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Ministry of Sound opens a members’ club

The Ministry, London

London – The Ministry is a new members’ club and co-working space opened by the iconic British nightclub.

The club, situated in London’s Southwark, features a 70ft-long bar, recording studio, a table service restaurant, serviced meeting rooms and a 40-seater cinema. With a focus on creative professionals who would have once frequented its nearby nightclub, membership to The Ministry will be exclusively available to those working in the music, film and TV, PR, technology and fashion industries.

Following the launch of its fitness space in 2017, the Ministry of Sound has been working to both protect and develop its brand amid the reported demise of London’s club culture. According to BBC Newsbeat, nearly half of all nightclubs in the city have closed in the last 10 years. However, as these spaces disappear, members’ clubs that combine co-working with leisure, performance and social activities are growing in popularity.

A game to promote self-care

Selfcare Game, Montreal

Montreal – #SelfCare is a new game created as an antidote to the aggressive plotlines of many of today’s gaming titles.

Created by Canadian magazine editor Eve Thomas in collaboration with games studio Tru Luv – a company that strives to create ‘experimental games focused on care and characters’ – #SelfCare will launch later this year as a smartphone game, with a narrative that revolves around spending a day in bed.

While video games often focus on stressful, violent or competitive situations, the character in this game practices the ultimate act of self-care by lying in bed all day surrounded by their favourite things, such as crystals, candles and a glass of water. Rather than following a narrative, players take part in short tasks, including Tarot card readings and breathing exercises. ‘As you take care of the character in #SelfCare, perhaps you can take care of yourself a little bit too,’ reads a statement from Tru Luv.

As the number of people diagnosed with depression and anxiety rises, new types of Intelligent Games are addressing these mental health issues by providing tools for self-care.

Accenture launches a tool to fight AI bias

London – At CogX 2018, Accenture revealed a first-of-its-kind AI Fairness Tool, which allows companies and governments to check whether their AI systems treat customers fairly.

The tool explores aspects such as data assessment – where the data that feeds into the AI is checked for its potential impact on consumers – to determine whether a company’s application of AI is appropriate and unbiased. For example, if a bank is looking to integrate an AI application as a way to decide whether people qualify for a loan, they could use the Fairness Tool to ensure no customers are discriminated against because of their age, race, gender or residence.

As explored in our macrotrend Morality Recoded, the flaws of AI must be addressed by brands and businesses to ensure the data use and outputs created are not tailored to a particular gender, age range or lifestyle.

Workbays Village by ECAL and Vitra, Switzerland

Bacardi creates an interactive music video for IGTV

Live Moves, Bacardi

US – Following the launch of Instagram’s new long-form video platform IGTV, Bacardi is using co-creation to determine the type of content its followers want.

The result is a new branded music video from the rum brand, debuted on IGTV and featuring dancers Les Twins. Using the Instagram Stories polling platform, Bacardi and Les Twins asked their followers to vote on elements of the video, including its choreography, camera angles, lighting and length. Using the results of the polls, the final version of the music video was posted on Bacardi’s IGTV account.

‘We’re encouraging fans to actually choose what moves them, instead of just delivering ready-made content,’ says Laila Mignoni, director of creative excellence at Bacardi. ‘It’s a much deeper, more meaningful level of engagement that pushes fans to really think about what moves them and take control of the narrative.’

Bacardi’s use of IGTV as a tool for creating branded video content taps into a new era of marketing that goes Beyond Product Placement.

Teenagers are quickly losing interest in Facebook

According to a new survey by Pew Research Center focused on social media use among 13-to-17-year-olds in the US, the number of teenagers who use Facebook has significantly decreased in the last three years.

Driving this decline is the growth of Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, which have become the top three social platforms among teens. They also highlight Gen Z’s preference for visual-first platforms.

As we explored in the Brand Redemption microtrend, Facebook is trying to counteract negative associations by repositioning itself as a force for good in society. This follows the launch of its Messenger app for kids, which was created to build positive brand recognition among younger generations.

Thought-starter: What do consumers see in clear drinks?

Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University examines whether a lack of colour can bring success in the overcrowded drinks market.

Given the seemingly exponential growth of new beverage brands in the marketplace in recent years, drinks marketers have increasingly been turning to the unusual use of colour to make their product stand out and catch the consumer’s wandering eye.

The marketing angle certainly helps to explain the emergence of blue-hued prosecco and wine brands in recent years, such as Blumond and GïK. Other brands have started colouring vodka and gin in tones of blue and pink for much the same reason.

Some, though, have been moving in the opposite direction, bringing out clear versions of erstwhile colourful drinks: think of Clear Coffee, clear (non-alcoholic) beer, and clear Coca-Cola to name but three. Just as in the beauty aisle, such colourless products seem to be associated with purity, perhaps also with notions of being natural and, by implication, healthy.

But before brands jump on the clear drinks bandwagon, it is important to bear in mind some of the previous failures in this space – and the reasons behind them.

For more, read the full op-ed here.