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Monki highlights the effects of social media on mental health

All the Feels by Monki, Sweden

Sweden – The H&M Group’s youth-focused fashion brand has launched a campaign to draw attention to the positive and negative sides of social media.

The campaign, All The Feels, features video interviews with three social media influencers who double as mental health advocates. Emily Bador talks about her role in the body positivity movement, John Yuyi discusses how her online persona is juxtaposed with her real identity, and Elyse Fox shares her story on building her collective Sad Girls Club.

The brand also released a capsule collection of nine items that encourage women to express their emotions on their clothing. The range of accessories and clothing comes with contrasting slogans such as ‘bad day’ and ‘good day’, which can be added or removed with Velcro depending on the wearer’s mood.

While social media’s damaging impact on young people is a hot topic, the positive effects are less documented. For more on how Generation Z are taking control of their emotions, book one of our in-house presentations.

Zip by Premier Inn is a stripped-back budget hotel

Zip by Premier Inn, UK

UK – The new hotel concept will offer travellers compact rooms for ultra-low prices.

The rooms were designed by PriestmanGoode, an agency with experience designing for compact spaces such as airline and train cabins. Adhering to the motto ‘basics done brilliantly’, the rooms offer a choice of bed sizes, an en suite bathroom with a power shower, a digital screen, television and free wifi. With stripped-back facilities, Premier Inn hopes to encourage guests to use the communal spaces.

Zip by Premier Inn will be located on the outskirts of UK towns and cities, with the first 138-room hotel opening in Cardiff in early 2019. The rooms, which will be less than half the size of a standard Premier Inn room, will start at just £19 ($25, €22) a night.

As travellers spend more time outside their hotel room, hospitality brands are redesigning their facilities to focus on the basics. To see how this has infiltrated the luxury sector, see our microtrend Stripped-back Hospitality.

China wants to illuminate its streets with artificial moons

Photography by Alexander Andrews

Chengdu – Artificial moons could light the skies of the southwestern city of Chengdu by 2020, eliminating the need for street lights.

A proposal by the Tian Fu New Area Science Society plans to launch an ‘illumination satellite’ that would orbit above the city and shine eight times brighter than the moon. The society’s leader, Wu Chunfeng, also plans to launch three more satellites by 2022, which could replace street lights in urban areas.

Chunfeng says the satellite will orbit about 300 miles above the city and use a mirror-like coating to reflect sunlight down to Earth. The project aims to cut down on costly street lights, which would save the city an estimated £133m (Rmb1.2bn, $174m, €152m) each year.

Our cities are getting smarter. To discover the impact technology will have on our urban environments, explore our Smart Cities vertical.

This campaign invites people to meet their shoes

Meet Your Shoes by Allbirds, US

US – A campaign by material innovation brand Allbirds honours its classic line of shoes, which are created from natural materials such as wool and eucalyptus tree fibre.

One of the Meet Your Shoes video ads follows a man who abandons his haircut to get on a plane and meet his shoes, which turns out to be a sheared sheep. An online portal allows customers to get involved by entering a product code. They are then directed to a live feed of a sheep or tree in their natural environment.

One of the pioneers of the rapidly growing Synthetic Leather Market, Allbirds prides itself on creating sustainable, all-natural footwear, which includes the Wool Runners, created from Merino wool, and Tree Runners, sourced from FSC-certified eucalyptus trees.

In a world where consumers are questioning the source of their products, Allbirds shows how brands can demonstrate the transparency of their supply chain in a humorous way.

Stat: Tv advertising is most influential for Generation X

Generation X, those aged between 38 and 53, are still buying products they see advertised on television, according to a recent poll by YouGov and MarketingCharts. Almost a quarter (23.5%) of respondents made a purchase influenced by tv advertising in the past six months, making it more influential than personal recommendations (22.5%), consumer reviews (19.6%) and online video ads (8.3%).

The results demonstrate the importance of traditional tv advertising in a marketing landscape where brands are increasingly producing campaigns exclusively for digital channels. Companies that want to harness the purchasing power of this forgotten demographic should reconsider how they use this medium.

Thought-starter: What’s next for the indie beauty market?

Ayuna,

From cyclical-based beauty to brands celebrating their ethical credentials, creative researcher Jessica Smith rounds up the top independent brands on display at London's first Indie Beauty Expo.

Gallinée a brand renowned for harnessing microbiotic beauty, presented a new face vinegar that contains hibiscus vinegar, known for its astringent, exfoliating and soothing properties. As consumers’ knowledge of their microbiome grows, more beauty products are catering for the balance of the skin’s bacteria.

Cosmeceutical skincare brand One Skin takes a cyclical approach to skincare, creating personalised skincare prescriptions to meet the needs of individuals’ skin at different times. With a range of skin programmes that target environmental and lifestyle factors such as stress, partying, living in a city, age or sun damage, the brand seeks to educate consumers about how to understand their skincare needs based on their lifestyle not their skin type.

In an effort to disrupt the oral care market, Lebon launched an organic mouthwash at the show in a bid to protect, neutralise and prevent the build-up of plaque in a more natural but effective way.

Read the full round-up here.