How To Sound Like A Premium Beauty Brand (Without Sounding Like a Life Coach)

If you missed it, Hunter Smith went looking for a new barber last week and found a service description that belongs on a retreat brochure. He read it out to camera, eyebrows doing most of the work, and it was the best 47 seconds of Instagram Iast week. I've rewatched it more times than I'd like my screen time report to know about.

The barber (who stays nameless, because Hunter isn't a monster) promises to use hair as a vehicle to go deeper. Over the course of your visits, they'll use casual conversation to identify your growth areas. Once the cut's done, you're invited back for a short meeting to map out your path forward. All of this for a short back and sides. It costs $150.

Your clients clocked it in seconds

Nearly 400 people piled into the comments, and they weren't copywriters. They were the exact people you want in your chair or on your treatment bed. The most-liked comment called it AI slop that nobody bothered to check. Someone asked what the Medicare rebate was for the session, and another said it was their literal nightmare.

This is the bit I want you to sit with. Your clients can't tell you what a subordinate clause is, but they can smell copy that's trying too hard from across the street. Once they smell it, they don't book. They screenshot it and send it to the group chat. Exhibit A 🤣👇🏼

The price was never the problem

A few commenters jumped in to defend the $150, and fair enough. Hair professionals deserve to be paid for their skill, and women have paid that much (and more) for a cut for decades without anyone making a reel about it.

The price isn't what went wrong. What went wrong is that the copy meant to justify the price describes a service nobody came in for, and never once mentions the one they did. There's nothing about the fade, the scissor work, or how long he'll be in the chair. It's all growth areas and paths forward, as if the haircut were an awkward side effect of the coaching.

When figuring out how to sound like a premium beauty brand goes off the rails

When you want a price to feel worth it, the instinct is to borrow words from an industry that charges more, but suddenly every facial is a ritual and every blow-dry is a journey, and nobody can tell what they're paying for.

AI makes this worse. Ask it to how to sound like a premium beauty brand, and it'll hand you a mindfulness retreat with a price list attached. It's confident and polished, but it could belong to any business on earth, which is the whole problem.

Good premium copy has one job. It lets the reader picture themself having the thing before they've booked it: the warm towel, the quiet room, walking out and catching their reflection in a shop window. Weirdly, the barber's copy nails that part. You can see it perfectly. There you are in a cape, talking through your growth areas with a man holding clippers.

Vivid? Absolutely. Confusing as hell for the bloke who thought he was booking a haircut? Also yes.

That's the sneaky version of bad copy. We all know vague copy loses bookings, but a crystal-clear picture of the wrong thing loses them faster. A confused client doesn't email to ask what you meant. They close the tab.

If you're wincing at your own treatment menu right now, drop your business name on my next Sunday Roast, and I'll take a look. Gently. Ish.

What premium sounds like

No man has ever sat in a barber's chair hoping for a journey. He wants to walk out looking like he has his life together. He'll chat if you do, he just doesn't want it on the invoice. He'd bloody love a coffee, though, provided there are 245 alternative milk options with at least 3 he can't pronounce. Afterall, this is Melbourne.

So tell him what his hundred and fifty bucks buys. A full hour in the chair, and a cut shaped around the cowlick he's hated since Year 7. Tell him it'll still look good on day twelve.

The same goes for your menu. Your client doesn't want to reconnect with her skin. She wants to know she's getting 75 minutes, extractions done properly, and that she can go back to work without anyone asking if she's had a reaction. That's what makes $180 feel worth the investment.

Premium copy isn't bigger words. It's proof that you know exactly what she's worried about and exactly what you'll do about it.

Write it the way you'd say it to him in the chair. Every one of those details is a reason to book. "Vehicle" is a reason to screenshot it and send it to the group chat.