Cannes gets underway, brain chip babies 👾, Brian Wilson's goodbye and all the latest brand news

I get a peek at what the future holds—or at least what people think it holds—through the startup brands that approach us. These things come in waves. For a while, it was all about sustainability. First came the vegan alternatives. Meat, milk, cheese. Then the refillables. Deodorant, kitchen spray, drinks.

The promise is always the same: Better for the planet, better for us.

It tracks. Consumption is the dominant human activity. Our global economy rests on it. But if all that consumption ends up torching the planet, then our ability to swipe, shop, and subscribe starts to look a little pointless.

Recently, that phase seems to be fading. Or at least, it’s no longer the headline. The brands we’re talking to now aren’t as worried about saving the Earth as they are about saving us.

And no, the threat isn't sentient AI issuing “Order 66” and turning Teslas into tanks. Or even a jobless, machine-dominated world.

I’m talking about something far simpler.

Scrap the reusable toothpaste or carbon-neutral candles. Today’s brands are more likely to be selling remote cabins to rekindle desire, sex tech for solo or partner use, and gummies for hormone balance—hers, and increasingly, his.

You got it: Fertility is the new branded frontier.

It's not exactly new. The category incumbents have been sluggish for a while. But the market is getting bigger. And the margins are still sweet.

But under the hood of this trend is something more unsettling. Spend time with Dr. Alice Evans’ work, and you stop thinking about TAMs and start thinking about survival. Birth rates are plummeting everywhere. Once a suburban cliché, the 2.1 children per woman needed to keep a population steady, is now far above where most countries sit.

Yes, there are biological factors. Oocyte failure is rising. Sperm counts have dropped 50–60% since 1972. But biology alone can’t explain the speed or scale of this shift. Something else is going on.

Some of it’s economic. The cost of raising a child is absurd. And some of it’s cultural. We delay milestones and value independence.

But some of it is harder to name. Dr. Evans describes a pullback from intimacy. A retreat from connection. Maybe even from hope.

So the problem isn't just fecundity. It’s the struggle, resulting in disinterest. Disinterest in dating, in getting together, in the long haul. We can blame screens and dating apps. We can blame disconnection in general. We can blame debt. The chaos of the world. It's all the things. The net is always the same: It's getting harder for people to form relationships. Having kids, over having pets, is less desirable.

Maybe this is all inevitable. Darwin always said extinction was the rule, not the exception. And AI is certainly adapting to us faster than we are to it.

So, perhaps it’s time for a new species to dominate. And maybe it’s already begun.

Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old newly minted billionaire behind ScaleAI, acquired by Meta, announced this week that he won’t be having children just yet. Not because of career or the lack of a partner.

No, he’s waiting for brain chips to evolve.

With Neuralink showing early signs of success, and Apple reportedly looking at brain-computer interfaces, Wang figures it’s worth holding off. Kids born with access to brain chips, he says, will “learn how to use them in crazy, crazy ways.”

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Brian Wilson died on Wednesday morning.

I wasn’t a superfan, but I understood what The Beach Boys meant. Surfboards, cars, good vibrations. Wilson scored a sun-drenched, hormone-charged, and wildly hopeful version of American adolescence. The soundtrack to teenage romance. To those beautiful and bruising years, when we attach to people in ways that shape the rest of our lives. And from which new lives are born.

I remember my first teenage party. I didn’t want to go. Begged my mum to let me stay home. The idea of being seen and judged felt unbearable. But she wouldn’t budge. She picked out something I could actually wear. Pushed me out the door.

The music was loud. We sat for what felt like hours around the edges of the dancefloor. When we finally got up, we looked awkward as hell. But we tried. And I came home a little taller that day.

Mum, just as much a single parent as she was five marriages deep, wasn’t always that pushy. She wanted me to get out there, meet people, and stay open. But she also didn’t want me to rush.

“Choose your life’s partner carefully,” she told me. “From that one choice will come 90% of your happiness or misery.”

Certainly true for our Beach Boy, Brian Wilson. Under pressure to outdo the Beatles, he turned to LSD and set out to create the greatest album that never was: Smile. Mysticism and paranoia followed. He became convinced that a fire near the studio had been caused by one of his recording sessions. So he burned the tapes. Shut it all down. Was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Spent years bedridden.

But in the late 1980s, he met Melinda Ledbetter, a former model, who helped him reconnect with life. They married. Adopted five children. Built something steady.

“She saved my life,” he said.

Smile was released with a live performance in 2004. A teenage symphony of symphonies. It ended with a fifteen-minute standing ovation.

