Article

Comment

Re-enchanting

Weirdness

2 August 2023

4 min read

The age of re-enchantment and how brands will exploit it

One of the world's largest advertising agencies has released a report on 're-enchantment', Daniel Kim predicts a not-too-distant future when brands will exploit and commodify spiritual hunger.

Daniel Kim

Daniel is an advertising strategist turned vicar-in-training.

Last month, Wunderman Thompson published a new insight report called The age of re-enchantment. I was giddy to get into it, not least because Seen & Unseen has a podcast called 'Re-Enchanting' (which you should listen to by the way).

For the uninitiated, Wunderman Thompson is a 20,000 person-strong global advertising agency who literally invented the term ‘marketing’ back in 1961. With clients like Heinz Ketchup, Burger King, Bose, HSBC, KitKat and countless other ubiquitous brands, they are a culture-shaping juggernaut. They’re no joke.

Like all Wunderman reports, The age of re-enchantment is meticulously researched, beautifully presented, and written with finesse, coining terms left, right and centre like 'joy-deficit' and 'sensory techtopias'. It had me nodding along from the get-go.

'Re-enchantment is fulfilling a craving for feelings of wonder and awe, an appetite for joy and fun, and an openness to thrills and adventures'.

Yes.

The top two emotions that people want more of in their lives are ‘joy’ and ‘hope’.

Yes, yes!

'We live in a rational, explained world, and one in which we are harried and anxious, with little time to pause and pursue these sensations'.

Yes, yes, yes!

But then, as I read on, my warm glee turned into abject horror.

In the introduction of the report, Marie Stafford, the Global Director of Wunderman Thompson wrote:

'It’s time to remake the world through the lens of re-enchantment, where the new brand metrics are jaw drops, heart swells, and goosebumps. Brands can help people transcend tough times and jolt them from long-standing malaise by celebrating the thrilling and uplifting, the awe-inspiring, and the magical'

In other words, the market has recognised this profound existential hunger in culture at large, and will now try and extract capital value from you.

A couple months ago, I wrote a piece on the dangers of selling spirituality and wellness, and how it had become a $3.7 trillion dollar industry, warning that 'we can’t let our spiritual hunger be commodified for profit'. Well, get ready folks. Here comes the re-enchanting brands here to do just that.

The middle bulk of the report parades a line-up of case-studies that have leant into the ‘age of re-enchantment’.

Some brands, like Levi Strauss, were leaning into themes of mortality and death in the post-pandemic period, such as in the 2023 Campaign, 'Greatest Story Ever Worn: Legends never Die'. This ad dramatises the true story of a man who requested all his loved ones to wear Levi’s to his funeral.

The Greatest Story Ever Worn: Legends Never Die, 2023

Others were leaning into the desire for transcendence, trying to (legally) replicate spiritual and psychedelic experiences. Of note was a new VR experience called Isness-D developed to deliver a transcendent experience that replicates spiritual and near-death experiences. Apparently, this VR product has similar effects to a medium dose of LSD.

Product demonstration of Isness-D.

The report also recommended that brands tap into the ‘Joyconomy’. Yup, you read that right. That means ‘advocating for moments of joy, play and fun’ because that can be a ‘powerful strategy for brands to uplift and engage customers’. After all, 49 per cent of people say that they would be even more likely to purchase from a brand that brings them a sense of joy. In fact, the CEO of Daybreak, a fitness-and-dance company, even said that one of the core KPIs for her business is ‘tears of joy’. …

Look, I’m sure they mean well, but quite frankly, I don’t want to be part of a world where tears of joy(!) are considered key performance indicators for brands. Tears of joy are for weddings, reunions, or the end of a national war. Not a market transaction! Similarly, I find something bizarrely distasteful about a mortality-themed brand activation. ‘Yes, embrace your mortality and stare into the void, but don’t forget to buy our 501 Original Levi Denim.’ And I don’t know about you, but if I am going to seek out experiences of profound, spiritual transcendence, I’m sure as hell not going to do it in some VR-fake-LSD-hellscape-nightmare that I overpaid for.

There’s a profound irony in all of it. There is chunky section in the report about the rise of ‘New Spiritual Rebels’, the ever-growing community of people interested and practicing non-traditional religions like witchcraft and paganism. The report recognises that, wrapped up in this movement, there is a desire to 'break things down and build them up again in paths of inclusive post-capitalist… futures'.

How are brands meant to respond to that?! “Ah, yes”, nodded the advertiser. “Now, how do we bake that into our new Spring campaign for Airbnb? Maybe an authentic Wicca hut in Salem could be the hero ad?” It’s absurd.

This is blindingly obvious, but brands will be hopeless at addressing questions of mortality, transcendence, awe, serendipity, hope, joy, and meaning in a chaotic and anxious world. I love brands, but that’s above their pay-grade. Unfortunately, that won’t stop them from trying to commodify 're-enchantment' and extract capital value from it. No thank you.

