Everything I do starts here:
“You can’t make money on virtue.”
This thesis is circulating among the more honest corners of the investment world where several successful Venture Capitalists claim to only invest in companies that appeal to the seven deadly sins. I don't think it's because they're cynical. I think they're paying attention.
Seven words that have outlasted empires because they describe people’s core motivations. Or what I call the itches we love to scratch on any given Tuesday.
The sins are the ancient, irreducible reasons why human beings want to do (or buy) anything at all.
That’s where the Pleasure Codes come in
(If the word pleasure just made you twitch, note1 is for you.)
It’s my method for thinking through which of those wants can be met, resolved, and, if you are very good at what you do, transmuted into loyalty and the kind of irrational attachment that no brand manifesto will ever produce.
The itch is the sin.
The scratch is the Pleasure Code.
Your brand is the back scratcher.
The thing is most brands don’t know which itch they’re scratching. And some are actively pretending their customers don’t itch at all.
The itch always comes first.
The scratch is what this newsletter is about.
✨ “This is by far the most exciting read on the psychology of brands, and motivation behind people buying anything (even services) and I couldn’t help but nod away — as uncomfortable as many might feel, it is indeed very true.” Julia S. Co-Founder of the Luminar Collective✨
What changes when you read this consistently
The people who read this are not all the same. Some are executives, founders, or category leaders trying to get the people around them to think about the future differently. Some are marketers wondering how to cut through all the trend hype. Some are writers hunting for ideas that don’t feel borrowed.
What they take from it varies. Here’s what comes up most:
Stories that stick well enough to share with a room of ten thousand people and have them actually lean in
A language for something they always sensed but could never find the words for
A reason to stop chasing tactics and return to the question underneath all of them
Fresh ideas that apply whether you’re briefing a team, pitching a client, or staring at a blank page
A way to think about strategy, content, and culture that doesn’t sound like everything else in their inbox
One reader took that first point literally. An insights executive used this newsletter (and my team) to convince her organisation that the future was worth paying attention to. Her company called what followed the most valuable thing they’d done in a very long time.
You will not find this in a deck from McKinsey.
How it works
Most weeks, I publish twice a week:
On Tuesdays, you get fresh insights into a Compass Point with the psychology, philosophy, and brand histories to help you think differently about the opportunities for your brand, your company and even yourself. At the heart of every edition are eight coded territories of desire, each a different way people seek meaning and aliveness.
On Thursdays, you get deep insights into one Pleasure Code, its cultural currents, and the brand moves (brilliant, baffling, and occasionally involving artful fly vomit) that show where human desire is doing its most interesting work right now. This is a field guide (not a trend report) that leaves you with questions you’ll still be wrestling with on Friday.
✨ "I get so caught up in all the KPIs I’m responsible for that I keep chasing the wrong things. This way of thinking got me focused on what I’m really trying to achieve, and once I made that shift, everything changed." Chris Z. Head of Corporate Communications, Fortune 500✨
✨ “The problem with all the trend databases and reports I get is that I can’t get my stakeholders across R&D, Marketing and the Board to relate. The examples you share and the way you share them with storytelling makes them sticky.” Ashish V. Head of Innovation Insights, FTSE 100 ✨
If the free edition is the invitation in, paid is where the deeper pattern reveals itself. Upgrade to paid for:
Full Library Access: Every edition, every framework, every field guide, and the full Seven (now Eight) Sins series in one place so you can follow the thinking from the beginning or jump straight to the itch you’re trying to name.
Pleasure Codes Plus: The intelligence platform behind the newsletter: a living library of cultural signals, brand moves, and pattern recognition designed to help you understand what people actually want, and what that opens up for the things you’re building.
The Pleasure Codes Compass: The full map of eight territories of desire, each one a different way people seek meaning, aliveness, comfort, recognition, belonging, or escape — and a sharper way of seeing where your brand already lives, and where it could go next.
A perspective shift: On strategy. On positioning. On innovation. About content creation. On the gap between what people say they want and what they actually reach for when nobody is watching.
About me
I’m Angelique Green.
In 1995, Starbucks had around 500 stores. When I left a decade later, it had 14,000, spread across 35 countries, each one requiring someone to walk into a culture, understand what pleasure looked like there, and figure out how a paper cup of coffee could fit inside it. That was my job. It turned out to be the best education in human desire I could have asked for.
After that, I spent time inside the big network agencies blending brand strategy and innovation. Then in 2012, I founded The Mighty Shed, which clients have described, with some accuracy, as “the Special Forces for business.” We go in, find the itch, create the most compelling scratch, and disappear. The client gets the credit. We get the next impossible mission.
The Pleasure Codes is the thinking that sits beneath all of it. 30 years of pattern recognition across categories, continents, and consumer motivations, distilled into a single system. All designed for anyone who creates, leads, or builds things other people are supposed to care about and brave enough to ask the same question:
“Which itch should we scratch, and how?”
I live in London with my best friend (and husband, Mr. Green). Most mornings you'll find me at the boxing ring. Most evenings you'll find me conducting what I generously call "deep qualitative research" at the local pub, or at a Michelin-starred table, or both, sometimes on the same day.
See you in the scratch,
Angelique
One small clarification: when people in business hear the word pleasure, they often assume indulgence or sex. That reaction says more about our cultural hang-ups than the concept itself. Pleasure includes comfort, meaning, ritual, exploration, status, identity, and connection. It is the map of human behaviour. Ignore it, and you hand the market to brands that understand desire better than you do.
