Hello curious people.
Here are this week’s headlines:
How enhanced can humanity get? Let’s explore how brands and culture fit in to the human race for enhancement.
From brain-to-voice breakthroughs to water-from-air tech and cloned polo ponies.
Spark your imagination with micro-dosing Moms, then sit back and listen to an in-depth case study on MrBeast.
Comms that are breaking category conventions across football, wellness and…insurance?!
Big Brother’s early seasons are being reappraised as unfiltered cultural artefacts that captured raw, unscripted vulnerability, offering a stark contrast to today’s polished, performative digital intimacy.
Enjoy the read,
Angelique
Enhanced Humans: How Sport is Rewriting Peak Performance
In just under a year, the Enhanced Games will launch in Las Vegas, where athletes can use performance-enhancing drugs without restriction. You might dismiss this as fringe sports, but this is when enhancement will really start to take off in the mainstream.
People are already spending big to feel superhuman, whether it's Ozempic for weight loss or personalised nootropic stacks for brain power. Enhancement in all forms is going mainstream across work, creativity, and social lives.
Why Enhancement Matters
Physical Enhancement: Making your body stronger, faster, or tougher with drugs or supplements. It's for anyone who wants to feel unstoppable.
Cognitive Enhancement: Sharpening your brain for better focus, memory, or creativity. It's about keeping up in a hectic world.
Social/Emotional Enhancement: Feeling confident or connected without the struggle. It’s about being your best self with friends.
Take the workplace for example, when jobs are getting more competitive, whether you’ve got a job or not, ‘finding your edge’ becomes more important. Perhaps you hear that your coworker's renewed energy and creativity are due to micro-dosing psychedelics; suddenly, ‘natural’ starts feeling like losing or falling behind.
The Enhanced Games aren't just about sport; they signal a world where enhanced becomes the baseline expectation. Safety and fairness are real concerns, but the pull of better performance is stronger. Let’s look at what’s already on offer...
Cognitive Optimisation
Platforms like Mind Vault are using AI to tailor nootropic blends, combining lion's mane, bacopa, citicoline, and more, to support focus, memory, and stress resilience.
Legal Doping Redefined
Tour de France teams are using Carbon Monoxide rebreathing before races to simulate altitude training, blurring legal doping lines with unregulated tech.
Superhuman Speed Amplification
Prototypes inspired by bicycle mechanics have enabled test runners to go 50% faster using spring-loaded leg exoskeletons from Vanderbilt Exos.
Mainstream Brain Hacking
Accessible trans-cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) devices are entering mainstream use, promising quick cognitive boosts despite regulatory and safety concerns.
Grey Market Enhancement
Synthetic compounds like vinpocetine are being sold as brain-enhancers despite FDA ruling it unapproved, reflecting a market driven by perceived cognitive ROI.
Neuro Social Enhancement
Sentia's GABA-powered non-alcoholic drink uses anxiety-reducing neurochemistry to mimic the calm effect of alcohol, offering a buzz, not a hangover.
The Enhanced Games are just the beginning. The question for brands isn't whether humans will be enhanced, it's whether your brand will be relevant to them. Here's some thoughts on how to be prepared...
Pick Your Lane: Enhanced, natural, or hybrid, but make it clear. Your brand’s stance shapes how consumers see you. Choose one and own it.
Solve the Tension: Many people want discretion, they don’t want to seem enhanced to others but also don’t want to fall behind.
Design for Optimisation: Consumers expect real-time feedback, personalisation, and measurable results. Build a pipeline that matches their upgraded lives.
Move Fast: Regulation is coming, but first-movers in the grey zones will set the category standards.
Want to explore further in ‘enhanced humans’?
Join Future Possible®, the world's only innovation tool that combines consumer foresights, actionable opportunities, and thousands of inspiring signals just like the ones above. It’s a sweet bundle of everything we’re seeing that gets updated weekly, so you can stay inspired and map your next moves for only £95/year.
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
Google Beam is a new AI-first video platform that converts 2D video streams into realistic 3D experiences using an array of cameras and AI.
Researchers have conceptualised a portable water dispenser that uses a ‘super sponge’ material to passively absorb humidity from the air, condensing it into clean drinking water without electricity.
Scientists have created an advanced brain-computer interface that translates a paralysed man's brain activity into synthesised speech, capturing his intended words and the natural cadence of his voice.
In polo's high-stakes elite world, legend Adolfo Cambiaso revolutionised the sport by using clones of his champion mare ‘Cuartetera’. He even fielding six identical ponies in a major tournament, but a secret sale of clones sparked a legal battle, culminating in a court order to return them.
The Cata-Lyst:
2 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
Two very different cultural phenomena, both with major impact.
Mommy Needs a Microdose
Two wellness entrepreneurs share how microdosing psychedelics has helped them navigate motherhood, trauma, and business with greater clarity, purpose, and emotional balance.
Source: Guardian / Getty Images / MRBeast / Reuters
Everyone's Studying MrBeast
400M subscribers. Multiple 9-figure businesses. A blueprint for conquering Gen Z that legacy brands are desperately trying to reverse-engineer. The Guardian unpick his past and present over 30 minutes. Enjoy.
3 Great Marketing Moves
This week we look at campaigns that are making a statement by defying category conventions…
Creating a New Legacy
Source: Famous Campaigns / Saype Artiste
Ditching the usual sponsorship approach, this celebrates all things Women’s Euros with the tournament’s best ad, no brand in sight. A stunning biodegradable artwork that sends an empowering message to every girl on the planet.
A Punk Approach to Healthcare
Source: TMRW / Campaign Brief
TMRW is a revolution in personalised healthcare, thanks to their app which uses AI to analyse over 1,700 biomarkers in real-time. Using real customers, this new campaign brings more attitude to healthcare, rejecting “artificial perfection, no more influencers doing breathwork on beige sofas.”
A Splash of Creativity
Source: Hiscox / Uncommon
In a category where most direct mail goes straight in the bin, this looks as if it’s already been there. But, it’s a very creative way for Hiscox & Uncommon to bring the problem front and centre for their consumers with high-value properties and contents insurance.
Reality Rewinds
Twenty-five years after it first aired, Big Brother’s early seasons are being reappraised not as low-brow chaos, but as raw cultural documents, offering a window into a pre-filter, pre-brand, pre-therapy world of televised intimacy.
Before Love Island’s PR-trained soundbites or TikTok’s algorithmic edits, Big Brother captured a generation learning to be themselves in real time. From the raw awkwardness of “Am I minging?” to real-life relationships blossoming (and crumbling) under 24/7 surveillance, it foreshadowed the confessional tone of today’s internet but without the polish. Now, nostalgia meets critique as younger audiences discover what uncurated vulnerability really looked like.
As the line between entertainment and authenticity blurs once again, will the future of pleasure lie in hyper-staged perfection, or something messier, stranger, and more human?
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