The age of re-enchantment is real, and this report does a tremendous job at demonstrating it. But this piece of work is not, and shouldn’t be, for brands. It should be for community and religious leaders, and it should be for you. And so I will end this article in a similar vein to my last one.

If we are going to embark on this journey of re-enchanting our society with joy, spiritual depth, and existential meaning, we can’t let that hunger be commodified for profit. The re-enchantment of our hearts is too important for that. It is worth more, infinitely more, than 501 Originals.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Culture

Politics

3 December 2024

5 min read

The assisted dying debate revealed the real role of Parliament

MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers.

M. Ciftci

Mehmet Ciftci has a PhD in political theology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on bioethics, faith and politics.

An MP stands and speaks in a parliamentary debate.

MP Diane Abbott speaks in the debate.

Parliament TV.

What would be the effect of allowing assisted suicide for those ‘people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power and to have decisions made for them’, asked Danny Kruger MP, as he wrapped up his speech? ‘What are the safeguards for them? Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament; you and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.’

His words capture an important aspect of Friday’s debate: what is the point of Parliament? Do MPs meet to turn public opinion polls into policies? If the majority are in favour of something, do MPs have nothing left to do but to follow the public and sort out the fine details? We might instinctively say ‘Yes!’ It seems right and democratic to treat those whom we elect as people we select and send to do our bidding. And the polls do seem to show the majority of people supporting assisted suicide, at least in principle – although there are good reasons to be sceptical about those figures and about the conclusions drawn from them.

But there are numerous times when the majority are known to be in favour of something but politicians refuse to endorse it. Polls repeatedly show that a majority are in favour of reintroducing the death penalty. Why might it be right for MPs sometimes to ignore what the purported majority thinks and to use their own judgement?

Because Parliament is not just a debating chamber.

An older way of referring to it was to call it the ‘High Court of Parliament’ because ‘parliament, classically, was where individuals could seek the redress of grievances through their representatives,’ as law lecturer Dr Robert Craig writes. It performed its function admirably in response to the Horizon scandal: a legitimate grievance was brought to its attention, and it responded to redress the wrongs done to the sub-postmasters by passing a law to ‘overturn a series of judgments that could only have been obtained, and were only obtained, by a toxic, captured and wilfully blind corporate culture’.

Friday’s debate featured many MPs who understood what they were there to do. They acknowledged the ‘terrible plight of the people who are begging us for this new law’ as Danny Kruger said. But they also spoke up for those who were in danger of being harmed and wronged by the bill: the disabled and the dying, and all the vulnerable who were not there to speak on their own behalf.

Many echoed the concerns expressed by Diane Abbott about coercion: ‘Robust safeguards for the sick and dying are vital to protect them from predatory relatives, to protect them from the state and, above all, to protect them from themselves. There will be those who say to themselves that they do not want to be a burden. … Others will worry about assets they had hoped to leave for their grandchildren being eroded by the cost of care. There will even be a handful who will think they should not be taking up a hospital bed.’ And evidence of coercion is hard to find and trace: ‘Coercion in the family context can be about not what you say but what you do not say—the long, meaningful pause.’

An analysis shared on X by law lecturer Philip Murray found an association between the level of deprivation in a constituency and how likely a Labour MP was to vote against the bill. He also shared figures showing that 2/3 of MPs from ethnic minorities voted against it. In other words, MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers of helping people to kill themselves.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm.

But it seems that many MPs did not appreciate what the debate was about or what they had gathered to do. Layla Moran MP said: ‘The media are asking all of us, “Are you for or against the Bill?”, but I urge hon. Members to think about the question differently. The question I will be answering today is, “Do I want to keep talking about the issues in the Bill?”’ But James Cleverly MP intervened: “she is misrepresenting what we are doing at this point. We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill.” He was right to be impatient. Unlike the Oxford Union, the vote has consequences. Parliamentarians are not there merely to debate. As the term ‘High Court of Parliament’ suggests, when MPs (either on their own initiative or as a government) propose bills, what they are often doing is conveying a plea to redress some grievance, and their debates are to decide whether to respond by making laws to grant justice to the wronged.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm, because the scrutiny that the bill will undergo in the following stages is not likely to be as rigorous as with government bills. As a Private Member’s Bill, the assisted dying proposal is free to be scrutinised by a committee selected by the MP who has proposed the bill, i.e. Kim Leadbeater. When the bill reaches the stage for a final vote in the Commons at the third reading, no further amendments can be made and the time for debate is likely to be short.

It is rare but bills are sometimes defeated at the third reading. With eighteen abstentions on Friday and at least thirty-six MPs claiming they might change their minds later, there is still hope.

Each sitting of the Commons begins every day with a prayer by the Speaker’s Chaplain, who prays that MPs ‘may they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices, keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind.’

We can only hope and pray that at their next opportunity, MP will consider this bill in light of their responsibilities as the country’s High Court, charged with protecting the most vulnerable in society from harm.