LSN : Daily Signals : The Summer of Ludd festival is turning anti-tech sentiment into a movement

MAD//Fest 2026: How entertainment is shaping discovery

Warburtons Bakers Street campaign, UK

UK – At the annual MAD//Fest marketing festival, which continued today in Shoreditch, London, entertainment emerged as a powerful tool for building relevance in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Using the 60th anniversary of wine brand Casillero del Diablo as a case study for how heritage brands can stay relevant, Claire Raine, head of brand marketing at VCT Europe, urged the audience to ‘resist the temptation to put all of your marketing budget into point of sale’, instead encouraging brands to develop long-term entertainment-focused strategies.

Echoing themes explored in our macrotrend report The Future of Discovery, the talk illuminated how, for heritage brands, entertainment is becoming a powerful tool for keeping legacy alive – by creating moments people want to watch, share and return to.

Elsewhere, Harriet McDonald, head of commercial partnerships at Transport for London, made the case for the transport network as a creative platform. Describing London as ‘the world’s biggest stage’, McDonald unpacked how brands can turn everyday journeys into cultural moments, pointing to activations such as Warburtons’ takeover of Baker Street station in March 2026.

In the two-day campaign to mark the bakery brand’s 150th anniversary, Morgan Freeman’s voice took over the Tannoy system with bakery-themed twists on familiar Tube announcements – asking passengers to ‘mind the bap’ and ‘stand behind the buttery yellow line’ – while the northbound Jubilee line platform was rebranded Bakers Street and its roundels transformed into giant crumpets.

The talk was a lesson in how to treat everyday environments as media channels, using entertainment, place and public platforms to keep brands discoverable.

Strategic opportunity

Use entertainment to keep brand equity culturally active. Translate heritage, place or everyday touchpoints into stories and experiences that audiences want to watch, share and return to

The Summer of Ludd festival is turning anti-tech sentiment into a movement

US – Hundreds of people gathered in Tompkins Square Park in New York at the end of June 2026 for the Summer of Ludd – a week-long festival designed to get people off their phones and into the community.

Advertised exclusively through physical posters and printed booklets (with no online presence) events included workshops on mending, shortwave radio, dating offline and resisting data centres. The organising collective, who remain anonymous, told Summer of Ludd audiences: ‘We believe that the event is the medium to enact social change, where people can meet up in physical space. When we are trying to organise online, we have Mark Zuckerberg’s eyeballs and Silicon Valley’s fingers in the sacred human interactions of our lives.’

As unpacked in our latest Communities report, The Tech-Resisters, citizens armed with knowledge of addictive design and extraction mechanics are rejecting algorithms, embracing analogue alternatives and treating friction as protection. The festival marks the fastest-growing edge of this movement entering mainstream culture.

Photography by Maks Gelatin

Strategic opportunity

As tech resistance moves from fringe to festival, brands that design for presence over engagement by building spaces, products and experiences that reward being offline will resonate with the fastest-growing counter-culture

Stat: Global UHNW population at record high as luxury spending power grows

MoneymBag$ by Mackenzie Freemire, US

Global – Altrata’s World Ultra Wealth Report 2026 reveals that the global ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) population reached a record 556,850 individuals in 2025, up 14.4% year on year, marking the fastest growth since 2017. Those with more than £22.5m ($30m, €26.3m) in wealth accounted for a fifth of all consumer-facing luxury spending, with collective wealth rising to £47.8 trillion ($63.8 trillion, €55.9 trillion).

Self-made wealth now dominates the UHNW landscape, with four-fifths of North America’s ultra-wealthy having built their fortunes independently, rising to 92% in China. About 20% of UHNW individuals globally live outside their country of birth, reflecting increasingly mobile and international wealth networks.

Women represent 12% of the segment, reaching 13% in Asia. Altrata estimates the ultra-wealthy spent £211bn ($282bn, €247bn) on luxury goods and services in 2025.

North America remains the largest UHNW market, growing 15% to reach 224,470 individuals with £19.2 trillion ($25.7 trillion, €22.5 trillion) in combined wealth, while Asia’s UHNW population increased by 15.8%, now accounting for more than a quarter of the global total. Japan and Hong Kong recorded the fastest growth among leading markets.

In The Great Wealth Transfer we explore how wealth ownership, distribution and the politics shaping cross-generational spending are changing among UHNW individuals.

Strategic opportunity

Track fast-growing UHNW cities beyond traditional luxury capitals, identifying new markets, partnerships and cultural insights before competitors establish deeper relationships