How can cities welcome more people? In our latest issue of City Limits we share how urban life has changed to be better on inclusive and accessible spaces – and even smell better…
It’s through cities that we find meaning, and as we were putting together our 11th issue of City Limits – our ongoing exploration of the ever changing urban experience – we wanted to look at how city living is accelerating change in the very meaningful task of making places more accessible.
There’s lots of ways to talk about this, but by calling this issue Enabling Spaces, we wanted to look at what is making more people feel more welcome in cities.
Pg7 Mapping enabling citiesPg8 A blueprint for future citiesPg10 How brands action inclusion
We go to luxury shops in Miami where a Blind or low vision customer can use a smartphone to interpret what is going on, celebrate a product that silences city noise, and senior housing that connects the community rather than separates them.
The full 16 page magazine includes:
_A semiotic analysis of how to visually present better city experiences – clue: accessibility can be felt as well as seen.
_Interviews with city planning experts about how trauma and neurodiverse needs are informing urban planning.
Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these…
At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.
Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.
In chapter two: The Financial Outsiders, we heard from a community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems.
Here we dig a little deeper into this changing relationship with money and how it can inspire more emergent strategies for mass audiences.
The Financial Outsiders are a manifestation of a deeper cultural shift towards being free from wealth or economic systems that costs others. Looking at what this group gains from living and giving outside of elitist money systems can make us think differently about the way that we craft financial products and position them.
Subverting Status. As chasing down those traditional milestones of (ultra) wealth become less ‘shiny’, how do we think about new articulations of (and ways to cater to) age old social identity needs like ’status’, ‘reward’ and ‘discernment’? It’s not that this audience aren’t seeking all the good stuff that once came with splashing cash – self-gratification, community validation, recognition – but instead they’re more choiceful in how they fulfil these desires, with the act of giving (rather than receiving) hitting that sweet spot.
Values over value. You can’t put a price on happiness. Cliche, and a bit (to use a Gen Z word) ‘cringe’ – but for many this rings true more today than ever before. Rather than play by the rules of a game that’s rigged against them, young people are forging their own way of earning (figurative) wealth – by doubling down and focusing on their values, rather than their earning potential. It’s not that they don’t value work, they just don’t see work as a fair value exchange. Which poses an interesting question to us as marketers, strategists, employers – how do you define, create and communicate real ‘value’ to an audience who interprets it in a fundamentally different way?
(More) Radical Honesty. Radical honesty has been a thing for a while. Honest brands that ‘say it how it is’ connect with an iconically millennial sensibility (I’m looking at you, Ryanair, KFC & Pot Noodle ). Emerging audiences are however encouraging us to move a step further, from saying the unsaid – to doing the unexpected; supporting people and communities in ways that genuinely benefit them. What our Financial Outsiders are calling for isn’t about CSR, it’s about putting an end to gatekeeping that upholds the imbalance between the haves & have nots through creating spaces and cultivating (branded) communities that facilitate the greatest kind of wealth distribution – knowledge.
Learning about The Financial Outsiders is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.
We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.
Our editorial insight series, Club Free, meets people who don’t fit neatly into segmentation tick-boxes. Here Global Managing Director El Pigram gives some tactics for brands to meet them outside of these…
At Crowd, we believe that change presents opportunity.
Our latest editorial insights series, Club Free, is about groups seeking a new way of thinking about their individual liberty. It’s not freedom that’s unchecked or selfish: we talked to people who are providing each other with the support, empathy and community to exercise their freedom effectively.
In chapter one: The Poly-Normals, we heard from married couples, young daters, content creators and community spokespeople in the US and UK who by choosing to engage in multiple romantic relationships make room for more creativity, more sharing and more openness.
Here we dig a little deeper into this relationship energy and identify how fringe movements like polyamory can inspire more emergent strategies for mass audiences.
The Poly-Normals are a manifestation of deeper cultural shift toward more uninhibited forms of connection. These moments can help us think differently about the way we craft product, position brands and hold a mirror to modern relationships in our communications.
Purposeful Pleasure.
At the core of polyamory is a celebration of meaningful release; the idea that ‘letting go’ (of stereotype or expectation) doesn’t need to be a reckless act that compromises our values or the things we hold important.
