We ride at Dawn for the Stardust app
I love end of year planning.
Planning for Q1 and beyond is so much joy and excitement for me. Potential? Unmatched. Results? Yet to come. Success? Inevitable. You’d typically catch me with Pinterest boards open, a slowed Sabrina Carpenter playlist on my noise cancelling headphones and tapping on my keyboard with ultra-specific goals that are 10x where I currently am.
But this year something is really pissing me off. And I’m the ideal audience for it.
The incessant content on Youtube and TikTok about rebranding and revamping your life/personality for 2025.
“10 steps to rebrand yourself 🦋” “Ultimate guide to level up in 2025” “Glow UP before the New Year”
Glow-ups are juiiiicy for me. Who doesn’t love the classic makeover montages in 00’s romcoms? And no, you don’t need to take your glasses off so everyone can realise you’re hot.
But this year I feel we collectively are…. tired?? Tired of falling for the narrative that we need to change everything about ourselves to be more likely to succeed?
Whatever it is that you need? You’ve got the foundation of it already.
Confidence online → hidden within your ‘why’.
Confidence IRL → owning your narrative.
Creativity → you’ll find it ANYWHERE other than on your phone.
Sales → in your offers, technique and relationship-skills.
I know that being spicy online is getting STALE for you because you tell me it feels that way. And the community guidelines are guidelining REALLY hard lately.
I’m excited to say no to industries that thrive on women’s insecurities and craft problems out of thin air to sell us the answers to. Instead I’m inviting in execution. Determination. Creative and critical thinking. Celebration. And my favourite word, strategy.
We Ride at Dawn for Stardust
Stardust have shared on their socials a cute (not-cute) little (not-little) problem they were made aware of this week. The iconic period tracking app with a witchy side has been sent warnings from the Google Play Store that their app is violating Sexual Content and Profanity Policy.
With this warning they were sent an evidential screenshot of the violation. Which was from the Symtpoms Library (where you can log your daily symptoms of your cycle). Lo and behold the great big profanity was ‘tender breasts’ with an accompanying basic illustration. Should be an easy fix for the app.
Did ‘Flo’ receive this same notification? What about X?
Unfortunately this is just another day in female-owned Femtech, it’s yet another day where the overlords display contempt for women’s bodies and are nitpicking the very tools that women use for their menstrual cycles. The tools that keep women independent and informed of themselves.
Read more about the disadvantages female founders in female tech startups face
“Béa Fertility, an at-home fertility kit, was told by Amazon that it couldn’t sell its products on the site if it used the words “vagina” or “vaginal canal”. The word “semen”, however, was fine.” 🙄
I’ll Eat my Hat if that’s not Alfie from Emily in Paris talking dirty to me
Today is the day Quinn announce their next celebrity collab, with allllll signs (after analysing several teaser trailers 🥵) are pointing to everyone’s collective crush Lucien Laviscount (also known as Alfie from Emily in Paris).
This is the third celebrity collab of year, Andrew Scott back in May [you can read my marketing analysis on it here], Kate Moennig in July and now this, ‘The Regent’ releasing on November 25th. And Quinn are following a familiar formula (no need to reinvent the wheel) which saw their App Store Downloads increase by 382% during the drop for Andrew Scott’s collab.
Their TikTok strategy is still spicy and playing into their Dandy seduction archetype (rebellious, dramatic and colourful) and FULL of teasing. The Quinn social media and community team are experts at their craft at this point. Encouraging guesses, throwing out red herrings (there was a consistent stream of guesses for Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey until recent days) and replying to comments as fuel for more content.
Their TikTok feed is where they get to play and experiment and get more views, and IG seems to be the place to find the real information and have more formal posts (the official teasers and trailers and posters.)