👋 Hello curious minds,
Here are this week’s headlines:
Beers without booze, coffee without beans… subtraction is everywhere. But real breakthroughs happen when we create something we never knew we wanted.
Brains as controllers, cloaks of invisibility, cameras that film light in motion, and Google in your head - welcome to tomorrow, today!
From mind-bending science to reality-flipping philosophy, these picks explore the strange, surprising ways we make sense of the world.
From giant timers to fashion egg hunts, these campaigns blur the line between spectacle and experience. Each one is bold, physical, and impossible to scroll past.
The Anti-AI Revolution Gets Real New Yorkers turned a million-dollar AI necklace campaign into protest art, and the CEO admits he planned it.
Hope this sparks a thought (or two) for you! And as always… let me know what you think 💌 [email protected].
Angelique
The Future of ‘Better for You’
I think Guinness has done something borderline genius with their 0.0 non-alcohol stout.
It took them years of countless iterations, and millions in investment to engineer the impossible: a pint that tastes like Guinness without the alcohol.
It's genuinely impressive.
But their triumph makes me wonder…
Are we becoming so obsessed with perfecting the art of subtraction, that we’re completely ignoring the magic of addition?
The Substitution Economy
When I look around, everything is becoming "without" something:
Meat & milk without cows
Coffee without beans
Nicotine without smoke
Hookups without contact (hello, metaverse)
We're building an entire economy based on absence. A world of things pretending to be other things. And we're getting scary good at it.
Tesla makes their electric cars artificially rumble because we miss the engine sound.
Impossible Burgers bleed because we need the theatre of meat.
But what if we stopped trying to recreate the past and started creating the future?
The Creation Opportunity
While everyone's perfecting substitution, Ben Branson (who sold Seedlip to Diageo) was always playing a different game.
He never set out to make a ‘gin without alcohol’. He had his eye on creating something that didn't exist, distilled botanicals inspired by 17th-century herbal remedies (and his lifelong love of foraging).
Seedlip succeeded because it wasn't trying to be a substitute. And now through Pollen Projects (his next venture) he's exploring the 99.7% of plants the drinks industry ignores and obsessing over creating new occasions rather than replacing existing ones.
That's the difference between solving for what was and solving for what might be.
The New Pleasure Codes
I don’t think humans actually want replicas. I think they want permission. Permission to feel sophisticated. Permission to feel indulgent. Permission to feel part of the ritual.
If we keep focusing on perfecting ‘better for you’ replicas, we'll miss the real opportunity: creating entirely new rituals that need no permission at all.
One of my favourite examples of this is Kin Euphorics. They never tried to be "cocktails without alcohol."
They invented feel-good revelry for any time of day.
(Something alcohol could never own).
And created a completely new category where Ayurvedic wisdom meets cognitive stimulation meets modern social culture to become deliciously enchanting (with adaptogens, nootropics and botanicals) during new moments throughout the day.
Going forward, I see two paths in ‘better for you’ innovation:
The Subtraction Strategy
Start with what exists → Strip out the “bad” → Perfect the replica → Compete on similarity → Differentiate through brand
Outcome: A shinier version of yesterday.
Think: burgers that bleed beet juice, cars that fake an engine growl, beers that taste like the pub but behave like sparkling water. Necessary, sure. But nostalgia on life support.
The Addition Strategy
Start with human desire → Layer in new benefits → Create fresh rituals → Own new occasions
Outcome: A category no one else can touch.
Think: Seedlip inventing a new social ritual from forgotten botanicals. Kin Euphorics blending Ayurveda with nightclubs.
Entirely new codes for entirely new cravings.
And if Guinness turned its 0.0 genius towards addition? We might be sipping a malted ice cream stout laced with nitro fizz. A nightcap dessert that gives you the theatre of Guinness in an entirely new form.
Substitution is the dress rehearsal. Addition is opening night.
And the boldest brands? They won’t compete on “without.” They’ll own the stage with something we never even thought to want.
Want More?
