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Ocado’s Shopping List Stories campaign finds emotional value in the weekly shop

Ocado, Life Delivered, UK

UK – Ocado is reframing grocery shopping as an emotional experience with Shopping List Stories, a new campaign by Uncommon Creative Studio.

Rejecting category conventions of price points and product close-ups, the OOH and print campaign draws on intimate life moments – from birthday parties and proposals to heartbreak and homesickness – positioning Ocado as a trusted delivery partner through it all.

Each ad pairs a lo-fi, nostalgic photograph with a short, emotionally charged shopping list. One execution reads simply: ‘one tin of Ocado Gold Roast Instant Coffee, zero words’, accompanied by a blurred image of a comforting handhold.

This latest iteration of the Life Delivered series signals Ocado’s ongoing effort to humanise online grocery retail by connecting with lived experience and emotional value – a key shift we explored in our New Codes of Value report.

Strategic opportunity

Earn long-term loyalty by focusing on your brand’s share of life, not just wallet – embedding into everyday rituals and emotional moments to create deeper, more meaningful connections with consumers

Foresight Friday: Alice Crossley, senior foresight analyst

Every Friday, The Future Laboratory team offers an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, senior foresight analyst Alice Crossley celebrates the Lionesses’ path to another Euros final – and the rise of the inner-city Norman.

: My stress levels have just about recovered from the Lionesses’ nail-biting UEFA Euro 2025 semi-final on Tuesday, just in time for Sunday’s final against Spain. We haven’t made it easy for ourselves, but I’ve got faith the Lionesses will see it through!

: Nineteen-year-old Michelle Agyemang might be the future of the Lionesses, but I loved this campaign from White Stuff honouring the original 1972 women’s team. Julia, Sue, Jeannie, Lynda, Maggie and Pat played England’s first ever women’s international match. Dressed by White Stuff, they share stories of what it was like playing 50 years ago.

: Not all brand campaigns are scoring, though. This Substack from Sibling Studio analyses the current sponsorship landscape in women’s sports and highlights the need for brands that ‘don’t just show up and slap a logo on something, but shape how people experience the game’. Look out for our Women’s Sports Economy microtrend, going live next week, which spotlights the female founders building a better, more creative sports industry from the ground up.

: And finally, a weekend read: Clive Martin’s latest article for VICE introduces us to ‘the Normans’ – a new inner-city Zillennial typology defined by mullets, moustaches and love of novelty t-shirts featuring anthropomorphic peanuts, pickles and pizzas. The Norman is obsessed with the following things, Martin writes: ‘bikes, beer gardens, day festivals, Turnstile, ‘chilled reds’, Confidence Man, The Bear, weekends in Marseille, Instagram chefs who use death metal typefaces, sharing-plates with orange writing on them, soft-scoop ice cream, Loyle Carner and steady-state cardio.’ Every Londoner knows a Norman – or maybe has a little Norman in them.

Nike National Federation Kits 2025: England, UK

Quote of the Week

‘If we want women’s football to shape culture in the same way men’s sport does, it needs the same level of ambition: big ideas, bold storytelling and platforms that elevate talent as individuals, not just as a team’

Sibling Studio (source: Substack)

Stat: Netflix confirms anime watching is no longer niche

Spotify Anime Hub, US

Global – More than half of Netflix’s 300m global subscribers now watch anime, according to proprietary figures shared by the streamer. In 2024 alone, anime was viewed over 1bn times on the platform, with viewership tripling between 2020 and 2025.

Hit programs such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Sakamoto Days and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners have topped Netflix’s non-English charts in multiple countries – signalling that once-niche genres are becoming mainstream cultural drivers.

Interestingly, 80-90% of Netflix members watch dubbed anime. That’s why, similarly to all Netflix originals, the latest animes launch simultaneously across the globe with dubbed audio and audio descriptions included in up to 33 languages.

Netflix’s investment in anime programming shows streaming is evolving beyond content delivery into community creation. A global phenomenon already reaching millions of fans across East Asia, the US, France and Germany, animes on Netflix are now growing in popularity in Brazil, Mexico, India, Indonesia and even across parts of Africa.

As seen in our Streaming’s Next Frontier report, streaming services such as Netflix are no longer just entertainment hubs, but global cultural engines. As subscriber churn rises, Netflix’s anime strategy offers a path forward: creating niche content that cultivates loyal, emotionally invested fandoms as an antidote to churn.

Strategic opportunity

Netflix’s 33-language dubbing strategy shows the power of hyper-localised global rollouts. Consider how to localise like a streamer by adapting products, services or campaigns into multiple languages and cultural contexts