Branding was king at the REALtalk Business Forum at Hair Festival 2025. Taking place on the morning of Sunday, June 29, a series of keynote speeches and panel discussions platformed business experts, salon leaders and marketing specialists to educate a room of salon owners and managers and challenge them to truly think about and elevate their brand.
Kicking off the day, James Needham, Co-Founder and Joint Strategy Director of Untangld, opened up the idea of redefining your brand story, using key success stories from the world of hair, beauty and beyond. James looked at your salon’s superpowers and its role in culture. “Great businesses change culture, they understand culture and shift it,” he shared.
James also outlined simple ways to map success, such as mining your customer database, running a strategy workshop and looking at your competitor set.
“Find areas that are underserved, who’s not doing this, who’s doing it poorly? I look at brands like July Luggage as an example, they basically copied a US brand by looking at all the negative feedback on that luggage, to take all of those weaknesses and make it their strength as a brand, and as a result they’re an incredible Australian success story globally,” James shared. “It’s about understanding that and where the category shows its weak points, that’s very important.”
Next, Tamara Reid, Founder of Inside Industry, took to the stage to address the idea of building and accelerating a personal brand. For any salon leader who’s ever wanted media, content and editorial opportunities, event, panel and podcast experiences and ambassadorships, this keynote speech offered insights into this space. Tamara asked attendees what they want to be known for and spoke on the importance of having clarity, credibility, consistency and community, that is what people say about you when you aren’t there, substance over style and relationships with those who support your mission over a focus on follower counts. She also explained how to define this out further into a personal brand.
“Niche down further, when you tell me you want to be an industry educator, what do you want to educate on? Whether it’s consultations, colouring, cutting, take it down a step further, you can’t just be an educator, what do you actually want to teach people and how are you different?”
The first of three panels showcased inspirational hair industry leaders, as compered by REALtalk emcee Cameron Pine, Editorial and Creative Director of INSTYLE. Oscar Cullinan, Founder of Oscar Oscar Salons, WILDE.hair, HMP BT and BeardDye, Emily Ciardiello, Chief of Everything Officer and Creative Director for Foil Me, Ali Holmes, Director and Principal Stylist of Wild Life SOGO, representing Kao, Mary Alamine, Co-Owner, Creative Director and educator for Royals Hair, representing O&M, and Ben Semple, educator from Circles of Hair, representing L’Oréal Professionnel, shared valuable insights. The panel discussed personal branding, feedback, data collection – where Oscar explained that he has the “most critical, difficult, challenging and creative stylists” test and offer feedback on his products – and core values.
“You never want anyone to say they’re not happy, but you would rather get that feedback as they’re giving you the opportunity to fix it, and any kind of feedback is good feedback,” Mary shared. “You want to continue to ensure that you’re committed to high level customer service and that you’re consistent. Every single client, even returning clients, will get a call seven days later to ensure that they were happy with their service. We send texts out as well, but phone calls are so personal.”
Throughout the panel and the day, branding based on values was a running theme.
“When people come into the salon, they feel like they’re connecting with old friends and family, when we go back to why we’re in the business and what our core values are, it’s about connection,” Ali said. “We’re in the business of connection with the by-product of good hair. We run community style events where our goal is for our clients to meet each other, I would describe us as a meeting point and community salon.”
Social media expert James Fitzgerald, Executive Director of Programming for SMK, returned to REALtalk, educating on the always-evolving medium that is social media. James spoke about what successful social media looks like today, with the reduced role of hashtags, which he described as “chronically overstated” and a lesser factor for algorithms, and the increased role of people-led, informal content. 51 per cent of speaking content on social media is the poster speaking to the camera, and most thumbnails feature a person’s face often with a tight crop.
“What we’re starting to see is a major recalibration of how we should approach these channels,” James explained. “If you’re focusing on being discovered, this is where things like copywriting and content are evolving. Always lead with people. We also have to keep in mind that a lot of the best performing content now is not particularly polished. What we’re finding, increasingly, is the more polished, branded and slick it looks, the worse it generally does. There’s this creeping informality into social media in terms of the language, tone and copy.”