This week’s deep dive was inspired by my talk at the Just Drinks Non-Alc Innovation conference. If you’d like a copy of my presentation, reply to this email and I’ll send it your way.
Wait, What?!: Sci-fi Tech Hitting the Real World
Perri Karyal has rigged an EEG headset to translate her brainwaves into game controls, playing games hands-free. It’s not flawless yet, but when your thoughts become your joystick, you know you're in control!
China’s new ‘metamaterials’ can bend radar waves, making drones vanish mid-air. Today it’s stealth tech, but the future? Think Harry Potter cloaks you can actually wear.
MIT’s trillion-fps camera captures light itself, slowing beams as they crawl across a room. Watching this isn’t just seeing the world, it’s glimpsing the code that runs it.
MIT’s AlterEgo headset turns silent questions into searches, then whispers answers back through your skull. No typing, no speaking, just Google in your head. Suddenly, your inner voice is online.
The Cata-Lyst:
3 Mind-Expanding Finds We’re Tuning Into
The world doesn’t make sense at the best of times, but these three gems remind us that curiosity might be the best compass we’ve got.
Cultural Capital / Substack
The End of Reading as We Know It
In this provocative Substack piece, Jonathan Marriott explores the rise of the “post-literate era”, where reading and writing are no longer our default modes of learning or expression. As voice, visuals, and symbolic media take centre stage, literacy isn’t disappearing, but evolving.
Joe McCormick / Robert Lamb
Where the Weirdest Ideas Win
In this episode of Stuff To Blow Your Mind, the hosts unpack their favourite winners from the 2025 Ig Nobel Prizes, science’s most delightfully absurd awards. These studies might sound silly (lizards eating pizza? Cowabunga dude!). But they scratch at the strange, overlooked edges of how the world works. As the team behind the prizes say, they’re all about research that makes you laugh, then think.
Mind Matters
This Might Expand Your Mind Too Much (It Did Mine)
In this fascinating conversation between a neurosurgeon and a philosopher, they explore the idea that consciousness isn’t something your brain produces, it might be the thing that creates everything else. It’s a deep dive into a theory called idealism, which flips how we think about reality itself. Challenging? Yes. But it opens up wild new ways of thinking about who we are and how the world works.
4 Great Marketing Moves
In a world ruled by screens, these campaigns remind us that real world experiences still make the biggest impact.
The Golden Flake Tavern
Greggs opened its first-ever pub inside Fenwick’s department store in Newcastle, serving stout, cocktails and pub twists on bakery classics (think steak-bake mixed grill). It’s a great move for a brand that crams people into a rushed frenzy to get their grab and go baked goods.
The Whole Picture
The Guardian delivers an interactive streetside intro to the publisher’s first US brand push. Their bold NYC billboards feature lines censored with black tape to highlight how “news in America can’t publish the whole picture.” Passers-by could peel away the tape to reveal The Whole Picture.
The 3-Minute Timer
The British Heart Foundation installed a giant 3D sand timer on London’s Southbank, counting down in real time to show a stark stat: someone in the UK dies from cardiovascular disease every three minutes.
The Citywide Egg Hunt
Diesel swapped the runway for Milan’s streets, placing models inside transparent eggs at 18 public spots across the city. The result: a Fashion Week treasure hunt that got people to leave the runways to experience where fashion actually matters.
AI Friend or Foe?
Photo: @normie_egirl
AI backlash continues to gain momentum, with New Yorkers turning Friend's million-dollar subway campaign into ground zero for resistance. The AI necklace ads have become canvases for collective outrage: "Stop profiting off loneliness." "Go make real friends."
The interesting part? The CEO admits he was rage-baiting the city and left the white space on the ads so people deface them.
Hmmmm…?
Is this clickbait as strategy in print? Have we reached peak attention economy where a million-dollar vandalism invitation counts as "earned media"? When your brand strategy is literally "make them hate us," you're not disrupting loneliness. You're just lonely for attention.
See you next week 🔮 👽 🎩 🪄