The Working Well Report: Key Findings on Health, Work, and the Creator Economy
At Spoken For Agency, we spend a lot of time thinking about the intersection of health, work, and brand storytelling. The Working Well Report was born from a question we kept hearing from brands and talent alike: what does the modern relationship between people and their wellbeing actually look like, and what does it mean for how we communicate?
What follows is a summary of the report's key findings, and more importantly, what we think those findings mean for brands building campaigns in the health and wellness space in 2026.
The World of Work Has Fundamentally Changed
The pandemic didn't create the conversation about wellbeing at work, but it accelerated it by about a decade. What was once an HR talking point is now a mainstream cultural conversation. Employees are demanding more from employers. Consumers are demanding more from brands. The bar for what counts as genuine commitment to health, rather than performative wellness, has risen sharply.
Burnout, mental health, physical health, the right to disconnect, flexible working, the four-day week: these aren't fringe topics anymore. They're the subjects of mainstream journalism, government policy debate, and increasingly, boardroom strategy. Any brand operating in or adjacent to this space needs to understand the conversation they're entering.
Trust Is the Central Challenge
The report's most consistent theme is trust or the lack of it. Audiences are deeply sceptical of wellness brands that haven't earned the right to speak on health topics. They can identify marketing-speak dressed as concern. They notice when a brand's messaging doesn't match its behaviour.
This scepticism isn't cynicism. It's a reasonable response to years of wellness content that overpromised and underdelivered. The brands that are breaking through this wall of scepticism share a common trait: they work with people who have genuine expertise and authentic lived experience. They let those voices lead, rather than just attaching their brand logo to borrowed credibility.
The Founder-Creator Is Reshaping Brand Partnerships
One of the most significant findings in the Working Well Report is the emergence of a new category of brand partner: the founder-creator. These are individuals who have built businesses in the health and wellness space while simultaneously building audiences around their expertise. They are not influencers who happen to be interested in wellness. They are practitioners who have chosen to share their knowledge publicly.
The distinction matters enormously to audiences. When a qualified occupational therapist talks about workplace stress, their audience hears something different from when a lifestyle creator talks about the same subject. The content might look similar on the surface. The trust it generates is entirely different in nature and depth.
Diverse Voices Are Not Optional
The report also found significant audience dissatisfaction with the lack of diverse representation in wellness content. For many audiences, particularly Black, Asian, and multicultural communities, mainstream wellness content feels culturally disconnected, inaccessible, or explicitly exclusive.
Brands that are genuinely reaching these audiences are doing so by working with talent who authentically represent and communicate with them. Not by adding diversity to a campaign as an afterthought, but by building from a starting point of genuine representation. This isn't a moral argument, though it is that too. It's a commercial one. The wellness audiences most underserved by existing content are also the ones with the most growth potential for brands willing to show up authentically.
What This Means for Brand Campaigns in 2026
The Working Well Report points toward several clear implications for brands building health and wellness campaigns this year:
When working with talent whose expertise is genuine and verifiable, audiences will check
Centre the human story, not the product. Campaigns that lead with lived experience outperform campaigns that lead with features
Build for depth, not just reach. A smaller, highly engaged audience in your exact category is worth more than a large, diffuse one
Invest in diverse representation from the brief stage, not as a post-production addition
Measure trust and sentiment alongside impressions; they're better predictors of long-term brand health
The brands that will win in the wellness space over the next five years are not the ones that shout loudest. They're the ones who earn the right to be heard.
Download the full Working Well Report from Spoken For Agency, or book a discovery call to discuss what our findings mean for your next brand campaign.