The People

The New Green Giant: How Matcha Took Over The World Matcha has gone from elusive to everywhere! The Japanese tea powder was once hard to find in the UK, but now you can have it in everything from iced lattes to energy drinks, bubble tea, pancakes and mousse. A quick search for the best matcha in London on TikTok, more than 720,000 videos are brewing under hashtag #matcha. Derived from the leaves of the #Camelliasinensis plant, matcha originates in Japan and is known for its earthy, pungent taste – fans and foes reference its grassiness. The boom comes amid a general rise in the popularity of Asian culture and cuisine, from mochi rice cakes to #bubbletea and Korean corn dogs. But where matcha enters a league of its own is the remixing of a traditional ceremonial drink with new flavours and aesthetically pleasing colours. Blank Street now has 24 stores in London offering watermelon, yuzu and mango matcha. But there have also been more conversations about cultural appropriation. Is the drink being taken too far from its original form and traditions? Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/dhmckKvA Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

The Real Reason People Aren’t Having Kids A fascinating long read from Christine Emba from The Atlantic exploring the “why?” behind the so-called fertility crisis. In the US, women had 3.6 children on average but in 2023 the number was 1.62. In the UK the number is 1.7 children. Emba challenges the conventional idea that more financial support from governments will make people more likely to have children. South Korea has a fertility rate of 0.72, the lowest in the world. The country has spent more than $200 billion over the past 16 years on policies meant to boost fertility, including monthly stipends for parents, expanded parental leave, and subsidized prenatal care—yet its total fertility rate fell by 25% in that time. Surely there must be another reason why people aren’t having kids. Emba posits that young people don’t see the meaning in life and the future. The challenge then becomes how do we give young people hope for the future? And help them find meaning in life? Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/e435w4kF Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

The Olympic Stars We Didn’t Know We Needed The best way to watch the Paris Olympics International Olympic Committee – IOC is on TikTok if you want behind-the-scenes coverage. Have you heard about the chocolate muffins at the Olympic Village? And more niche subplots not covered in the official TV coverage like Yusuf Dikeç, Turkey’s nonchalant marksman who won silver in the air pistol competition. The 51-year-old went viral for looking like he had just wandered in from the streets with a baggy T-shirt, one hand in the pocket and normal glasses. Whereas fellow competitors wore specialised lenses – one to focus and the other to avoid blur – and ear protectors to avoid noise. Other subplots in the Olympics have included “Aunti Ni” the 61-year-old grandmother who won her first game in the women’s table tennis. And of course, Stephen Nedoroscik aka “Pummel Horse Guy” aka “Clark Kent of the Pummel Horse”. A reminder that beyond the high-performance, elite athletes – people are interested in real people and entertaining narratives. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/d5TCuDUr Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

🤔 Are imagination and the real world separate? 💡 Kian’s TEDxBrighton talk explores how imagination is connected to the real world, and how we can collectively imagine a better future. 👉 Click here to watch the full talk: https://lnkd.in/g7cRNn8n #TedX #Imagination #publicspeaking #innovation #tedtalk #

🤔 What is our biggest challenge? 📊 According to the World Economic Forum, the greatest challenges facing the world are climate change, war and military conflicts and global poverty and inequality. 💡 Kian’s TEDxBrighton talk explores why we have a crisis of imagination and how we can collectively imagine a better future. 👉 Click here to watch the full talk: https://lnkd.in/g7cRNn8n 📧 If you’re interested in collaborating and exchanging ideas drop us a message or email [email protected] ! #TedX #Imagination #publicspeaking #innovation #tedtalk #

The Crisis Of Leadership A couple of weeks ago, during the first US Presidential debate on CNN – viewers had to struggle with the binary choice of a 78-year-old billionaire convicted of 34 counts of falsifying evidence including a $130,000 bribe to a porn actor and an 81-year-old President incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together. The United States is the world’s largest economy and military superpower. In some ways, the American President is the leader of the Western world. After the debate, many Americans and the world at large were asking: Is this the best we can do? Now this isn’t necessarily about age only, there’s great wisdom and experience to be gained from people in their 80s (see The Elders, an initiative set by the late Nelson Mandela). The problem is a lack of exposure to the challenges facing young people and no vision for the future. More than ever, the world’s biggest problems come from poor leadership. This is why we’re on a mission to make sure young people are involved in the decision-making process. Our world needs a new generation of leaders! Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/dSrg5eh3 Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

How To Get Rich From Peeping Inside People’s Fridges Most investors read S&P500 reports, The Economist and the Financial Times for market intelligence. But not Tassos Stassopoulos, Founder of London-based investment firm Trinetra who has pioneered an unorthodox strategy: looking inside refrigerators in homes around the world to predict the future – and monetise on those insights. Whereas other investors use market data and forecasts from big consumer-products companies to deduce what people in India might purchase in the future. Stassopoulos spent days travelling around the country and asking them himself. He found the ethnographic process fascinating. The main source of insight for him is the fridge! The approach tackles some important blind spots in traditional research. First is the lack of primary research. Second, the ability to bypass the “say-do-gap” which would emerge if we only asked people questions vs actual behaviour e.g. Fridges. Lastly, the ethnographic approach looks at small data – before the information hits the mainstream – giving Strassopoulos a competitive advantage compared to other investors getting their information from the same sources. What could your version of a fridge study look like? Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gpVCsG9A Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

How False Nostalgia Inspired A Myspace-like App For Gen Z Remember how fun the internet was before all the algorithms and adverts? A new social media app, Noplace is looking to make social media fun (and more simple) again by tapping into the 2000s nostalgia for Gen-Z who are already fascinated with Y2K-era tech and aesthetics. The app was the #1 most downloaded in the app store last week. The apps description reads: “calling all NPCs, main characters, swifties, barbs, nerds, and stans” – Noplace is specifically targeted at young people who are tired of the always-on nature of social media platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. Most interestingly, the app seems to be based on Myspace, the once popular and now defunct social network. It allows users to put their top 10 friends in a list on their profile and gives users a wider array of options to customise their profiles. “I think that part of the magical, fun part of the internet is gone now,” Tiffany Zhong, founder of Noplace. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/dJdSHMF4? Do you want to read more of our hand picked stories? Subscribe now (not later) to receive our newsletter every Friday https://lnkd.in/eG5RvXdq

How can we restore our collective imagination? This is the question that Kian Bakhtiari put to us and explored with us in yesterday's You're MarketingKind gathering. He believes we have a crisis of imagination and we need to use marketing and communications to create a shared sense of language and vision to help us imagine a better future. Kian inspired us with his work at The People and gave advice for helping to breakdown the notion that the world is fixed and unbending. You can see a short clip from the session below. He suggested we: ~Nurture the beginner mindset ~Evoke the power of play ~Take people out of their usual setting to give them a new perspective Together we debated whether businesses have become more or less creative in the past 15 years. And we nominated Neil Linford-Relph for Minster of Imagination for the new (imaginary) government department. Thank you for a great session Dr Chris Arnold Lorna Westwood Gemma Butler Catherine Archer Martin Uttley Kym Hamer Martina Doherty Minter Dial and Paul Skinner

Imagination creates reality 💫 What is our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination 🤯 According to the World Economic Forum, the greatest challenges facing the world are climate change, war and military conflicts and global poverty and inequality. But I would argue these are merely symptoms of our collective inability to imagine a future different from our current reality. My TEDxBrighton talk explores why we have a crisis of imagination and how we can collectively imagine a better future. Collective imagination will inform a large body of my thinking and work moving forward. If you’re interested in collaborating and exchanging ideas drop me a message! #TedX #Imagination #publicspeaking