When Branding Magic Becomes Tragic
Should “movement” brands slow down?
Applying to join The Wing in 2016 was peak aspirational pop-feminism: a women’s only co-working space that had showers and blowdryers in case your day of #girlbossing started with a sweaty Barre class. Sounds cheugy (!) but The Wing cleverly positioned itself as a coven for “women on their way.” A movement to belong to like early N.O.W. meetings, not just a women’s-only space like a Curves gym.
The fact that The Wing was small and exclusive enough to warrant an application process also signaled a premium experience: like a Soho House for younger, non-rich working women. But as the brand developed and the company expanded locations across the globe, The Wing’s marketing became less about sanctuary for freelance workers and increasingly about community, inclusivity, and opportunities for activism and education.
There were events for everything: pasta-making classes, Handmaids Tale screenings, and a “Support Circle” for anyone triggered by a recent Netflix documentary about R. Kelly. These regular events made me feel part of something deeper and more meaningful than a simple co-working space, and I RSVP’d to about zero of them. I was a pregnant freelancer working as many billable hours as I could before I’d lose my income with the birth of my son, so I was like the bad-seed rebel showing up to the reality show competition: I was not here to make friends.
I’d regularly get kicked out of the cushy Cottagecore chair that I used as a workstation at the Dumbo location so employees could set up the next fertility workshop or Mercury Retrograde Happy Hour. I’m not a thoroughbred asshole so I’d take it in stride: just because I didn’t want community from my workspace didn’t mean I begrudged it for anyone else. Plus, membership was still cheaper than anything comparable at WeWork, so having to switch seats and put on noise canceling headphones was NBD.
I often took part in member experience research for The Wing, where I learned they had at least two distinct personas they catered to: young women who were interested in forming connections, and older busier women who just wanted to be left alone on their laptops for a few hours. Both were sold on a “feminist utopia,” which, for the latter persona just meant a co-working space devoid of tech bros.
While The Wing was frantically blitzscaling, current and prospective employees were also being pitched a utopian feminist environment behind the scenes. They became disillusioned to discover The Wing was just another hospitality company like Soho House or Equinox, with the same frustrations of any other service-industry job.
Brand illusions and overpromising are probably at the core of what went wrong at The Wing, along with trying to make two competing member bases happy at the same time, and being led by a young woman CEO who was expected to be the kinder gentler version of an older and more successful male CEO.
Women-driven brands that emit a progressive feminist image are usually scrambling internally to live up to it, whereas simply being “women only” or overtly “feminine” without the rhetoric can keep brands out of trouble, even if much less cool: Did you know Curves has a male CEO who gives large donations to pro-life groups and they are still around?
The Wing’s brand promise wouldn’t have fallen apart if they kept it simple. They could have focused on one Ideal Consumer Profile (you can’t be a community center and a country club at the same time) and kept its messaging based on the utility and convenience of its spaces while still using an irreverent brand voice and an air of coolness.
If things went well, they may have scaled to reach different member bases. And with the wisdom and maturity of being a profitable business, they could have done more for actual feminist movements later on.
The flipside of being prudent and rigorously honest in your brand messaging (i.e., not setting yourself up for cancelation later) is a slightly less exciting place to work, belong to, or purchase from. (Which reminds me: Workplaces can never be utopias! Don’t ever let a startup CEO convince you otherwise.)
That’s why voice is so important in branding, because you can’t actually say much without setting yourself up for failure. It’s how you say it, as they say.
I’ve been back to the The Wing’s NYC spaces since they’ve reopened (all were closed during COVID and some shut down permanently) and while the softcore feminist veneer is still there with pink velvet sofas and phone booths named after fictional heroines like Hermione Granger and Vivian Banks, the vibe is different than the radical (albeit fraudulent) undercurrent of its heyday. There are fewer members, a new staff (some of whom follow you around the Bryant Park location like you’re gonna steal a stapler), a stripped-down mission statement, and no buzzy girl-power energy.
It’s a loss for someone obsessed with the idea of business and feminism and whether an intersection is possible or not, but the quieter rooms have been pretty good to focus on unexciting work.
