This week, I’m reporting from the Glossy Beauty & Wellness Summit where I checked in with wellness experts like Dr. Leonard Guarente, a pioneer of aging science and the co-founder and chief scientist of Elysium Health, and Aaron Jones, the chief digital officer of Unilever Wellbeing and Liquid I.V. Additionally, Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint supplement company hires a CEO and takes on $60 million in funding, health secretary RFK Jr. addresses the safety of acetaminophen for pregnant women, and Bevel raises $10 million to advance consumer wellness data analysis.
Longevity is driving the industry as consumers strive to look, feel and live better
Longevity is the buzzword of the year at Glossy’s annual three-day Beauty & Wellness Summit, which concludes on Wednesday.
“I think longevity is hot, hot, hot,” said Reuben Carranza, executive chairman of Bansk Beauty, parent company to Byoma, Amika and Eva NYC. “It’s evolving, and it’s going to, in my opinion, bring together beauty and wellness.”
Many of the wellness conversations had this week have been driven by tapping into evolving sciences, navigating the right marketing mix and understanding consumer preferences.
“Younger generations care a lot about wellness. … Forty-one percent of wellness spend happens through the Gen-Z cohort today,” said Aaron Jones, chief digital officer of Unilever Wellbeing and Liquid I.V. “It’s a top priority for them, and wellness has really transitioned from being health as the absence of disease to wellness as a proactive kind of ownership journey for every individual.” According to Jones, 84% of US consumers say wellness is a top priority.
For Unilever’s Wellbeing segment, which also includes Nutrafol supplements, marketing through athletes has been a game-changer.
“The connection to wellness makes a lot of sense with athletes. … Exercise is the No. 2 most frequently cited use case for Liquid I.V. to be used,” he said. “So obviously, sports is a natural fit, but more so than that, live sports is one of the very few moments where a lot of collective eyeballs are watching the same thing at the same time — and people are actually so engaged with the content and don’t want to miss anything, so they’re watching all the advertisements very intensely.”
Unlike on-demand streaming, sports is a way to reach consumers in a timely fashion. “It’s one of the very few moments where you show up to work on Monday and everyone’s talking about what happened over the weekend,” said Jones.
Beyond wellness brands, Glossy spoke to many beauty brands that have found runaway success seeding to, and partnering with, female athletes. For example, during a working group, an exec from a top hair-care brand told attendees about a recent partnership with a female athlete that drove nearly 70% of her A-list attendees to post after their event. “It’s been really successful for us to play in that sports space versus in the beauty space,” she said. “And we’ve gotten a ton of press around it.”
Tapping into emerging science, and how to translate that to marketing materials, was also a hot topic at the Summit.
For example, the focus on maintaining the body’s NAD levels continues to have major growth. As previously reported by Glossy, NAD is shortened for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a co-enzyme that naturally occurs in every cell of the human body but begins to diminish with age.
“We started working on aging about 30-35 years ago, and there wasn’t much going on, in terms of real scientific research in aging,” said Dr. Leonard Guarente, a longtime MIT researcher, pioneer of aging science, and co-founder and chief scientist of Elysium Health. “There was a lot of, sort of, bad science, or even non-science that was passed off as science, and some of that, I must say, still plagues the field.”
Dr. Guarente discovered the connection between aging and a group of proteins called sirtuins, which has provided the runway for the NAD+ boom happening now. His line is based on boosting NAD levels and has expanded into beauty-focused supplements, as well.
“We’re at the point of emergence now, and right at the tipping point [for NAD+ supplements that boost NAD levels],” he said. “Millions of people take these supplements, and I think it’s going to grow further.”
Executive moves:
- Caroline Linton is the new chief marketing officer of sauna franchise Perspire Sauna Studio. Her CV includes CMO of Pure Barre and Stride Fitness.
- Gyre Renwick is the new CEO of Blueprint, the longevity protocol and product line from American entrepreneur and biohacker Bryan Johnson. Renwick’s CV includes Lyft, Google and Modern Health.
News to know:
- Blueprint, the supplement company from American entrepreneur and biohacker Bryan Johnson, has taken on $60 million in funding from investors like Kim Kardashian and Ari Emanuel. Johnson is best known for documenting his quest to age in reverse on YouTube and through the Netflix film “Don’t Die.” Blueprint currently offers a variety of products DTC, like drink mixes, supplements and skin care.
- Bevel, a longevity-focused operating system that collects and analyzes consumer data through wearables, biomarkers and consumer input, has taken on $10 million in funding led by VC fund General Catalyst. “This funding lets us grow the team, move faster on your feature requests, and expand across more platforms and devices,” said CEO and co-founder Grey Nguyen on LinkedIn. “We’re still early, but this is a huge step toward building something that helps everyone understand and improve their own health.”
- Hellen Obiri, a celebrated Kenyan middle-distance runner, won the New York City Marathon on Sunday while setting a new women’s course record of just over two hours and 19 minutes to complete the 26.2 mile run. She also won the race in 2023. Obiri is 35 years old.
- U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed the safety of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in pain relievers like Tylenol, on Wednesday. “The causative association … between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism. But it is very suggestive,” he said. In September, President Donald Trump warned pregnant women not to take the drug, which has historically been considered safe during pregnancy, without citing any medical research.
- Kenvue, owner of Tylenol and beauty brands like Neutrogena, is set to be acquired by Kimberly-Clark Corp., the owner of Kleenex and Huggies, for $48.7 billion. The deal is set to close next year pending regulatory approval.
Stat of the week:
There’s a bidding war happening now to acquire Metsera, an American biotechnology company focused on obesity drugs. In September, the company announced plans to be acquired by American pharma giant Pfizer for $4.9 billion. However, on Thursday, Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, made an unsolicited $9 billion bid to acquire Metsera, which it later raised to $10 billion. Metsera, which launched in 2022, has several injectable and oral obesity drugs in its pipeline.
In the headlines:
Melatonin might be a heartbreaker. These are North America’s most wellness-obsessed cities in 2025. ‘We were getting crushed’: Brands cut back on free online returns to offset tariff costs.
Need a Glossy recap?
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