Dynamic #4

Joyful curiosity

Long relegated to the background, joy returns as an urgency. Not an escape, but a vital energy, like a lucid response to ambient fatigue. An energy capable, too, of transforming how we work, consume, live together. In a world crossed by uncertainty, it becomes a new value indicator : what moves, what makes smile, becomes strategic, a new KPI.

Globally, 49% of consumers are more inclined to buy from a brand that provides a feeling of joy (VML Intelligence, 2024), while nearly 80% believe brands could do more to make their customers happy ('The Happiness Report', Oracle News, 2022). These 'micro-moments of joy,' awakened by a creative gesture, an unusual flavor, or a moment of play, activate dopamine and regenerate inner momentum. So many tiny but decisive pauses, capable of reweaving a sensitive connection to the world. They calm, reconnect, and inspire.

In his work Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008), psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes flow theory: that state of total immersion in an activity we love, where we forget time. This state isn't reserved for artists or athletes, it can appear at the office, in a meeting, at the heart of a project. And when it's there, it changes everything: concentration, performance, well-being. Today, more and more companies and brands draw inspiration from it. Play, long confined to childhood, sneaks into both daily life and management strategies. It frees imagination, strengthens bonds, lightens tensions.

Aspirations change: living rather than possessing. Feeling rather than accumulating.

Even in the all-digital era, the desire for collective experience persists. Nearly one in two young people still prefer the cinema to streaming comfort (Kantar x Brut x CNC x Cannes Festival, 2024). Cinema, more than simple entertainment, becomes a sensory ritual, a shared moment, an emotional refuge. One more proof that sensation authenticity and connection strength prevail, when experienced for real.

Joy, today, is no longer a 'plus.' It becomes a heading, a way to think culture, brands, work, human connections. It can't be decreed, it's embodied. Companies that can make it living matter won't just be heard or visible: they'll be desired, chosen, and followed. Because in an era when everything wavers, sowing joy means building sustainability.

Work, play, repeat

Play is no longer today a side thing, it asserts itself as an innovation lever. In a world seeking meaning and regeneration, it becomes a powerful tool to rethink processes, stimulate creativity, and bring essential lightness. It opens another way: experimental, joyful, liberating.

What if the future of experiential went through this: learning to marvel, have fun together, to better invent tomorrow?

→ The antidote to exhaustion

In a context marked by burnout and hyperconnection, integrating playful moments into daily life is no longer a luxury but a necessity, it restores momentum. According to a LEGO study, 94% of CEOs worldwide believe devoting more time to play can help reduce employee burnout (2023): indeed, it favors decompression, relaunches imagination, and instills enthusiasm where routine sets in. It restores breathing to the organization.

→ A 'kidult' culture in full expansion

Current generations, all combined, claim a more playful, freer, more colorful lifestyle. Yesterday's children, today's adults, kidults (contraction of kid and adults in English) seek in play not an escape or return to childhood, but a more curious and lively way of being in the world and a means, for 86% of adults, to relax (LEGO, 2023). This dynamic also reflects in a booming market: in 2032, board game revenue will reach $32 billion, versus $14.4 billion in 2024 according to Fortune Business Insights (2025). Companies and brands embracing this trend anchor themselves in contemporary culture, connected to their audiences.

→ A terrain of joyful experimentation

Playing means allowing oneself to explore without stakes, create without pressure, collaborate better, learn differently, share emotions. In offices, marketing campaigns, product experiences, play becomes a common thread. It transforms relationships between employees, brands, and consumers, into more human and memorable experiences.

In 2032, board game revenue will reach $32 billion.

Euphoria, art is in the air

From June to September 2025, the Grand Palais hosted Euphoria, art is in the air, a spectacular exhibition dedicated to inflatable art. Monumental works, floating forms, and light play invited young and old to a joyful, sensory, and poetic experience, suspended between dream and lightness.

Dream Computing

Presented at Art Basel Miami in December 2024, Dream Computing fused art, artificial intelligence, and generative design. The exhibition offered a dreamlike and interactive experience, exploring human creativity through computational technologies. An immersive space where digital installations, sounds, and lights invited dreaming creation's future.

Kymono

In May 2025, Kymono, agency specialized in corporate culture 2.0 partners with Canal+ for an immersive experience inspired by the Werewolves series whose first game season came out late 2024. In a life-size Thiercelieux, employees are invited to live the cult game for real, themselves too. An unprecedented and pop culture way to reinvent team building, far from classic escape rooms.

Culture club

In an often saturated daily life, culture reappears as an essential source of joy, escape, and reconnection. Consumers no longer just seek products, but experiences that make them vibrate, smile, or dream. Combining surprise, pleasure, and lightness becomes a key engagement lever.

