company, turns its kit into a macronutrient routine. Headspace, a mental health tech-company, with Daily Meditation turns meditation into a measurable daily practice. The Ordinary, a Canadian skincare brand now owned by the American Estée Lauder, marks the transformation of cosmetics seen as parts of a sequence: with its minimalist packaging, it recalls the classic doctor's prescription.