Why Brands Could Embrace Spiritual Strategies
New ways of ‘worship’ are commercial opportunities, especially in China and India
Matter intelligence products, brand strategy and implementation consultancy deliver solutions that drive our clients’ commercial performance and increase your brand's cultural relevance. This week, Matter analyses: how should brands engage with the new wave of religiosity in China and India, as well as the rise of low-commitment spiritual practices globally?
Relevance check
Spending on astrology-related products and services is projected to grow to $22.8 billion by 2031 – Allied Market Research
Vast HNW VIP sections were set up at Hindu festival Maha Kumbh Mela in India, which was once “perceived as the preserve of India’s poor” – The Economist
KFC collaborated with the sacred Buddhist site Wutaishan to launch a new coffee with implicit support from the Chinese Communist Party
In Hong Kong, Gucci retracted a warning to producers of replicas of their goods used in funerary traditions
In California – the state with the highest GDP at $4.080 trillion – 70% of the population consider themselves “spiritual or somewhat spiritual” and only 15% consider themselves “very religious” – Pew Research Center
In the U.S., Baby Bucks & “Conservative Cosmo” – Noise, Not Opportunity
Research consistently finds that TikTok (the platform used by a third of U.S. adults, according to Pew) pushes rightwing voices, with one study finding right-wing praise is a significant predictor of user engagement. Creating a fertile breeding ground for manosphere influencers, many of whom were honoured guests at Trump’s inauguration.
Pro-natalism has become a central issue, with Trump signing a pro-IVF executive order, Republican lawmakers introducing anti-same-sex marriage resolutions to “preserve and grow our human race”, and a proposed “baby bonus” of up to $5,000 each time a woman has a child (the average hospital bill for giving birth in the US is $30,000, and the average cost for raising a child is $237,482).
Politically, the impact of these shifts is significant. But Evie Magazine and conservative media are not accurate representations of a cultural movement.
The only reason megachurches are getting bigger is that smaller churches are being forced to close, as per NPR. In a 2015 study, the percentage of Americans who described themselves as Christian was found to have dropped from 78.4% to 70.6% between 2007 and 2014. Ten years later, it’s 64%.
With churches across Christian denominations in the U.S. reporting that their older congregants are dying faster than new congregants can join their ranks, that percentage is only going to decrease. And there are far more leavers than joiners, reports Pew Research Center: “just over one-third of Americans between the ages of 30 and 39 who were brought up in Christian households no longer identify with that faith. But only 20% of young adults brought up outside the church have travelled in the opposite direction”. If these trends continue, Pew predicts that non-religious Americans could dominate society by 2055. (Meanwhile, atheism and agnosticism have been steadily gaining ground in Europe for generations.)
A key example is California – the fifth bluest state in the country and the state with the highest GDP at $4.080 trillion – where 70% of the population consider themselves “spiritual or somewhat spiritual” and only 15% consider themselves “very religious”, as per Pew Research Center. Contrast this with the fifth reddest state, Alabama, whose GDP is just $252.7 billion, where 72% of people consider themselves “very or somewhat religious”. And it quickly becomes clear that the opportunity for luxury brands in the U.S. does not lie in appealing to the impecunious heartlands of the religious rightwing culturesphere.
Low-commitment spirituality – from astrology apps, to tarot card readings on TikTok, to manifestation journals – has increasingly filled the hole left by waning religiosity. For consumers, this lifestyle movement is significant. Spending on astrology-related products and services is projected to grow to $22.8 billion by 2031, up from $12.8 billion in 2021, as per The Economist. 70% of Americans either “somewhat” or “strongly” believe in astrology, according to the Harris Poll. These are global areas of interest for consumers, with the rise of astrology apps like Co-Star in the US and Europe, Astrotalk in India, and Tencent-backed Cece in China.
Chinese Youth Are Choosing Neo-Taoism
A report by the Asia Society Policy Institute shows that China’s urban middle class are “rejecting officially sanctioned religious institutions and state-promoted ideology” and “seeking alternatives considered less tainted by party-state interference”. What Jing Daily reports as the online concepts of a “low desire life” and “minimalism life”.
