The Psychedelic Renaissance: Commercialising Sensory Wellness
Mainstreaming Mental Health: Programming, Stores & Services
Beauty Brands Harness Integrative Health
Kids’ Retail: Socialising Wellness
Pioneering brands like Netflix and British department store Selfridges are responding to curiosity about the health-boosting aspects of mind-altering substances, driven by the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ (rising consumer and scientific interest in hallucinogens). New documentaries, content platforms, ‘trip’-mimicking store experiences, metaverse-hosted therapy, and psychedelia-fuelled messaging are all growing in relevance.
Pioneering brands like Netflix and British department store Selfridges are responding to curiosity about the health-boosting aspects of mind-altering substances, driven by the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ (rising consumer and scientific interest in hallucinogens). New documentaries, content platforms, ‘trip’-mimicking store experiences, metaverse-hosted therapy, and psychedelia-fuelled messaging are all growing in relevance.
Summary
The Psychedelic Renaissance: Commercialising Sensory Wellness | Pioneering brands like Netflix and British department store Selfridges are responding to curiosity about the health-boosting aspects of mind-altering substances, driven by the ‘psychedelic renaissance’ (rising consumer and scientific interest in hallucinogens). New documentaries, content platforms, ‘trip’-mimicking store experiences, metaverse-hosted therapy, and psychedelia-fuelled messaging are all growing in relevance. |
Mainstreaming Mental Health: Programming, Stores & Services | Supporting consumers’ recovery from Covid’s aftershocks, astute beauty, sports brands and art institutions – from Dutch retailer Rituals to Palais de Tokyo – are now nurturing ‘mental wealth’. Media players are producing new platforms and programming aimed at preventing mental distress, while therapy organisations are supplementing closed clinics with high-street spaces. |
Beauty Brands Harness Integrative Health | Covid-19 has supercharged the appetite for 360° medi-beauty – 74% of consumers globally want the industry to make them feel – not just look – better (Unilever, 2021). Consequently, beauty and ‘tweakment’ brands like Haeckels (UK) and Modern Age (USA) are taking a much more intensive, ‘functional’ approach to self-care, encompassing sex, sleep, ageing well and gut health. |
Kids’ Retail: Socialising Wellness | With lockdown affecting many children’s mental, physical and developmental health – and screen time rising generally – brands are assuming caregiving roles, helping kids connect in-person and online. From Lego’s laundrette playscape to Nike’s move-to-win Roblox world, the best harness their imaginations, reflecting new forms of socialised wellness. |
Projected to be worth $7tn by 2025, the global wellness market is being swiftly reshaped around consumers’ prioritisation of pleasure after pandemic sacrifices, curiosity around psychedelics, a supercharged coalescence of health and beauty, and the mainstreaming of mental wellness. We unpack the key brand strategies and narratives emerging in response, via sectors including kids, beauty, sex, sports and TV.