Wellness Zones, Mood Crafting and Our Growing Biophilia in the Home

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key findings

The science of mood is opening up many options for companies as it advances

Understanding chemical and activity triggers of mood fast becomes the purview of ideation and development teams; experiments and knowledge are growing. Innovation informed by the endocrine system, hormone analysis and the chemistry of feeling good has a Darwinian-level advantage in proving wellness benefits when it is time to write advertisements and packaging.

It is oversimplified to say “natural makes us happy, chemicals make us ill”…but a lot of evidence points to this

There is a wellness tension sat between various aspects of nature that is lucrative for future innovation, evidenced by where disruptions have focused so far. The naturals trend is partly about expanding greenery at home, but it is also about the experience and protection of natural light, air, water, sounds and materials – and some of these conflict with each other.

Some companies creating value in the home believe wellness will not touch them; they are mistaken

If your connection to wellness is tenuous now, that does not mean it will always be so. Wellness has zones today, but it evolves to be a “whole house” trend. Some rooms are more obviously embedded in wellness already like the kitchen, bathroom and garden, but especially the naturals aspect of this, along with passive hygiene, have implications all over the home.

For all the soft reasons to care, one concrete aspect of wellness is that it is driving growth in a declining sector

As well as being “good”, there are selfish reasons to care. Across all the products in scope, wellness variants perform better than their host sectors. This trend is strongest in emerging fast growth markets with increasingly vibrant economies. This is a way to drive growth, create differentiation, and establish premium positioning in places like Brazil, India and Indonesia.

Some parts of this topic are deep and full of import, and hold strong ethics dilemmas

Brands are trying to impact moods. Brands are also intent on ways to use AI to measure and react to moods in the home, in real time, with personalised experiences and services. There are many implications to this, not least around mental wellbeing, our comfort levels over data sharing and being monitored, but also how much power is implied by “mood control”.