Monthly Archive

May 2025

  • raw-and-toasted-blog-bollywood-day-party-bollyday-party-dj-shai-guy
    Lifestyle

    Why Everyone Is Obsessed with Day Parties Right Now

    May 29 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  Make Moves, Not Excuses! The Bollywood Day Parties & London Nightlife article just got a plot. Enter the dance your way like it’s the biggest Bollywood release ever The sun’s shining, the music is on, DJ Shai Guy Bolly Day Party (gram: @bolly.day) is bringing all the ‘Main Character Energy’ without the stars actually having to show up. No knackered wristbands. No shoddy dress code. Just a dance floor with the hottest crew, the best Bollywood beats, while you give the cocktail menu (named after all Shah Rukh Khan’s best dance routines) a massive what the hell? You…

  • raw-and-toasted-food-fashion-trend
    Fashion

    The Food Fashion Trend Is the UK’s Next Big Branding Hack – Here’s Why

    May 29 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups, Okay okay okay fashion is so hungry today I’m talking Food Fashion why your ‘Why my Insta feed is full of bows on cake’. I follow you on IG I am sure you will have a designer bag next to some perfect pasta or a girl in her new designer clothes snarfing down a donut. What is all this food fashion nonsense?! So I was mid power-through a brand deck yesterday and I needed a snack. All of you – so predictable. So I treated myself to a snack which was an avocado sandwich because, forever and always…

  • raw-and-toasted-sheerluxe-brand-partnerships
    Lifestyle

    How SheerLuxe Can Unlock Luxury Brand Collaborations at Scale

    May 27 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  Tell us more about that. (listening Sheer Luxe podcast) Just got invited to a Zoom on “The Bright Minds” (which, no lie, was so Weatherspoons 1am lounge vibe, with the tonal level to match – sigh). I was protitching a growth approach for this favourite, long-standing retail client (no naming), which was to “set up a Facebook Page”, during which I was still recovering from that call, en route home on the tube, listening to the Sheer Luxe podcast about career pivots, when it just hit different. Lifestyle, commerce & culture all rose up into an editorial tonality…

  • raw-and-toasted-chelsea-in-bloom
    Fashion - Lifestyle

    Chelsea in Bloom Is the Ultimate Influencer Magnet-Brands, Activate This!

    May 21 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  Chelsea in Bloom 2025: Where the flowers meet the future of marketing. We aim to prove to London we’re not so dull once a year before she turns back to her grey, old self. Chelsea in Bloom is here and the city’s thrust itself into the most ostentatious flowery corset so that even springtime’s half as afraid of it. And I inevitably had to explore just how much marketing brilliance could be packed into the fields of flower signage. Theme for this year’s displays: Flowers in Fashion – or, if you want it elaborately delicate, a digital wonderland…

  • bar-sales-by-raw-and-toasted-hospitality
    Lifestyle

    How to Make Your Bar the Most Profitable Part of Your Business

    May 08 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  London is at the beginning of May. Cherry blossom, pub gardens, ice matcha back in rotation, suddenly all my consultants “working remotely” from park benches in kensington gardens, old school jazzed-up-half-a-deck. Stuck in-between brand strategy calls, retail mood-boards and being unimpressed-out-loud-whispering-anna-wintour-whilst-dosing-clients-on-every-town-fashion-trends report. Last week slumped-in-between-some-virtual-soho-house-meetings-and-a-morning-on-the-field-brainstorm-of-a-pitch-deck-for-an-imaginary-mocktail-brand, a friend from spicefusion- an upmarket indian asian fusion restaurant & bar tucked on Soho’s edges- with gold lighting, hip-hop thumkas, and private dining rooms booked out for weeks told me: “We crushing it. But the bar? Empty. Walk-in traffic? Plas. I scribbled on a napkin-between-meetings: this is not just a footfall problem.…

  • Lifestyle

    2025 Met Gala Trends Every Marketing Consultant Should Be Watching Right Now

    May 06 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  Today I was in a Zoom call with a fashion-tech startup pitching to a large retailer. Mid-pitch, a message popped up on my screen from a team leader: “hold on, Diljit just shut down the Met Gala”. I was over the moon (swoon) – him, an ivory. The legacy, the symbolism, the surgical styling – all in one. But more than just red-carpet arresting, this was brand architecture. Each and every detail from turban to ceremonial sword was saying something – to anyone beyond campaign copy. As a strategic consultant to brands on their positioning using partnerships, collaborations…

  • community-first-marketing-raw-and-toasted-grad-girl-marketing-event-london
    Lifestyle

    The Secret to Long-Term Brand Love? It’s Not Paid Ads, It’s Community-First!

    May 05 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups,  That “sort of an extrovert, sort of a ‘let’s shut the world out’ introvert middle ground”? Yeah, that’s me. But to be honest, it really all sort of depends on who’s in the room, what the atmosphere is like, and whether or not I’ve had enough coffee yet today. It’s sometimes the anonymous kid in the corner with the notebook, and other days I want to grab the microphone and stand at the front. So, typical consultant: read the room, flex, analyze. When I walked into our newest Grad Girl Marketing social mixer, I had no idea what…

  • Raw and Toasted blog
    Fashion

    Denim 3.0: Levi’s Rebrand Shows How to Marry Culture with Commerce

    May 05 - By 

    Hola Sugarcups, That feeling of trying on jeans in a fitting room lit up with black lights, not knowing if you need them, want them, or capitalism is gaslighting the hell out of you: That was me. After the one-must-take-forever scroll on a pretty slow Saturday I saw her: Beyoncé. A roadside diner. A freezer that made me feel 90s Americana and 2025 all at once. Levi’s. It was a little different. And I knew right then that it wasn’t a happy accident but a strategic growth hack. It wasn’t just the jeans I was contemplating that moment. It was…