Consumers desire agency when under strain: French multinational media company Havas’s 2024 Meaningful Brands Global Report reveals that “70% of people feel the world’s going in the wrong direction, but 69% won’t let tough times keep them down”. Smart sports, scent and lifestyle brands are backing this pursuit of staying buoyant via stores, spaces and apps presenting coping aids – boosting cognitive and physical abilities, managing mood and regulating emotions. Many are underscored by sonic strategies.

Savvy brands are leveraging practices including ecosomatics (reconnecting the body with  nature through direct sensory perception) and broader salutogenic design (merging architecture, neuroscience and psychology to actively improve physical and mental health) to create wellbeing-amplifying stores. High-concept multisensory design, eco-smart landscape gardening and material innovations, like air-detoxifying paint and natural ‘spatial disinfectants’, support the shift.

A new wave of cultured sports marketing anchored in a more subversive, perfectionism-repelling and distinctly less wholesome stance is gaining ground. Conjoining pleasure and performance – stoking cult communities on the way – whether it’s brands bringing canna-culture to running (amplifying the runner’s high), subcultural zines, urban manifestos for reclaiming movement or rave culture-anchored branding, it’s fertile ground for new-gen wellbeing.  

Banishing cannabis’s stoner associations for good, switched-on brands are pioneering fresh marketing narratives hitched to the happiness found in stronger social and familial cohesion. The best brands are overhauling stereotypes concerning age and canna-personas and emphasising cultural kudos and the power of expert brand guidance.