The tastemakers your brand should be building relationships with

The most beautiful brands are often missing one of the simplest opportunities to make their brand story more distinctive: connecting their products with the people who genuinely shape the tastes of their customers.

Not necessarily influencers, and not necessarily people with enormous audiences. I’m talking about genuine tastemakers – the people whose choices other people notice. The stylist whose wardrobe you want to emulate, the interior designer whose hotel recommendations you save, the artist whose work, studio or favourite objects make you see everyday life slightly differently.

For premium and design-led brands in particular, these relationships can be incredibly powerful.

Think beyond the traditional influencer

Influencer marketing has become so established that it’s easy to think of partnerships in fairly straightforward terms: find someone with the right audience, give them the product, create some content and measure the reach. But there is another, much more interesting opportunity.

What if you connected your product with people because of their taste, expertise and cultural relevance — rather than simply the size of their following?

Imagine:

A stylist who genuinely enthuses about the artisanal handbag she always reaches for.

An interior designer who raves about a boutique hotel that genuinely inspires her.

An artist whose daily ritual is a morning coffee in her favourite mug from a beautiful ceramics brand.

These aren't just product placements — they're associations, and those associations can be incredibly valuable.

The power of being chosen by someone your customer admires

When someone with genuine authority in a particular world chooses a product, they bring something with them that advertising can't easily manufacture: their own credibility and taste.

Fashion consultant Laura Vidrequin with The Sway bag by Strathberry

If an interior designer you admire recommends a hotel, you're interested because you trust her eye. If a stylist repeatedly carries the same handbag, you start to wonder what she sees in it. If an artist has surrounded herself with objects from a particular ceramics brand, the brand begins to feel like part of a world you'd like to inhabit. 

This is where it gets really interesting. You're no longer just communicating what your product is; you're communicating something about the kind of person who chooses it.

Build a network, not a one-off campaign

The real opportunity isn't necessarily one big collaboration. It can be much more powerful to build a network of people whose worlds naturally overlap with your own. A fashion brand might build relationships with stylists, photographers, designers and editors. A hotel could work with architects, chefs, artists, writers and interior designers. A ceramics brand could connect with chefs, florists, artists, interior designers and creative founders.

The point isn't to force a product into every possible conversation.

It's to identify the people who naturally belong in your brand world, and find authentic reasons for them to be part of it.

Over time, those relationships start to build a whole world around the brand.

And this is where strategy comes in

I think this is where brands often get it backwards. The best partnerships don't start with “Who could we collaborate with?” They start with: “What do we want our brand to be known for?”

What are the qualities you want people to associate with you?

Who already embodies those qualities?

Who does your customer already look to for inspiration?

Which worlds do you want your brand to belong to?

And perhaps most importantly: what can this person bring to your story that you couldn't create on your own?

Because when the right person enters the picture, they don't just give you access to their audience. They can give you a new perspective on your product, a new story to tell and a new group of people who might start to see your brand differently.

Beautiful content with a reason to exist

There's also a huge content opportunity here. Rather than creating content simply because you feel you need to post something, these relationships give you a genuine reason to tell a story.

You can show how a designer uses your product in their everyday life. Explore an artist's creative rituals. Ask a stylist about the pieces they always return to. Create a city guide with someone whose taste perfectly reflects your brand. 

The content becomes more interesting because there is an actual story behind it. And crucially, it should connect back to your wider brand positioning.

That's the difference between a nice piece of content and a piece of brand building.

Your customers are looking for signals

Ultimately, people don't just buy premium products for their functional attributes. They buy into taste, identity, aspiration and belonging. They're taking cues from the people and brands around them about what's interesting, beautiful, desirable and worth paying attention to.

The opportunity for brands is to become part of those conversations. Not by shouting louder, but by building relationships with the people whose choices already carry meaning. The most effective tastemaker partnerships don't feel like marketing, they feel like a natural meeting of worlds.

And when you get that right, you're doing something much more valuable than chasing a spike in reach. You're building a brand with a world around it — one that feels credible, distinctive and worth being part of.

It's one of my favourite ways to support growing brands: identifying the people, partnerships and stories that can help build a world around the product. It's also a big part of what sits behind my Storytelling Engine.

If you'd like to explore what this could look like for your brand, I'd love to hear from you.

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