If Your Brand Is Going to Jump on a Trend, Menopause Is a Safe Bet

I’m not usually the consultant you call when you want to jump on a trend.

Trend-led marketing and reactive NPD rarely build brands with real longevity — they build mess. Short shelf life. Fast intrigue fatigue. And in an industry already drowning in “new”, that approach often does more harm than good.

But menopause is different.

Not because it’s fashionable — but because we’re only just beginning to scrape the surface of how profoundly women’s health, aging and longevity have been misunderstood, underfunded, and underbuilt for decades. Supporting women through menopause isn’t trend marketing. It’s overdue infrastructure.

And brands that choose to show up now (thoughtfully, credibly, and with real weight behind them) aren’t late to the party. They’re early to a category that hasn’t yet been fully formed.

Women largely built the modern wellness industry. Estimates place its value at $6.8 trillion, and much of that growth came from women seeking answers where traditional medicine failed to provide them.

Hormonal health. Autoimmune conditions. Chronic fatigue. Gut issues. Skin disorders. Mental load. Burnout.

Yet despite being the economic and cultural engine of wellness, women have been conspicuously sidelined in the longevity conversation.

That’s not just a missed opportunity — it’s an industry flaw.

According to a McKinsey / World Economic Forum report, women live longer than men in every country and across all socioeconomic groups — by an average of five to six years. But they also spend 25% more of their lives in poor health.

Longer lives. Lower quality.

The next evolution of menopause isn’t spa days and supplements with grey evidence.

In the wellness space, we’re already seeing a shift away from the avalanche of evidence-challenged “hormone balancing” products, biohacks and pampering menopause retreats — and toward serious medical-wellness longevity programs designed specifically for women.

This new model is integrative by necessity.

Ovarian health cannot be addressed in isolation. Lifestyle interventions (sleep quality, stress regulation, metabolic health, strength training, nutrition, and longitudinal biomarker tracking) are not optional extras. They're necessity.

One of the biggest misconceptions brands make when approaching menopause is assuming the opportunity sits exclusively with women in their 50s.

It doesn’t.

As women’s health expands from treating menopause at midlife to understanding stages of ovarian health, a new longevity wave is emerging — one that spans from the teens through to the 90s.

The fastest category growth won’t come from women already in menopause. It will come from women in their 20s, 30s and 40s building what researchers increasingly describe as runway protocols.

For brands, this fundamentally changes who menopause messaging is for — and how early trust can be built.

If the moral case doesn’t land, the commercial one should.

The global longevity market is estimated at $58 billion — and by failing to centre women meaningfully, it’s leaving extraordinary money on the table.

According to Nielsen, women are expected to control 75% of discretionary spending worldwide within the next five years — representing around $32 trillion.

Women over 50 are the fastest-growing consumer demographic globally. Women make 80% of healthcare decisions. And yet most longevity brands are still designed through a male lens, with female adaptation bolted on as an afterthought.

Supporting women through menopause doesn’t mean slapping a pink label on an existing product or launching a one-off campaign in October.

It means investing in education. Partnering with credible experts. Building products, services and platforms that acknowledge the full biological arc of women’s lives - see Eir Woman, they're doing it brilliantly.

Brands that get this right won’t be remembered for “jumping on a trend”.

They’ll be remembered for helping define a category — at a time when women are no longer willing to be quietly underserved.

And if there’s one bet I’d confidently make in an industry full of trend hype?

Menopause isn’t going anywhere. The brands brave enough to show up properly will.