Trend Taster: queenager edition
In this week’s edition of the Trend Taster, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:
Negative age stereotypes in ads
Puerto Rico’s glow-in-the-dark medication labels
Relooted lets players steal back 70 real African artifacts
Explainer: queenager
German cities incentivise safer nighttime travel for women
Negative age stereotypes in ads
New research by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) shows that over a third of UK adults think older people face negative stereotyping in ads, with nearly half of those 65+ agreeing. The damage isn't just surface level either. When we show older people as purposeless, isolated, or powerless, we're not just missing the mark creatively, we're potentially reinforcing genuine fears about ageing. The research highlights something crucial for brands and agencies: authentic representation isn't just about doing the right thing, it's about understanding your audience properly.
Puerto Rico’s glow-in-the-dark medication labels
Puerto Rico's power grid failures sparked an ingenious solution: glow-in-the-dark medication labels. With 25% of residents over 65 and frequent blackouts, Alivia Health created labels that illuminate prescriptions for six hours using ambient light. As a result they saw 200 million media impressions, 10,000 labels dispensed in two weeks, and 13.5% prescription billing increase. This is addressing real vulnerability with practical innovation.
Relooted lets players steal back 70 real African artifacts
A South African gaming studio just turned museum visits into heist missions. Nyamakop's new game Relooted lets players steal back 70 real African artifacts currently sitting in Western museums, complete with 30-second escape sequences and specialized crew skills. This isn't just entertainment, it's cultural reclamation disguised as gameplay. The studio deliberately built an authentic African team to ensure genuine representation while letting players draw their own conclusions about where these artifacts truly belong. Gaming is becoming the new battleground for decolonizing narratives.
Explainer: queenager
Jules Verne has partnered with women's community Noon to create "Queenager" tours for women 50+, starting with a female-led Egypt expedition this autumn. These aren't your typical group tours either, featuring female Egyptologists and "Queenager Conversations" that acknowledge midlife realities like divorce and caring responsibilities. It's about time someone recognized that women entering their prime spending years want adventures that reflect their actual lives, not sanitized versions of them.
German cities incentivise safer nighttime travel for women
German cities are handing out €10 taxi vouchers to women for safer nighttime travel, and they're disappearing faster than cities can print them. Cologne's 1,500 vouchers vanished within days of launch, while Munich tripled their allocation to 105,000 this year. It's a band-aid solution to a deeper problem: only 28% of women in Hannover feel safe at night, down from 42% in 2018. Women are twice as likely as men to avoid certain areas entirely. While these voucher schemes offer immediate relief, they're essentially subsidizing the symptom rather than treating the root causes. The real challenge isn't just funding more taxis, it's redesigning urban spaces so women don't need an escape route in the first place.
