Hello Friends,
Here are this week’s headlines:
Join us for a 48-hour guided tour of LA this September. Explore the shifts shaping what’s next in alcohol, food, cannabis, and conscious indulgence.
Is your brand helping people to swing between wildness and wellness?
Focused on optimisation of bodies, minds, and everything we consume.
Explore how we protect, stretch, and tune in to our inner states.
See how brands are going against always-on culture, and bringing their promise to life.
Burned out by the algorithm, switching off has become the ultimate flex.
PS since we’ve trained ourselves to fix problems, here’s a reminder from Angelique on LinkedIn, that the real magic happens when you create something people can’t wait to feel.
George
Exploring Festivals and The Pleasure Pendulum
Festival season is well and truly upon us, and I'm wondering if it's the ultimate microcosm of how we chase pleasure in 2025?
Whether it's one day or five days, festivals are where wildness and wellness meet head on. It used to be either/or, and if you went too big, then you would simply have to deal with the aftermath. This generation has figured out that the richest experiences come from swinging between extremes.
You don't have to choose one kind of experience. Instead, you can flow between wildness and wellness, indulging as much as you desire; the key is taking both into consideration at all times.
This is a holistic approach from a generation who grew up in a culture of ‘life hacks’, so it’s no surprise that they’re hacking how to feel good across extremes. They might do sunrise yoga, a cold plunge and a green smoothie, then start day drinking by 11am, microdosing throughout the day and rehydrating at night.
Festivals like Love Trails and Wilderness blur the line between rave and retreat, where you might enjoy a runners high in the day and an illicit one later. You can earn your euphoria, and it lands deeper because of it.
The only thing that stands in the way of pleasure are the queues or the price tag.
The Art of the Swing
One Reddit thread, "How do you party hard for 4 nights straight at Glastonbury?" captures this spirit perfectly as it reads like a recovery-informed performance manual:
"Pick your peak nights" - Know when to let go and when to recharge
"Hydrate like you mean it" - Water is strategy
"Mindset is everything" - Your joy is your fuel
"Recovery starts before the comedown" - Preparation is pleasure insurance
As one festival-goer put it: "I do not want to be dead on Monday. I want to feel like I have lived."
Festivals are just where this pendulum swings fastest. But this appetite for the full spectrum of pleasure is reshaping how people approach joy everywhere, brands that understand the full spectrum get to play in a much bigger sandbox.
Loop Earplugs
Protects your pleasure so that you can enjoy the music for longer, or simply zone out when you need to.
Puresport Supplements
A strategic partner of pleasure with a portfolio designed to help people sustain and maintain.
ON Beer
Feel real effects and get a buzz without the fear of a crash thanks to the power of plants.
Glow
Plant-based ice cream designed to nourish you, not make you feel like junk.
Grön
Cannabis-infused chocolate with varying cannabinoid ratios for sleep, daytime, and hybrid moments.
Prime Time
Low calorie beer with caffeine variants so you can manage your energy and your waistline.
Karma Water
Probiotic, energy and immunity products so you can keep feeling good pre, during and post.
WHOOP
The fitness wearable now also tracks psychedelics, so users can monitor the effects of alternative substances.
Design for the Swing
As Maya Angelou said, "You can't really know where you're going until you know where you've been."
This is the opportunity for brands, to help people transition between states, helping people move from wildness to wellness, and back again, whether they're on their way up or down.
Areas to explore:
Find your place(s) on the pendulum, tapping into the needstates between moments and guiding the audience through the shifts
Expand your portfolio by finding the most relevant transitions e.g. stack benefits to reinvigorate an existing product
Engage partners with a contrasting yet complementary offering of wildness or wellness e.g. stack experiences to help them swing
Our weekly deep dive is fuelled by our innovation tool Future Possible.
Uncover what’s next before the competition with 1,000s of inspiring signals and actionable innovation opportunities for only £95 per year.
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
Scientists have developed a test that uses epigenetic markers from a cheek swab to predict a person’s biological age and mortality risk. It opens the door to personalised longevity insights, where lifespan forecasting could one day guide everyday health decisions.
The Enhanced Games, a new competition where athletes can openly use performance-enhancing drugs, plans to launch its first event in 2025. It challenges long-standing norms in sport and could spark a wave of bio-optimised athletics built for spectacle, not regulation.
Meta has unveiled a prototype wearable that lets users type just by thinking, using neural signals detected through a headband. It’s a step toward hands-free computing that could reshape how we work, communicate, and control digital worlds.
The Airsū pod uses plant-based compounds to slow spoilage and extend product freshness, doubling shelf life without altering packaging or formulations. For food producers, it’s a low-lift innovation that reduces returns, boosts sustainability credentials, and keeps products fresher through the last mile.
The Cata-Lyst:
5 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
Never-ending Playlist
NTS’ curated Expansions mixtape is an infinite sprawling journey through astral jazz, spiritual house, and cosmic soundscapes, from Sun Ra to obscure global rarities; it's meant for dissolving time while you work, walk, or spiral.
Brian Eno Knows “What Art Does”
Brian Eno discusses his new book “What Art Does,” emphasising art’s emotional power and how it shapes human feeling. It’s a profound meditation on how creative expression affects our inner world.
A Year-Long Happiness Experiment
In a world ruled by productivity hacks and overthinking, Just Do Stuff is a refreshingly weird, behavioural-science-meets-chaos approach to life. Created by behavioural scientist Patrick Fagan, the project challenges people to run small, playful “micro-experiments” every day.
Perfect Your Sleep
A practical sleep playbook rooted in neuroscience. Dr. Andrew Huberman breaks down the exact tools, timing, and protocols to fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up sharper.
Planning for the Worst
In a world hooked on optimism, disaster management expert Professor Lucy Easthope, brings a radical kind of comfort: prepare for the worst, and everything else becomes more manageable.
5 Great Marketing Moves
Brands finding ways to help combat the ‘always-on’ culture.
Malibu x Brian Cox
As an antidote to overwork, Brian invites you to “…slam your laptop shut. Put down your tools. Grab a Piña Colada. And… CLOCK OFF!”
Nescafe Clasico Decaf
Bringing the benefit of better sleep to life for their Decaf blend, Nescafe turn the lights down on their billboards.
Stella Artois ‘A Delay Worth More’
Flipping the script on a flight delay, Stella invites you to enjoy a micro-break.
Two brands bringing their promise to life in clever ways
Cheetos Trousers
If your trousers are Cheetos cheese dust orange, nobody can tell where you’ve wiped your fingers, right?
KFC Finger Lickin’ Fork
Maintaining their brand promise with new rice bowls - but this time the fingers are in the cutlery.
The Great Log-Off
For a generation raised on the feed, the ultimate rebellion is switching off. Nearly half of young people say they wish the internet had never been invented. They’re suffering with existential fatigue caused by algorithmic noise, constant surveillance, and filtered perfection. Their desire? A hunger for realness, rawness, and rest.
Offline is the new aspiration.
How might your brand reconnect with a generation craving less screen and more scene?
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