Similarly, my mum—fiercely independent, occasionally volatile—never gave up on love. Four marriages in, including two false starts, a heartbreaking loss, and one outright mistake, she let go of perfection and chose partnership for the fifth. It turned out well. He held her hand to the end. Both in life and in those final tender moments, as her breaths slowed and she let go, the way all living things do when their time comes.

Brands entering the fertility space would do well to bear all this in mind. We can take all the supplements we want, but if we've lost the will to find one another through the uncertainty, then maybe our species really is reaching its twilight years.

And if that's the case, well...I figure, let's all make a few hundred million along the way. Those Sunseekers aren't gonna sail themselves. Let's ramp up investment in silicon-based life. AI brains. Infinite processing power. Endless self-powered product evolution.

Because love is rarely as efficient. Biologically, emotionally, economically, it’s always a risk.

Still, like it or not, it's the magic that our species runs on, kids or not.

I’ll never forget that party. That moment of showing up when I didn’t want to. It was the beginning of something. In believing, maybe. In one another. In permanence. In surviving the chaos of the world together. As Wilson once wrote, maybe prophetically:

“I may not always love you, but as long as there are stars above you…”

For now, I reckon that flawed idea will do just fine. For God only knows what we’d be without each other.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

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Market Moves

World Bank predicts U.S. growth will halve amid tariffs | The Wall Street Journal

UK energy prices poised to rise | The Guardian

Reeves sets out 10-year infrastructure plan | Financial Times

Brand Beat

Farewell to the Mad Men era: Cannes gets underway | Business Insider

Inside the mastermind behind Cannes Lions’ most exclusive parties | Digiday

Veteran ad execs share Cannes Lions survival tips for first-timers | Ad Age

Hinge teams with Esther Perel to revamp dating prompts | Fast Company

Gucci-owner, Kering shares surge 7% on reports of new CEO | CNBC

Snapchat teams up with McDonald’s | Social Media Today

Elon Musk demands ad dollars or threatens lawsuit | Quartz

Instagram’s biggest campaign yet urges creators to ditch self-doubt | Adweek

Uber launches new creative studio for brand ads | Fast Company

Bojangles considers sale as fried chicken demand soars | The Wall Street Journal

The ugly new marketing strategy of annoyance | Honest Broker

Smuckers snacks share price drop | Nasdaq

Did Typhoo’s purposeful rebrand kill its 120-year-old legacy? | The Drum

Impossible Foods eyes significant growth opportunity ahead | The Wall Street Journal

Why the new Andrex advert is a life-changing masterpiece | The Guardian

UK bans Twix ad for encouraging unsafe driving | BBC

Advertising industry fears AI will kill creativity and jobs | The Guardian

Stanley Cup craze may be fading, brand chief unveils plan | The Wall Street Journal

Sports driving success but broader media market stalling | Digiday

L’Oréal snaps up majority stake in Medik8 skincare | Vogue Business

Mark Read’s full exit statement from WPP | Adweek

Starting Up

Startup names are getting sillier, I like it | Sifted

Uber-like app for tapering off antidepressants debuts in US | Wired

Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney raises $11 million for second startup | Fortune

Dirtea brothers brew a functional mushroom revolution | Forbes

11 YC Demo Day startups investors are buzzing about | TechCrunch

Tech Tidbits

US government’s AI acceleration site accidentally leaked on GitHub | Slashdot

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang lit up the room at London Tech Week | CNBC

Disney and Universal sue Midjourney over AI copyright infringement | TechCrunch

The gentle singularity - Sam Altman’s latest thoughts | Sam Altman Blog

ScaleAI’s founder is waiting for Neuralink before having kids | The Economic Times

From fishing family to French CEO takes on Silicon Valley | France 24

Venture Vibes

Octopus Ventures CEO Erin Platts speaks at London Tech Week | Bloomberg

Youngest self-made millionaire drives a Honda, shops at Shein | Fortune

Private equity marketing investment jumps 21%: what agencies should know | The Drum

New crowdfunding research looks positive | Reddit

Design Driven

Paola Lenti’s playful designs shrink to pint size | Design Milk

Learn the design skills they skip in class | Figma

Big Tech delivers fatal blow to flat design | Bloomberg

Shopify’s latest update undercuts fundamental UX design principles | Fast Company

Bill Atkinson: the creative genius who shaped the Mac, dies | Forbes

Happiness

Embracing jet lag’s surprising beauty | Wallpaper

Brian Wilson wanted to take us to a happier place | The Times

Smile - full performance | YouTube

When everything feels confusing and defies explanation | Kyla Scanlon