In particular, the report notes, young, predominantly female professionals comprise the followings of Tibetan monks on social media, who “package their teachings as therapy and offer explicit advice about the career, relationship, and family struggles faced by middle-class Chinese.” (This popularity comes despite the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is accused of imprisoning and marginalising Tibetan communities in the country).
As Pablo Mauron, partner and managing director for China at digital marketing agency DLG, tells Sixth Tone, younger generations had previously considered Chinese spirituality and customs “too traditional,” and were more likely to adopt Westernized codes and practices. But “embracing local traditions — from favouring tangible symbols to appreciating traditional values — has become a trendy lifestyle. This shift is inevitably manifesting itself in the consumer market,” he says.
Chinese travel platform Ctrip reports that spirituality and wellness are increasingly popular focuses for Gen Z consumers: visits to Buddhist temples have increased by 310% since 2023, with roughly half of those visitors born after 1990.
“Between going to work and advancing, young people are choosing to burn incense”
Widespread economic and societal uncertainty has led to a rise in temple visits, reports WGSN, where “young people visit to make wishes, for work or study but also for the tranquil environments and traditional culture.”
“Now, whenever I feel anxious, I visit temples and buy protective charms,” a 26-year-old Ph.D. student told Sixth Tone in March. A meme from 2023 provides a neat illustration of Chinese youth’s attraction to this new spirituality: “Between going to work and advancing, young people are choosing to burn incense” (“Nianqingren zai shangban yu shangjin zhijian xuanze shangxiang”).
Finger Lickin’ Sinicization
The Chinese Communist Party’s pursuit of “Sinicization”, which “requires religious groups to align their doctrines, customs and morality with Chinese culture”, means that this practice is largely left uncondemned, as Pew Research Center notes. “Back in 2023, an article from party-backed The Beijing News criticised Chinese youths for “skipping school, being unmotivated, and preoccupying themselves with offering incense at temples”.
The clash of ideological communism and practical capitalism is arrestingly illustrated in KFC’s collaboration with the sacred Buddhist site Wutaishan. As Dao Insights points out, “commercialising religious imagery” has been previously used as a reason by the CCP to ban brand usage of Buddhism symbols – however, KFC have toed the line by avoiding Buddhist imagery and including a blessing which does not appear in any Buddhist texts. Brands should accordingly take heed when attempting to tap into this cultural moment.
Indeed, the spirituality adopted by Chinese youth, rather like the KFC collaboration, does not adopt a single specific dogma, but is rather a form of Xuanxue (玄学) or neo-Taoism, “an umbrella term for spirituality, folk beliefs, mysticism and superstition, covering charms, divination, astrology, fengshui etc”, as Dao notes. As well as exploring rural areas and visiting temples, spaces for cultural gatherings around these ideas include Mount Wutai, Mount Putuo, Taobao’s New Year market, and the UNESCO-honoured Spring festival – the latter was recently praised by the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian for inspiring inbound tourism.
New traditions are encouraged as much as old ones – the CCP-backed newspaper China Youth Daily reported in 2022 that undergraduates in China favoured a mix of the two. Some of these traditions include digital activations, such as short-form videos on Douyin and digital red envelopes which can be used to send money-gifts in group chats.
A growing cultural appetite for low-commitment spiritual practices which avoid the CCP’s strict rules on religion, like tarot reading, (Chinese) astrology, and meditation, also speaks to this broadening consumer mindset. The Chinese astrology app Cece reported 2.49 million active users at the end of 2024, an increase of more than 57% year on year. We’re seeing brands respond to consumers’ open-mindedness when it comes to spirituality – including Dior's Château de Tarot collection and Armani Casa’s tarot deck.
All beneficial in light of constantly waning consumer trust. In China, @jingdaily reports that consumers are “increasingly ascribing luxury goods like Vivienne Westwood’s Saturn and Tiffany’s Smile necklaces with fantastical powers”. More than 30 million posts have been shared on Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu on spiritual topics like 八字 (a means of predicting the future): Gucci even publishes monthly horoscopes on its WeChat accounts.
“A Homegrown Movement”
Brands looking to genuinely engage with Chinese youth will find rich opportunities in this neo-spirituality movement. In the words of Bohan Qiu, founder of Shanghai- and Seoul-based creative agency BOH Project: “The lifestyle in different cities in Asia has become quite prosperous. So they think, why do I want to live like a Parisian? They actually think a brand needs to fit into their lifestyle here, their cultural context, rather than asking them to fit into a foreign lifestyle.”
