After attending the recent Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) NOW conference and trade show in Toronto, I came away with a fresh perspective on the evolving role of women’s health and how brands can better respond to women’s changing needs as primary household shoppers.
Across the sessions I attended, a few key themes emerged; how Canadians are approaching wellness today, how their needs are evolving, and what brands need to understand about how consumers, especially women, actually live.
1. Wellness is shifting from products to outcomes.
We often talk about consumers wanting more choice, but there’s another side to that conversation; sometimes, consumers simply want less complexity. Women are highly engaged and informed about their health and wellbeing but having more information doesn’t always make decisions easier. Format, taste, convenience, tolerability, timing, dosage, ingredients and price all determine whether a product can realistically become part of an everyday routine.
One of the biggest shifts I heard is that people aren’t necessarily shopping for ingredients, they’re shopping for what those ingredients can help them achieve. Consumers may not wake up thinking, “I need magnesium today”, they’re thinking about getting better sleep. They may not be looking for creatine because they consider themselves an athlete, they want to feel stronger. Fibre can be about digestion, but it can also be about feeling better day-to-day. Electrolytes can be about hydration, energy or recovery.
The ingredient is often just the vehicle, but the outcome has become the motivation.
2. Wellness is expanding beyond its aisle.
That shift toward outcomes also helps explain another trend in which traditional wellness categories are becoming increasingly blurred. Creatine isn’t just for athletes, electrolytes aren’t just for workouts., fibre isn’t just about digestive health, and beauty is increasingly being approached from the inside out. Consumers aren’t necessarily thinking in the categories that retailers use to organize products. Someone focused on skin health may also be thinking about nutrition. Someone focused on fitness may also be thinking about healthy aging, while someone looking for more energy may be exploring hydration, sleep, stress and supplements all at once, especially as new products continue to challenge traditional wellness formats.
The result is a more connected view of wellness, where products and categories increasingly overlap because consumers are thinking about their needs and not the aisle they belong in.
3. Women’s wellness is becoming more about life stage.
Another key theme was the shift toward more personalized approaches to women’s health. A woman’s needs can change dramatically throughout her life; fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, performance, perimenopause, and menopause can all bring different priorities, challenges and questions. I see this every day in the women around me, from my coworkers to my mom and my friends, who are each navigating a different stage of womanhood. Even within those broad life stages, no two experiences will be the same. That creates an interesting tension for wellness brands. There’s an opportunity to speak to women in a much more specific and relevant way, without reducing them to a single demographic or life stage. I particularly liked the idea of brands being able to “grow with” female consumers.
Rather than thinking about a woman as one target audience for a finite period, what happens when brands think about the relationship across multiple stages of her life?
The Shift to Wellness with a Purpose
Across these insights, wellness is becoming more personalized, convenient, experiential and purpose-driven, with the real shift moving from product to purpose. Consumers aren’t looking for more things to buy, they’re looking for solutions that help them sleep better, feel more energized, simplify their routines and improve everyday life.
How can PR unlock that opportunity?
- By building a strong narrative that can help translate functional ingredients into meaningful consumer outcomes, connecting your brand or product to the conversations, behaviours and aspirations shaping how people live, eat and feel.
- By identifying ways to connect your brand or product to emerging conversations and intersecting consumer needs that span categories and creating new reasons for consumers and media to pay attention.
- By connecting your brand to the experiences, questions and cultural conversations that matter to women at different stages of life, so that we create a more continuous, meaningful relationship that extends beyond a single campaign pulse or life stage.
Looking ahead to 2027, the opportunity for women’s wellness is clear; products need to solve real problems and deliver meaningful outcomes in ways that fit seamlessly into everyday life.