What if culture became the privileged terrain of sensory and emotional experiences capable of re-enchanting our daily lives?

→ Creating elsewhere breaks

In saturated daily life emerges the need to breathe, escape without leaving. We abandon ourselves to an epic work, we knit, we dream, we savor a dish like a sensory journey. Culture becomes refuge: gentle, immersive, accessible. Slow content, ASMR, manual workshops, or world cuisines invite slowing the pace, reconnecting to oneself. So many micro-escapes that open poetic breaches in reality – and nourish imagination.

→ Pop culture as common language

Generation Z blurs boundaries between professional and personal life, connecting rather than segmenting. This decompartmentalization becomes a new art of living that brands adopt by investing codes of culture, entertainment, and online communities. What if companies followed this movement? By bringing culture into the heart of their managerial and relational DNA, they can embody a living, unifying, and contemporary worldview, capable of creating connection between generations and plural imaginaries.

→ Experiences that bring together

Offering cultural experiences is much more than entertaining: it's creating sensitive contact points between individuals. Culture becomes a mirror in which everyone can recognize themselves, audiences as well as employees. Offered in simple, lively, and accessible formats, it weaves connections, triggers emotion, stimulates participation. Far from institutional codes, it unifies through shared enthusiasm, reactivates sense of belonging, and shows a common world. That's where its strength lies: in its capacity to unite without uniformizing, to bring together without excluding.

Culture becomes refuge.

L'Épée de Bois

The L'Épée de Bois cinema, located in Paris's 5th arrondissement, organizes every last Monday of the month a rather special cinema session, called Gourmépée, which combines screening of a film and tasting of dishes related to the film projected on the big screen.

Off Campus

Opened in March 2025 in Paris, Off Campus is a café-bookstore located in the 10th arrondissement. Designed as a place of cultural openness, it offers evening courses ranging from cinema to geopolitics, debates, workshops, and meetings, recreating an accessible, friendly, and stimulating university spirit for all curious minds.

DJ Azar

Like showcases or live DJ and artist sessions, the Bakery Session movement, invented by DJ Azar, offers partying differently around coffee and croissants in multiple bakeries across France.

Event scenarios

Key Trend #7 / Work, Play, Repeat

To bring play and joy back into collective dynamics, the event becomes a terrain of playful experimentation. It desacralizes daily life, fluidifies relationships, and stimulates creativity through lighter and freer formats.

1. Create playful breaks in professional daily life

Far from futile, play moments strengthen cohesion, stimulate enthusiasm, and favor letting go. The event offers weekly 'playful break' slots in redesigned relaxation spaces: board games, quizzes, express tournaments, or free-access consoles. A simple lever to energize work atmosphere and strengthen informal bonds, gently.

2. Activate collective intelligence through play

Working on oneself… by playing! Teams are invited to rethink daily life for a creative sprint: through role-playing, prototyping workshops, or team challenges. An energizing, unifying format that gives power to act and transforms routine into collaborative playground.

3. Break down frameworks by working outside walls

Because changing place already means changing perspective, the event organizes each quarter an off-site day in an unexpected place: art gallery, urban wasteland, educational farm… We work differently there, think more freely, strengthen team spirit through ideation workshops and wellness rituals. A collective breath of fresh air to bring forth new ideas.

Key Trend #8 / Culture club

Culture becomes a vector of cohesion, openness, and collective pride. The event relies on imagination, emotion, and curiosity to bring teams together, value taste diversity, and strengthen connection to the world.

1. Make culture a pretext for daily connection

Each week or month, teams gather around a thematic lunch: Olympics, K-pop, indie cinema, 90s… On the program: house playlist, mini quiz, free exchanges. These 'cultural lunches' transform a banal moment into a sharing experience. Pop culture becomes a spontaneous conversation lever.

2. Broaden horizons in a friendly framework

In the evening, the company opens to the world with immersive events: screenings, readings, debates hosted by artists, sociologists, or journalists. These 'perspective evenings' offer an original viewpoint on cultural or social issues and stimulate collective curiosity in a relaxed framework, outside usual roles.

3. Create an immersive and embodied cultural experience

Rather than a classic seminar, the event offers a thematic journey (1-2 days) in an unexpected universe: contemporary Japan, futuristic Africa, ecospirituality… Immersed in cultural or natural places, teams explore through creative workshops, inspiring encounters, and culinary experiences. Culture here becomes a collective adventure, leaving a lasting imprint. The event can rely on partner cultural institutions: museums, foundations, emerging scenes. By opening company doors to them or taking teams into their walls, we create unprecedented bridges between work world and artistic creation.