If brands can build genuine association with the perpetuation of these movements, just as Miu Miu became synonymous with shifting social attitudes around ageing and style in China, country-wide reach could be achieved. This kind of access point into authentic culture is rare in China, shares Matter’s expert community on the ground.
Executives should be aware that surface-level engagements, however, are not enough: adding a red colourway to an existing product for Lunar New Year won’t achieve the necessary cut-through. The risks of cultural appropriation should also be considered: in 2022, Dior found itself subject to demonstrators when the brand released a skirt similar in construction to a traditional horse-face skirt but marketed as a “hallmark Dior silhouette”.
The protestors’ issue was not with Dior’s design itself, but rather with the brand’s failure to recognise its alleged inspiration.
Similar issues arose in 2016, when Gucci quickly withdrew its warning to Hong Kong businesses selling paper versions of Gucci bags – which were being burned at funerals, as per custom. Gucci eventually acknowledged that it “fully respects the funeral context and trust[s] that the store owners did not have the intention to infringe Gucci’s trademark.” It would be far smarter to have made authentic versions of the paper products themselves.
In India, A Religious Rich
India has been identified as a rising star for luxury by Bain & Co, with spending on luxury expected to triple from $36 billion to $42 billion by 2030. When Narendra Modi walked into the White House in February, he was the prime minister of the world’s fifth-largest economy. By the end of Donald Trump’s second term, it may be the third. Impressively, it has grown at an average of 7% over the past decade.
All of that success has had an impact on consumer confidence. The number of Indians with enough wealth and appetite for investment risk has jumped from 2-5%, according to the New York Times. And while the per capita GDP is low, the extreme wealth accumulated by the elite of India, as it has done throughout its history, competes on a global scale. The current total number of billionaires in India is around 300, with 94 new billionaires added in 2023 alone.
Around 80% of Indians now consider religion an important part of their daily lives (by contrast, only 34% of Alabama Christians report attending service once a week, as per Pew). As The Economist reports, living in an era where the Bharatiya Janata Party has assumed the role of Hinduism’s custodian and has asserted that promoting Hindu causes is a public-policy priority, “many Indians believe that piety is no longer merely a sign of faith, but a symbol of patriotism and progress.”
In fact, rather than religious festivals such as Maha Kumbh Mela being “perceived as the preserve of India’s poor” (as they were traditionally), “Hindu celebrations [are now] grander [and] aspirational”.
High net worth individuals cluster around key cultural events like this in India, as Pareina Thapar, managing partner at Very Truly Yours, a Delhi-based boutique PR firm, tells Matter. She says: “Caste plays a big role in intermingling because that kind of food habits, faith habits, cultural, social, calendar and festivals that [the wealthy] celebrate are very, very regional.”
In the country, religion is potentially emerging as a reliable tentpole for HNWI engagement — just as art and wellness have. In January, the opening ceremony of one of Hinduism’s holiest temples in Ayodhya attracted so many HNWIs that private jet lots were full – 100 jets were estimated to have descended by officials, while other lots in nearby cities were also at capacity – and stores ran out of gold plated idols, as Reuters reported. Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani was among the attendees. "It's become like a status symbol to be invited to this event," Rajan Mehra, CEO of Indian luxury charter service Club One Air, told Reuters.
Diwali capsule collections and events are now a typical mainstay for luxury brands seeking to activate Indian consumers. “Brands are now organising extravagant Diwali events in cities like London, New York and Dubai which can rival celebrations in Delhi or Mumbai. However, there is room for innovation; to do something that is more experience driven other than just another event,” Srimoyi Bhattacharya, the founder of India-based luxury and lifestyle consultancy firm Peepul Advisory, told Vogue Business. Religious travel is also an opportunity. India’s religious tourism sector is expected to generate $59bn in revenue by 2028, according to WGSN.
For brands, religious events are a key opportunity to target an incredibly busy and increasingly private community of HNWIs and UHNWIs. As Pareina Thapar tells Matter, “There are the elite who don't want to be seen at all, who will do the private dinners and they're the real rich and then there would be the cultured intelligentsia”.
