Need to Know
17 : 12 : 21

By Abi Buller, Emily Rhodes and Lavinia Fasano

Australian gamers enjoy fictional foods in real life, The Biomimicry Institute pilots decomposable textiles and awareness grows of advertising eco-impact.

In today's news:

PlayStation takes dishes from play to plate

Trippin and Nike map out London’s cultural creatives

Decomposable fashion could hit the high street

Stat: Consumers demand greener advertising

PlayStation takes dishes from play to plate

PlayStation To Plate, Australia

Australia – Tapping into demands for phygital gaming experiences, the gaming brand is working with Australian restaurants and delivery platform Deliveroo to bring virtual dishes to life. Focusing on games such as Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank, the PlayStation to Plate campaign features restaurants Mary’s, The Italian Bowl and Bistro Morga recreating in-game foods as edible menu items.

The campaign by creative experience agency Amplify recognises the opportunity to promote food and drink in association with popular media and entertainment platforms. ‘By surfacing the attention to detail that goes into even the incidental food found in gaming universes, we hope to give new audiences a flavour of the rich, immersive worlds and stories, found only on PlayStation,’ says Tim Baggott, creative director at Amplify.

In an age when much of our social interaction and cultural experience exists in online spaces, PlayStation is tapping into Media Kitchens, bringing fictional or digital foods into real-life existence.

Strategic opportunity

For food brands, restaurants and retailers, gaming spaces not only offer novel marketing opportunities but ways to entice and engage audiences who can spend hours in-game

Trippin and Nike map out London’s cultural creatives

Trippin and Nike’s A–Z of London’s Future, UK

London – As we near the end of 2021, sportswear behemoth Nike and Generation Z travel platform Trippin have teamed up to spotlight the people and places that help make London the cultural capital it’s famed to be. Paying homage to 26 change-makers across the city, their alternative A–Z map recognises the shifting priorities and interests of young travellers.

Plotting London must-sees ranging from local eateries to community centres and young creatives, the list shows how a city's people – just as much as its landmarks – are essential to its fabric and personality. Championing human-centric initiatives such as Brixton Soup Kitchen and Football Beyond Borders, the alphabetical guide aligns itself with a new generation looking to travel more consciously and thoughtfully.

In this way, Trippin and Nike are offering audiences a fresh take on urban tourism, encouraging people out to London's suburbs. To better understand the Generation Z Anti-Tourists who are changing travel, read our interview with Trippin co-founder Sam Blenkinsopp on LS:N Global.

Strategic opportunity

Travel companies can create compelling content about unexpected locations. Why not take a local approach and create maps, guides or podcasts spotlighting destinations loved by city residents?

Decomposable fashion could hit the high street

US – Non-profit organisation The Biomimcry Institute is exploring how decomposition technologies could create bio-positive fabrics for use by high street fashion brands.

Seeking to establish a number of commercially ready materials that can be used in fashion production, its studies will convert wasted textiles into bio-compatible raw materials. Taking place over two years, the initiative will explore more than 130 decomposition technologies for textiles, including bacterial, enzymatic and anaerobic digestive processes.

Highlighting the solutions it hopes to offer, Beth Rattner, executive director for The Biomimicry Institute, asks: 'How do we get fashion to operate as an eco-system [like] the adaptive cycle that nature follows, which is primary production, consumption and decomposition?'

Existing materials in this space include wool and mycelium, also known as mushroom leather. By developing such bio-positive solutions and decomposition processes, The Biomimicry Institute hopes to offer an alternative to the fashion industry's reliance on recycling or reselling.

Algae dress by Scarlett Yang, UK

Strategic opportunity

Fashion and textiles companies should expand their sustainability strategies to include such bio-positive innovation. Work with material experts to develop fabric solutions that will break down to benefit natural environments

Stat: Consumers demand greener advertising

Empire of Signs by POR Studio, Spain

From its use of paper and energy to brand messaging, there is mounting pressure on the advertising industry to adopt more sustainable practices. According to recent research conducted by Microsoft and Dentsu, by 2026 some 77% of global consumers will only want to shop from brands that exercise green advertising.

With 91% of those surveyed stating that they want brands to explicitly demonstrate planet-positive choices in their ads, companies that fail to adhere to new sustainability standards risk facing a consumer backlash. To make brands greener, 42% of respondents said that companies should provide clear and transparent information about the environmental footprint of their products and advertising campaigns.

As new generations demand climate action from big corporations, the report suggests that brands should ‘collect and communicate credible, verifiable data on the true environmental impact of their media buys and ads to their consumers’. To learn more about how to implement greener communication strategies, companies can consult our Civic Brands macrotrend.