Before Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, there was MARTHA - the original influencer who revolutionized lifestyle content before "content creation" was even a term.
Over the weekend, I watched the Martha Stewart documentary, and it hit me: she literally invented the influencer playbook decades before social media existed. Think about it - Martha created aspirational content, built a lifestyle brand, and monetized personal expertise WAY before anyone else.
What Martha understood maybe before anyone else:
Personal brand is everything
People don't just want products - they want a lifestyle
Authenticity and expertise are the ultimate currency
Turning domestic skills into a multi-million-dollar empire
There were plenty of Martha Stewart magazines floating around my house growing up, and looking back now, putting two and two together, that style of photography definitely influenced the way that I saw the world and objects. My mom would see things in Living and then search for them at the antique stores and flea markets she took me and my brother to. Then, she would mimic the way it was styled in the magazine when we got back home.
While the original Living magazines discussed antique finds in Connecticut shops and then brought dupes to the aisles of Kmart to make it attainable for those who lived outside of Connecticut, the lifestyle influencers of today are showing you that you can attain the same aesthetic from your local thrift stores.
At one of the vision boarding get-togethers I went to a few years ago, I did take a completely intact 2002 Living magazine, and for some reason, it's made all of the moves I've had since then. But when I went searching for it after I watched the documentary and flipped through it while eating leftover pie, I got to a page that looked like what my Explore page on Instagram looks like right before a holiday.
And how powerful is it that page 228 of a 2002 magazine still has the same aesthetic that was so groundbreaking 22 years ago?
She wasn't just selling recipes or home decor—she was selling an entire aesthetic, a way of LIVING. Martha Stewart was doing flatlays, tutorial content, and lifestyle branding before we had filters, follower counts, or even a term to call what she was doing. She was literally the prototype and the architect for every lifestyle influencer you follow or are suggested to follow today.
From magazine spreads to TV shows and cookbooks to product lines - Martha didn't just create content; she created an entire ecosystem around her personal brand- which, when you talk to almost any younger millennial or Gen Z, is what they are trying to attain, with their podcasts, substack subscriptions, social feeds, affiliate links, and merch drops.
Talk about being ahead of her time.
The difference, however, is that Martha wanted people to get back to a time of enjoying life surrounded by pretty things and flavorful food. The lifestyle brands of today, it seems, want the world to live as they do because their way is the only way to do it correctly.
But the way the energy feels moving toward next year, at least from a marketing perspective, is that this one foundational value from the booming Living days holds true. Authenticity and expertise are the ultimate currency.
AKA storytelling.
Marketing to build an empire is truly storytelling; hell, everything that is marketing is storytelling.
In my experience of monitoring post analytics, the best-performing posts have been the ones when the business gets vulnerable and shares something real—not some "Today was the best Thanksgiving ever, my family is better than your family" type stuff.
Something where it walks the fine line of oversharing and just enough to touch on a similar experience that a scroller can also relate to.
If I have noticed anything in the last nine months of my daily life on social media, it's that people are truly beginning to see through the facade of the overstyled photo and cutesy caption and craving something real and relatable.
So, if you have been feeling uninspired lately and want to get back to the roots of personal branding, find the documentary or look through the magazines at your local thrift store or library donation table. If there's a Living there, pick it up and flip through it. Then, let me know what you think about it all.
All of this, however, has brought up my next question—is this also where our need to post only aesthetically perfect photos along with happy captions began? Blog coming soon.