LSN : Daily Signals : Drest is a shoppable luxury fashion game

Bompass & Parr’s sensory space celebrates salt

Temple of Halotherapy, Bompas & Parr

London – A new gastronomic art installation dedicated to halotherapy – salt therapy – guides visitors through the mineral's varied historical uses.

Created by multi-sensory studio Bompas & Parr in partnership with The Salters’ Company, the Temple of Halotherapy installation guides guests through a curated tasting experience, exploring everything from everyday to highly-coveted salts. The space aims to deepen visitors' knowledge about salt's political, scientific, religious and culinary history, and events that have led to its significance worldwide.

The halotherapy aspect refers to the use of salt vapours to cleanse the skin, improve respiration – a practice that has been used for centuries. Its temple setting, meanwhile, aims to evoke the sanctity of salt by encapsulating guests in a warm space, and inviting them to approach and worship at a salt altar.

As regularly explored by Bompass & Barr, sensory experiences with food are essential to building a connection with what we eat, help consumers make more conscious and sometimes sustainable decisions.

Drest is a shoppable luxury fashion game

Drest

London – The interactive fashion styling app will allow users to style and create their own content, as well as discover and shop products in a gaming context.

Bringing together content, entertainment and gamification, Drest users assume the role of a fashion stylist and are briefed with creative challenges. Players can cast their own models from a diverse line-up of avatars, and style them with products from over 100 luxury brands, including Gucci and Prada. Afterwards, users can share their creations both in-app and across social media.

‘I wanted to create a democratic and highly inventive new fashion experience that engages the Millennial and Gen Z audiences, as well as delighting and surprising existing fashion lovers and consumers,’ explains Lucy Yeomans, founder and co-CEO.

To achieve this, Drest is partnering with Gucci on a series of challenges that aim to inspire Drest users to interact with an assortment of Gucci products. A partnership with Farfetch also means the app will double as an e-commerce platform, allowing players to style and shop from a bespoke edit of Farfetch inventory.

For more on fashion’s gaming opportunity, read our Gaming Garments Market.

A hard coffee drink for busy Millennials

Chicago – La Colombe Coffee Roasters has partnered with MillerCoors to create a ready-to-drink cold brew coffee spiked with alcohol.

The drink is based on medium roast Brazilian and Columbian beans that are cold-pressed overnight before being combined with alcohol to create a conveniently-packaged 4.2% ABV beverage with 50mg of caffeine.

Available in two flavours – black or vanilla – the Hard Coffee Cold Brew promises to delicately balance sweet, bitter and chocolate notes. The drinks campaign tag-line, Rally Like A Grown-Up, is geared towards busy Millennials transitioning between activities, whether daytime brunches, work, dinner, weddings, or nighttime events.

'Millennials are constantly looking for new products to complement their active, busy lives. La Colombe Hard Cold Brew Coffee does exactly that,' comments Sofia Colucci, vice president of innovation at MillerCoors.

As third-wave coffee culture blooms in the west, brands are innovating product categories to create new, convenient experiences for today's coffee connoisseurs.

La Colombe Hard Cold Brew Coffee

Stat: The spending power of Latinx consumers skyrockets

Currently representing about 20% of the total US population, Latinx buying power is surging across the country, according to a new study by Nielsen. The La Oportunidad Latinx report forecasts that Latinx spending in the US could hit $1.9 trillion (£1.5tn, €1.7tn) by 2023 – higher than the GDP of countries like Australia, Spain or Mexico.

While much of this buying power is concentrated in the states that border Latin America, the fastest growth in Hispanic spending is happening in northern states such as Washington and North Dakota. Furthermore, this spend is likely being driven by the youth – Latinx consumers are the youngest ethnic or racial group in the country, with a median age of 28.

To see how young people around the world are spending, and approaching brands, differently to generations before them, explore our Emerging Youth Series.