The desire for a public profile is lesser than in other regions. Akanksha Kamath, former fashion features director of Vogue India, tells Matter that the elite Indian female consumer is “going to private events at private homes every night. She won't dine at restaurants unless specific to society or Bollywood. Home and travel is it.”
Perhaps the most impactful benefit to brands in building strategies that reflect religion in the sub-continent is the mixture of piety and patriotism. As Trump’s tariffs continue to force the industry to seek out new opportunities, India is often top of the list. But the reality of wealth distribution localises much of that opportunity in the very wealthy, many of whom have state-related or state-adjacent businesses and thus a vested interest in signalling their engagement with Hindu nationalism.
This will likely increase due to the escalating border tensions with Pakistan in Kashmir. Especially following Modi’s recent English language announcement that he plans to chase the perpetrators of extremist violence with alleged Pakistani-backing, “to the ends of the earth.”
While the World Burns, Gen Z Are Looking At The Stars
Last year, Forbes reported that Gen Z are using tarot cards to predict the stock market. A headline based, certainly, on a few viral TikTok videos rather than any damning evidence, but which nonetheless points to the increasingly normalised position of what was once termed New Age thinking amongst this generation.
Brands have been so quick to jump on the trend that a tarot reading table can be found at activations from American Express at BST Hyde Park to Emma Chamberlain’s Warby Parker pop-up events.
For brands, tapping into this multivalence of beliefs could go beyond an Instagram caption about ‘lucky girl syndrome’ or a tarot-themed bag collection. This is not a passing fad. Concepts from manifesting to Saturn Return are now a lingua franca for a generation looking for meaning outside of traditional social, familial, economic, and career structures. Bella Hadid’s Orebella has effectively combined the language of neo-spiritualism with an awareness of consumers’ ever-growing appetite for self-care and wellness, with a line of “aura-enhancing” perfumes.
“While ancient astrology focused heavily on prediction, modern astrology serves primarily as a tool for self-understanding,” one psychic told Vox Media. Gen Z across the globe are comfortable with merging multiple streams of spirituality in seeking out their space in the world. McKinsey has termed them a “hypercognitive generation”, comfortable with “collecting and cross-referencing many sources of information” and focused on finding ways to shape their “individual identities over time” through experimentation and adoption.
Scaled businesses could lean into creating tools and products which speak to the self-care rituals which come with low-commitment spirituality.
What Matters
In the U.S., Spirituality Sells: The space occupied by the religious rightwing in the U.S. in culture outsizes their actual viability as a luxury consumer group. More fruitful is the rise of low-commitment spiritual practices, now a staple in Gen Z’s existential self-care diet.
Party-Approved Incense: To genuinely activate youth in China, brands need to find authentic ways to integrate with local culture and neo-Taoism whilst moving away from eurocentric narratives and avoiding cultural appropriation.
Elite Religiosity in India: A one-off Diwali collection is not enough to genuinely engage and reach this luxury consumer base. In terms of how the elite of such a huge country interact with each other, this is a nuanced and intricate relationship, requiring on the ground-expertise for brands to navigate sufficiently fluently, given expectations of service and handling.
Dark Matter
The latest blow to trust and influencers is the expected response to Trump’s tariffs. Gen Z were already turning to cryptocurrency and fin-fluencers. That behaviour is only going to increase — for now.
Money creators earn 25-50% more per brand deal than other kinds of influencers – Business Insider
Men are about twice as likely to have transferred money into or out of crypto accounts – JP Morgan
42% of men ages 18 to 29 invested in or used crypto, versus 17% of women of that age – Pew Research Center
Because the risk is high. While fin-fluencers may be enjoying consumer trust right now, the guardrails which might have protected these would-be investors are being destroyed by the current U.S. administration.
The president’s official $TRUMP cryptocurrency token jumped more than 50% this week, with the coin’s website claiming Trump would have dinner with the top 200 holders. Its total market value was boosted to $2.7 billion.
A Senate Democrat described it as “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”
In April, the U.S. justice department said it would disband a unit dedicated to investigating cryptocurrency-related fraud
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance has already taken the position that typical meme coins do not constitute “securities”. This means that traders have no protections under federal securities law.