Hope in Britain Hasn’t Died. It’s Just Come Closer

For decades, we’ve built brands by trading on future optimism. A better version of you. A better version of life. A better version of the world. It’s been a powerful formula, tickling people’s deepest desires and stoking their shallowest dissatisfactions.

The down-and-dirty sell lives in the here and now. The worthier business of brand building gets the longer aspirational horizon. So goes the formula.

But in Britain today, that approach is starting to feel off. Not just less effective, but out of step with how people are actually living - and buying.

Our cultural narrative is of a nation tired, stretched and sceptical. Last year’s change of government unsettled the mood further, tipping the conversation between compulsive looking back and feverish looking ahead. Neither offers much stability. Or confidence.

That mood shows up in the data. A recent YouGov study found fewer than one in four Britons feel optimistic about the country’s long-term direction. Consumer trend reports echo the same language: compressed outlooks, reduced certainty, optimism in retreat.

It’s tempting to read all this as the death of hope in Britain. But that misses a critical nuance. Hope isn’t actually dead. It’s moved closer. Our hope horizons have shortened.

People have shifted their belief to the present, focusing less on distant ideals and more on what can be influenced today, this week, this month. Aspirations still exist, but they’re increasingly rooted in the here and now - and acted on with urgency.

In many ways, AI is accelerating this shift, changing how we navigate the world - collapsing the distance between imagining something and doing something about it.

We see this playing out across brands closest to culture, at both ends of the spectrum. Luxury rooting itself in real places and lived experience - Burberry is the masterclass. Mass brands like McDonald's elevating the everyday in heightened, meaningful and ultra-expressive ways. Both creating anchor points that feel genuinely worth it in a messy, uncertain world.

Our recent Leo PopPulse research into the influence of Gen Z reinforces this pattern. This cohort isn’t longing for distant visions. They are highly skilled navigators of the present, filtering for everyday good stuff with a quiet, practical optimism. Aspiration, for them, is measured by what can be imagined and acted on now. Given their influence on everyone around them, including older generations, this mindset is already shaping how Britain thinks and behaves.

All of this points to a reframing of brand building that feels overdue and, frankly, creatively liberating. One that pulls brands closer to the moments people are actually living through, taking part in the fizz of culture as it forms. Less distant ‘visionaries’, more active, value-adding participants with tangible products and services to sell. It brings brand creativity back into the heart of what makes a company tick.

And there’s something distinctly British about all this too. When things feel uncertain, we don’t reach for lofty ideals or grand declarations. We get on with it. We’re expressive, ironic, inventive. We make sense of life through creativity that stays close to reality, not above it, finding ways to live with the chaos rather than escape it. That instinct is alive now, and it’s why the present has become such fertile ground for brands willing to show up with confidence and imagination.

After decades of selling better tomorrows, belief is being built much closer to home. And that’s good news for anyone in the business of building brands - because it’s something we can greedily do in the here and now, and over time. The brands that understand that won’t just matter more; they’ll sell more too.

Lilli English is chief strategy officer at Leo UK