How can we create moments or new messages that lean into conscious, deliberate joy without the underbelly of guilt, shame or judgement that often comes hand in hand with prioritising our own enjoyment.
Breaking the stalemate.
Increased understanding of intersectionality, greater social recognition of non-binary identities and a growing community of people reimagining sex and relationships. These movements don’t exist in isolation – and all point to a need for less dualistic thinking. Culture is messy, people are messy and adopting a ‘this or that’ view on how people go about life is increasingly inaccurate (and unproductive).
How can we reframe how we understand our audience, and how we craft our strategies to connect with people in ways that are less monolithic?
Unzipping our assumptions
Of course, not all relationships down the track will look like this. But it does suggest that there’s a growing schism between old and new ways of thinking. How can we help to challenge how we think about (and cater to) family and community?
Learning about The Poly-Normals is part of our commitment to look at (and be inspired by) groups of people who don’t fit neatly into tick-boxes, well trodden segmentations or traditional pathways.
We hope you find these stories interesting. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.
A bold claim, but we’re going with it. We’re taking Freedom back – celebrating manifestations of it that are about community and shared responsibility rather than purely self-interest.
This editorial insights series will share the many positive and motivating stories emerging from people getting to live their lives just how they want to live them (and therefore more brands needing to move on from squeezing people into old fashioned little boxes).
Chapter One, The Poly-Normals & Chapter Two, The Financial Outsiders
First up in Club Free, issue one, The Poly-Normals and The Financial Outsiders. The former: a set of people changing sexual relationships for the better, for all; the latter: an equally community-minded group living and giving outside of elitist money systems. Brought together: clear signals of just how far and wide our Club Free adventures can take us.
The two chapter report includes:
_Introduction to the shared culture of this new freedom: embracing community, contribution and shared responsibility
_Spotlight on what brands can learn from this
_Sharing the stories of people who are getting freedom back on track.
We hope you find these stories interesting and inspiring. And please do feel (yes) free to reach out to the Crowd DNA team to explore how this type of thinking could apply to your brand challenges.
Though this is issue one, we in fact trialled some freedom material in a rather good webinar last summer – you can download our Reframing Ageing APAC and Un-Dependents reports here and here.
Crowd Shortcuts – a quick chat about something that’s caught our attention. This week, the revaluation of bodily functions from waste to wonder…
What’s all this then? We’ve had #GutTok (over 800 million views) and posting a stool sample to a nutrition app for analysis. Now comes the next big branding of bodily functions: the drive to tap menstrual blood as a valuable health resource.
Has ‘period positivity’ come this far? Yes. Content creator wild.witchy.woman (26.9 followers on TikTok) is among the advocates for actually drinking menses for optimum well-being… Meanwhile, healthcare start-ups are capitalising on this with research into the medical value of menstrual effluence (which contains blood, vaginal secretions, cervical mucus, and endometrial cells), and demonstrating its value to a consumer.
The Q-pad for collection at qvin.comCycle Check from theblood.ioPeriod Power from wild.witchy.woman
Tell us more… Theblood (www.theblood.io) offer a kit that will give insights into individual menstrual cycles from a sample, and can be studied for conditions such as endometriosis. Founders Isabelle Guenou and Miriam Santer believe: “Menstruation can be the answer to problems and pain”. Meanwhile, Qvin™ has designed the Q-Pad (qvin.com) for the supply of a sample of menstrual blood that can be then tested for critical health information like biomarkers for diabetes.
So why is this ‘waste’ product being re-valued now? It’s time to take the female body seriously – all of it and especially the bits greeted with disgust. Healthcare services are being called out for failing to do so; from ‘medical gaslighting’ to blaming terminology (eg, ‘geriatric mother’; ‘hostile uterus’) and the so-called Gender Data Gap where treatments efficacy may only have been tested on male bodies.
It’s a long way from hiding tampons up sleeves… Absolutely. To have the option of giving a blood sample that is not only for research into overlooked health issues, but taken from a bodily process often treated with unease by medical professionals (or much worse) is empowering. As one of the participants in a Qvin™ study to assess if menstrual blood can be used to screen for cervical cancer put it: “For me, it’s just a win overall if this becomes a product because it will reduce my anxiety and will give me more control over what’s going on with the testing.”
