Missed our NOSTALGIA report and briefing? Our latest DIRTY WORD unpacks the best-in-class examples of product design, campaign storytelling and cultural strategy that meaningfully engage with the past, and reveal the psychological mechanisms that make nostalgia such a powerful tool for brands today.

We also shared our proprietary framework – Re:Brand Loop – which outlines 10 actionable strategies for brands to harness nostalgia effectively, without getting stuck in the past.

You also don’t want to miss our FORUM next Wednesday which tackles the topic of “good taste” in the age of AI with Tyler Bainbridge (Perfectly Imperfect), Günseli Yalcinkaya (ex-DAZED) and Rachel Lee (ex-DigiFairy). We'll be discussing if machines can imitate taste, does that erode its meaning – or simply expose how subjective it’s always been? And in an era where anyone (or anything) can generate style, who gets to decide what counts as “good”?

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SEEDS

Women’s football isn’t some underground subculture. It’s here and it’s mainstream – and that’s not based on a feeling. Sky Sports reported earlier this year that 80% of UK fans follow both men’s and women’s sports. So why are brands still treating the women’s game like it’s niche, a novelty – or worse, an afterthought?

Choice was once a privilege. Now it’s a trap. What psychologists in the 1970s called “overchoice” has become the baseline of modern life: an endless scroll of products, partners, playlists, posts. Children and young adults in particular aren’t lazy or indifferent – they’re paralysed. Faced with too much of everything, the brain short-circuits. Exhaustion replaces intention. We’re calling it passive attack.

In certain corners of the internet, an idea has been gaining momentum: that social media has turned everyday life into one long, rolling series of self-inflicted embarrassments. Humiliation has become the currency of our digital age. It’s not exactly a new thought, but lately it seems to be hitting the nail on the head for more and more people – that creeping feeling that humiliation, or the threat of it, has become part of how we show up online. 

In The Viral Aesthetics of Poverty, Jon Jacobsen captures how makeshift public and domestic objects – from a Yeezy Foam Runner toothbrush holder to plastic-bottle “lightbulbs” – stand out against mass-produced product design. These chimera-like objects, born from necessity, fuse unlikely materials and functions together to reignite usefulness and increase their users’ chances of survival. 

According to a new study from MIT’s Media Lab, we should all be worried about losing our linguistic edge – thanks to AI. Brands, take note – in a ChatGPT world, the occasional mistake is a refreshing reminder that real writing can be perfectly imperfect.

The irony is not lost on us, but protein is everywhere – in cereal, skincare, even toothpaste. It’s less about nourishment and more about cultural capital and status. For brands, it’s riding the same hype wave kale caught a decade ago.

Reading has always been a mostly solitary pursuit – until now. Enter reading parties. The post-Covid craving for human connection is well-documented, and in an age of algorithm-driven misinformation, paper books are enjoying a very real comeback.

As a kid, I never cared who saw my watercolours. I made them because they made me feel something. That, I think, is the part we’ve forgotten. That we can create just to create – but it takes unlearning. Maybe we've forgotten what it means to make something without the need for a response.

Cringe is still coming at me from all directions. I first wrote about how “the awkward and the profound collide to shape culture” in my Cringe = Sublime SEED back in April. Since then, a new infographic seems to appear each week. Cringe entered the cycle – or rather, cycles – and became an accepted part of the loop of cultural production and prediction. It’s no longer the end result, nor a by-product. Cringe is a stage to pass through – once, twice, maybe infinitely. 

The old ugly shielded us from contagion; the new ugly protects us from delusion. It reminds us that not everything can be sold — nor should it be. Sensorial provocation becomes a kind of numbing. The new ugly surfaces where reality is denied and emotion is flattened. It’s an alarm bell when stories become too smooth to trust. Its dissonance jolts us – the gut flinch, the brain sensing that something’s off, that we’ve slipped into another state of awareness, half-asleep. The new ugly isn’t here to scare us. It’s here to wake us up.

We asked SEED CLUB member Edmond Lau to create a series of Nostalgia Starter Packs for us. Take our quiz to find out what type of nostalgic you are.

When reality becomes this unstable, maybe the gamble is the point. It feels like we’re in the age of the Big Gamble, doesn’t it? Most literally, the online gambling boom is making headlines worldwide, with talk of it as a public health emergency in some countries. In the UK, the proportion of children engaging in problem gambling doubled in the year 2023-24.

Last night, SEED CLUB members came together at Protein Studios to discuss and swap nostalgic snacks. There were Pez dispensers, Angel Delight, Ferrero Rochers, Cherry Coke's, Mini Cheddar's and even Bananinha Paraibuna from Brazil – a sweet, sentimental spread that stirred memories as much as taste buds. Think corner shop classics meet global sweet-tooth psychogeography.

Eavesdrop on the Protein GROUP CHAT with covering the spiritual void of Labubu, the aesthetics of slop and Trump tweets as modern folklore.

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SEED CLUB is our private decentralised research community where insight journalists and cultural curators sow and grow SEEDS before they're planted out on Protein XYZ for all to see. As a member you'll have the opportunity to get commissioned to write SEEDS, collaborate with Protein AGENCY on client projects as well as connect and learn from 330+ other incredibly smart humans.