CPR Hair then took to the stage, with a panel discussion on Branding and The Holistic Salon headlined by CPR Hair CEO Cass Donnelly, Creative Director of CPR Hair Natalie Chadwick and CPR National Colour Ambassador Nicole Lamers as joined by global phenomenon and renowned salon coach Tabatha Coffey, travelling from the US. As compered by Jo Cowan, National Sales Director for INSTYLE and Hair Festival, the panel talked about the Holistic Salons concept as one of alignment, community, connection and facilitating moments of excellence, from the reception desk and how the client is greeted through to the consultation, waiting area, service and beyond. Cass described the concept as conscious storytelling, love and kindness for the client, that has them educated, buying retail and becoming a walking billboard for your business, out of the salon and in recreating their look at home. It’s also about your team and yourself within that concept.
“We need to have more connection in salon with our clients, it’s not about just getting them in and out for a service, it really is about building those relationships and caring for them while they’re there, so creating safe spaces,” Nicole shared. “If you have a happy team, you have happy clients, then they return then you get more profit, it’s just that flow-on effect, what you’ll see in Holistic Salons logo is it’s an infinity circle, so it’s about that whole journey.”
For Tabatha, it’s about congruency in values and vision, as well as having human systems that support the team, the clients, the community and ourselves as leaders.
“It’s the structure that we build within our businesses that elevates our business and gives us a benchmark where we can keep elevating and growing and exceeding and lifting the bar,” she shared.
“If you are not living your values in your business, then your business won’t thrive, it has to be really aligned and centred. These are my values, this is what I stand for, this is how I show up and lead my team, this is what I imagine for my team, vision and values. When you paint that picture, the systems become the next obvious step that you need to implement to create that structure, whether it’s the client experience and services that you’re providing, the retail you’re selling and the people you align yourself with.”
A final panel hosted more of our versatile industry leaders, with Tracey Hughes, General Manager of Dermapenworld EXO Grow, Mackenzie Hayward, Founder of The Attaché Line, Nathan Yazbek, Director of Salon Yazbek, representing Kao, Nicki Ranatawake, Founder of Salon Purpose, representing O&M, and Sharlene Lee, Owner of Circles of Hair, representing L’Oréal Professionnel, sharing their branding insights from their own experience. Their versatile personal brand stories covered Nathan’s thoughts on brand alignment, Tracey’s points on starting a brand with the necessary strategy, vision and brand messaging and Nicki’s philanthropic pursuits and how she uniquely started her business during COVID.
“Everything that we do at Salon Purpose is kind, we love people, that is people in our local community, our clients, our staff and the people that we have impact over in other countries that we help support,” Nicki shared.
Mackenzie explained how she’s built her brand directly through community and relationships, while Sharlene shared the necessity of staying agile from her three decades as a salon owner.
“We leaned into our community and started reaching out to hairdressers who are working on the floor every single day, and we got our message through them. From that we created natural relationships and people wanted to promote our brand. Once they used it, they were excited to show it off, and that’s how we were able to grow in the industry by really connecting to the hairdresser on the floor and making their life easier. When they get our product, they see the value in it, they talk about it naturally, they start to take to social media, which elevates our brand,” she shared.
“To keep current right now, you have to take risks, you have to be consistent and you need to change it up all the time,” Sharlene added. “I see people in the industry who have been in the industry for so long, but they’re too scared to move with the times so they’re getting left behind. You need to look at your branding and think about what you can do differently, also you have to reach out to your team.”
Bookending the day, James Needham returned to the stage for an Interactive Planning Session, asking salon owners to really assess their reputation and the promise they make to themselves as a business in simple terms, which serves to articulate what the salon stands for, how it attracts clients and how it stands out, using this as a guiding decision-making metric. Attendees left with actionable strategies to invest in their brand as a growth platform, a point of difference and a mantra.
Investing in yourself and your business, fostering community with some of the industry’s leading voices and reassessing everything you do to stay current, relevant and impactful, that’s the beauty of branding and that’s the heart of REALtalk. See you again in 2026.
For more information visit www.hairfestival.com.au
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