And let’s not underestimate how this research is needed: Note, in a recent review of scientific papers, Leah Hazard finds that there are about four hundred studies on menstrual effluent compared with more than fifteen thousand for semen or sperm (Womb, published 2023).
Where else is this health empowerment happening? Plugging the data gap on hormones, individuals track their cycles – to then sync to exercise, diet, skincare, mood or productivity (and yes, bypass a visit to the docs altogether and download one of the many apps to get personalised insights). There’s more and more options like this for people to choose – and therefore control – the process of tracking their health themselves.
TL;DR: While looking at periods with wonder may have happened because people feel let down by traditional medicine, it has forced new insights, research and empowered attitudes to health. So the opposite of waste – thankfully.
Plant-based foods are now tasty to all – even avid meat-eaters. Crowd DNA’s Céline Longden-Naufal decodes how this happens by countering veganism’s sombre reputation with playful pleasure…
An avid meat eater chooses a beefless burger. A shopper picks Beyond Meat sausages with no thought to animal welfare. Or a vegan dish is ordered by someone who has no rules about what they can or can’t eat. For those who enjoy plant based not as a strict choice, or a way of life, how do these products appeal to this less rigid person?
As part of our regular cultural decode series, we analyse how La Vie (a plant-based bacon and lardon alternative product) does this by fostering a more playful and approachable attitude to plant-based diets. We look at how it engages with the flexible consumer, to “unite everyone at the same table, no matter their dietary preferences,” as La Vie co-founder Nicholas Schweitzer puts it. And how this hybrid market is being created without severing the important ties to the environmental considerations and ethics that are the historic (and still beating) heart of the veganism movement.
1. Plant-based as playful pleasure
Child-like wonder evoked by playful graphics
La Vie’s use of bright, clashing block colours to amplify the hand-drawn illustrations of anthropomorphised characters recall children’s cartoons, coding the plant-based world as bringing a child-like wonder to what has traditionally been seen as a sombre subject. This marries well with a cheeky and down-to-earth tone of voice (eg “Made from plants, not from ass!”) that suggests engagement with a grown-up audience, communicating an adult playfulness. It sparks our childhood imaginative freedom and puts it through the lens of age appropriate wit. Meanwhile, the dynamism and eccentricity of those cartoons elevates the plant-based ethos in more energetic and stimulating ways –all in all, La Vie is positioned as an uplifting and pleasurable indulgence for all ages.
2.Plant-based as light-heartedly rebellious
Making serious points in a non-serious way
While the switch to plant-based diets are usually stemmed from deep-rooted ethical, health and environmental issues, these are often fuelled by aggression and bleakness. La Vie’s use of relevant puns (eg “Bacon that doesn’t make the planet sizzle”) brings light and humour to important issues around sustainability and health. Playing with brand’s cultural stereotype to push plant-based products – like “Ze award-winning French plant-based bacon now available in Sonzburries” – also codes this space as pushing boundaries without taking itself too seriously. We often see in millennial humour used to convey realism with topics that are considered serious. Imagery of counterculture symbols (eg planet earth giving the peace sign) connotes a 1970s hippie aesthetic, coding plant-based as being an optimistic steward of the environment and ethics, rather than the bringer of doom and gloom.
3. Plant-based as approachable and flexible
Recognisable routines and cultural tropes make the innovative product feel familiar
Traditionally, vegans have been the primary focus for plant-based products where the vegan credentials of a product took priority over being a tasty. The visuals of dishes that incorporate non-vegan components (eg eggs) code plant-based lifestyles as expansive and adaptable. Imagery of full, brightly colourful dishes and glistening ingredients resemble the images we see on diner menus that are known for rich foods, and suggests that plant-based lifestyles can also be tantalising and indulgent. Meanwhile, with breakfast being an integral part of family life, utilising this uniting symbol of a comforting routine evokes approachability. And the use of familiar pop culture references (eg “On Mondays we wear pink” – from Mean Girls) and inclusive language (eg “For meat lovers and vegans”) makes this space accessible for everyone.
