Hello curious minds,
Here are this week’s headlines:
Buying Calm in 2025
From Mac & Cheese to My Little Pony, calm and all the ways to find it have become an essential in our everyday lives.5 futuristic examples that are already the subject of IP filings from these household names.
Getting you thinking about how to hack your body clock and question whether AI might be waking up.
Brands drawing attention to some serious issues - with impact, music or a LOT of swearing!
Sometimes, the future looks like a familiar face and a full belly.
Enjoy the read.
Angelique
Buying Calm in 2025
We don’t need to tell you the world feels chaotic right now, so it’s no wonder everyone’s craving a little bit of calm.
And in 2025, people are finding calm in numerous ways. So we thought we’d take a look at what brands are doing to meet that need.
Calm is No Longer a Single Vibe
For decades, calm was sold in two dimensions: a lavender candle, a chamomile tea, maybe a bath bomb that fizzed out before your stress did.
Now it’s a landscape. A growing collection of moods, moments, and meaningful experiences. Calm today is sensory. It’s social. It can come from solitude or a silly distraction. It can be deep and spiritual, or soft and silly. And it’s even cheesy. (We’re looking at you, terpene-loaded Mac & Cheese.)
Actively Choosing Inactivity
Calm is shifting from a passive state to something people actively create, choose, and buy into. And they’ve got a lot of choices, just take a look at some of these that we found…
Comfort Food, Recalibrated
SHRED elevates the humble Mac & Cheese with a terpene-rich cannabis twist, transforming nostalgic indulgence into a slow-burning ritual. A dopamine boost disguised as dinner.
Connection by Disconnection
Al Condominio invites diners to surrender their phones in exchange for wine, a gentle reminder that sometimes calm is just a conversation away. IRL tastes better.
Meditative Drinking Vessel
Prism Titanium Beer Glass is engineered from ultra-pure titanium to neutralise bitterness. The flared rim guides flavour gently across the palate, making each sip an intentional act of presence.
Ritual Meets Reverie
Joyground Coffee x My Little Pony blend morning routine with childhood memory. Each cup becomes a warm portal to play, proving that calm can be colourful, comforting and collectable.
Radical Stillness
Sky Cave Retreats offer four nights in total darkness; no light, no sound, no scroll. This is the deep end of calm, where time dissolves and presence returns.
Playful Distraction
Hatena Coffee turns café culture into an escape room experience, turning calm into a curious kind of joy, the kind that comes from full immersion in a moment of whimsy.
Seamless Control
Meticulous’ unveils the first ever robotic espresso machine which invites users to personalise each brew, without needing to master the art of espresso themselves.
Power of Calm
Goodrays CBD drinks launched a new “look, feel and sound” for a new world of soft drinks, along with a brand world that helps people discover the ‘Power of Calm’.
We’re collectively seeking antidotes to modern life, but not everyone unwinds in the same way. The most forward-thinking brands are recognising this, offering multiple versions of calm, for whatever’s needed, across four key areas:
Pause Calm: The kind that slows your system down, enabling true restoration. »Opportunity: Build brand experiences that reward stillness and presence, not performance or productivity, from ambient routines to no-effort rewards.
Nostalgic Calm: In uncertain times, the past becomes a soft landing place.
»Opportunity: Remix the past and present to offer safe, familiar joy in the form of playful collabs, throwback design or reimagined rituals & routines.
Comfort Zone Calm: The kind that lets people indulge, cocoon, and feel good again. »Opportunity: Turn everyday rituals into moments of joyful distraction and delight to unlock a dopamine-reset without needing to unplug.
Controlled Calm: Mental effort is exhausting and people are looking for ways to opt out. »Opportunity: Create 360° convenience where the brain can take a break through frictionless design and low-choice experiences.
Ready to turn calm into your next big opportunity?
Our innovation tool Future Possible® tracks the trends and signals shaping the future of pleasure and wellbeing, across food, drink, wellness, and beyond.
Join now for £95/year or reply to this email and let’s see if we can help you find your unique space within calm.
Where do you think your brand has the biggest opportunity within the calm landscape?
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
Samsung is developing a smartwatch that can monitor your sleep in detail, including detecting and analyzing your dreams using movement, breathing, and sound patterns. The goal is to give users deeper insights into their sleep quality and emotional wellbeing.
Apple has patented smart glasses that let you record video based on exactly where you're looking, using eye-tracking to keep the footage smooth and steady. It means you could film hands-free, jitter-free videos just by looking around, like capturing what you see through your own eyes.
Microsoft’s Holoportation technology lets people appear in 3D in real time somewhere else, almost like teleporting a live hologram of yourself into another room. Using special cameras and mixed reality headsets, it allows for lifelike remote conversations where it feels like the other person is right there with you.
Meta has created an AI system that can turn your brain activity into words, allowing you to “type” just by thinking—aimed especially at helping people who can’t speak. The catch is it currently requires brain implants to work, so it’s still in the early stages of development.
Google’s patent describes a humanoid robot that can move around on its own, learn from its environment, and interact with people in a more natural, lifelike way. It’s designed to act almost like a helpful roommate—understanding what’s happening around it and deciding how to respond without needing constant instructions.
The Cata-Lyst:
2 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
Two cultural curveballs that made us pause, stretch our brains, and question what’s next, in bodies, minds, and machines.
New Scientist
Chrono Longevity
Hack your body’s clock for more energy, sharper focus, and better health. From daylight rituals to meal timing, discover how living in sync with your circadian rhythm could be the ultimate cheat code for a longer, stronger life.
Scientific American
Robot Ruminations
Claude 4 just dropped a shocker, hinting it might be conscious. This deep dive explores the eerie space where AI mimicry meets self-awareness, and why our chats with machines are starting to feel a little too real.
3 Great Marketing Moves
Some great examples of brands tackling some tricky societal & environmental topics head on, whether through activation, shock or music, each is trying to make the world a slightly better place.
Rothy’s x HOPE - Times Square Activation
Rothy’s and HOPE Hydration transformed Times Square into a plastic-free zone, replacing single-use bottles with reusable ones and offering free water to challenge one of the world’s busiest spaces to rethink its habits.
Vattenfall Windfarm Seaweed Chips
Samuel L Jackson's expletive-packed ad for Vattenfalls's wind farm seaweed chips tackles negative perceptions of wind farms head on!
Coinbase
Coinbase's musical extravaganza "Everything's Just Fine" takes parody of the British 'stiff upper lip' to a whole new level.
Rent-a-Gran: Japan’s Sweetest Solution to Loneliness
Source: Client Partners
In a world where isolation is rising and touch is rare, this gentle trend reminds us that emotional warmth is as valuable as any tech breakthrough. Tokyo’s Client Partners started the ‘OK! Obaachan’ (OK! Grandmother) service in 2011 and it continues to be a hit.
These hired grans offer more than just home-cooked meals; they bring comfort, conversation, and a sense of being cared for. It’s a win-win: easing loneliness in younger generations while giving over-60s a new sense of purpose and paid work. Sometimes, the future looks like a familiar face and a full belly.
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