Plant-based brands are continuously striving for new and creative ways to entice consumers to veganism without losing their traditional customers. Introducing a whimsical playfulness and light-hearted activism rather than the historical scare-mongering tactics allows others to ease into plant-based options without eating it with a side order of guilt.
La Vie champions these shifts without compromising on indulgence and taste to transport consumers to a novel yet familiar plant-based world. It allows them to rethink their engagement with health and planet without leaving a bad taste in their mouth.
In our latest issue of City Limits – our regular exploration of changing urban experience – we look at solutions to world problems in the food business – from climate labels on menus to floating farms. One of our spotlights on sustainability is the rise of the zero-waste restaurant as not only a call to action, but an immersive experience for the diner.
Cities around the world are full of immersive dining experiences. From eating dinner in a makeshift aircraft, to sipping cocktails in the cupboard of a pawn-shop; going out for a meal is no longer just about the food. For those looking beyond standard dining experiences, meals are accompanied by a spectacle. So much so that experience fatigue has set in.
So where do you turn when all the ‘experiences’ have been had? When you’re served yet another once-in-a-lifetime theatre show while trying to eat your soup? You turn back to the real hero: the food. Forward-thinking restaurants in global cities are shunning the temptation for distracting entertainment, and letting the food become the experience again.
The reusable coffee container and the composter taking pride of place in the dining room at Nolla (photos by Nikola Tomevski)
Enter the zero-waste restaurants: establishments attempting to do away with food waste entirely. Here, the food becomes the focus as diners buy into the admirable attempt at fully sustainable dining. While the issue of waste is certainly not a recent obsession for the restaurant industry – lots of places have been experimenting with sustainability for decades – what’s new is the front and centering of the efforts, and the glamorisation that goes with it.
Silo in London, for example, is designed ‘back to front’ with the bin in mind (irony being they don’t actually have a bin, they don’t need one). All food is used in its entirety – think cured mushroom stems and yeast treacle. Any leftovers are composted and sent back to their hyperlocal suppliers. Like Silo, Helsinki’s Nolla (‘zero’ in Finnish) sends compost back into the system, but guests are welcome to take home a scoopful too – a different kind of doggy bag. It’s philosophy of ‘refuse, reduce, reuse, and only as a last resource, recycle’ is consistent, from a reusable coffee container and a composter (above) to not accepting food that comes in single use plastic.
Meanwhile, Mume in Taipei has a dedicated sourcing manager (rare in a small, Asian restaurant) with the mission to champion underrated Taiwanese ingredients and zero-waste cooking practices.
A lampshade made out of seaweed and paper waste by Tŷ Syml at Silo (@silolondon) and taking ‘zero-waste’ centre stage at Rhodora (@rhodora_wine_bar)
These places strive to avoid food leftovers, but also any scrap of rubbish. Rhodora in Brooklyn – a fully sustainable wine bar also ‘waging a war against waste’ – shreds wine boxes into compost material and donates corks to an organisation that turns them into shoes. Everything is transported on bikes. Back at Silo, plates are made from plastic bags, wall lights from crushed bottles, and ceiling fixtures from dried seaweed. This all-in approach to the zero-waste concept is what makes these restaurants a fully immersive dining experience – no gimmick-y entertainment required.
But these restaurants aren’t cheap: they’re all mid to high-end. This is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, sustainability is definitely something to be coveted, but why is the experience of it not more accessible? Secondly, could the price points actually work in sustainability’s favour? Making zero-waste dining a sexy, high-end experience brands the concept as an aspirational lifestyle. Like the Tesla car model, fancy zero-waste restaurants could, in turn, make the thought of intensive recycling more desirable – eggshell compost and all.
Saying that, it is a bit odd to glamorise something that should be an everyday activity. If people are playing at sustainability when they dine out, are they less likely to practise it at home? The very act of going out for a meal that has been beautifully prepared for you distances it – managing food waste becomes something to passively experience and admire, rather than actively do.
Either way, city diners are hungry for new, immersive experiences – and zero-waste restaurants are a welcome addition to the menu.
