3 May 2023

Hi folks,

The unofficial fashion show known as the Met Gala took place on Monday, with the theme dedicated to the late designer Karl Lagerfeld. It was also the first year where it wasn’t immediately clear if Jared Leto really was dressed as a cat, or someone was just having fun with Midjourney. 

Scroll down for 6G, canned cocktails, and workouts from Thor. 

Stats to power your week

🍸 Gen Zs and millennials in 6 markets prefer pre-mixed cocktails over any other liquor. They’re 18% more likely than average drinkers to be into cocktail making, even if the price of ingredients adds up. The solution? Conveniently-packaged drinks at a lower price in a variety of new flavors. (GWI Alcohol)

📖 Summer is fast-approaching, so be sure to grab your swimsuit, boarding pass, and summer book on the way to the beach. Mystery takes the top spot as the most popular genre for vacation reads. Gen Z’s most favorite genre? Dystopian. Keep an eye out for rereads of The Hunger Games at a beach near you. (GWI Zeitgeist) 

🎟️ Consumers now have to weigh the cost of live events against essentials in a time of record inflation. Despite extreme price hikes due to resold tickets (thanks a lot, bots), half of Americans say the experience of a live event is more important than the cost. (GWI Zeitgeist)

⚽ American interest in the EPL is growing rapidly, with a 54% increase in fans since Q4 2020. Increased coverage of matches and TV shows – both real and fictional – may explain the rise of the sport’s popularity. (GWI Sports)

🏠 The number of people without any travel plans for the next 12 months is up 44% since Q3 2022. Consumers are still feeling the crunch from high inflation, and aren’t really planning any big trips. Still, 79% of consumers in 10 markets have started making plans for a domestic vacation this year, but only 59% plan to travel internationally. (GWI Travel)

What’s on our radar

India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country.

Airlines are using AI to inform decisions on route planning optimization, fuel efficiency, and avoiding turbulence. 

Speaking of AI, the city of Yokosuka in Japan is tapping ChatGPT to take on administrative tasks. 

Earlier this year a great campaign used AI to imagine London in the aftermath of an earthquake. It wasn’t hard to imagine the same “what if” mentality applied to political ads, and that’s exactly what the Republican Party is going for. 

The Algerian gorilla fish image that went viral isn’t real, it’s just some image trickery. We’ll let you decide if this is more or less believable than Balenciaga Pope.

The latest viral AI offering is a trailer for Star Wars imagined through the eyes of Wes Anderson. But can the technology go further than just trailers? 

Oh, and AI also made the front cover of Vogue Italia. 

Chinese electric vehicles have had a good start in 2023, with U Power’s IPO up 620%. Plus, competitor BYD showed off a new suspension system by having the car dance, right in time for the new Transformers trailer. 

Marvel has introduced a new app that uses character voices from the MCU to guide users through workouts. If you’ve ever wanted Thor to lead you on a run, here’s your chance.  

TikTok parent company ByteDance is set to release Lemon8 in the US in May. While TikTok is seeing deinfluencing take off, Lemon8 seems to be set up like Instagram, with curated content and the ability to tag products. 

The US is starting to plan for 6G wireless communications. Rollout is still years away, but it will allow global internet access and offer improvements to streaming and downloads. 

Mindful mess is in as consumers move away from perfect organization and embrace a little chaos. Even Marie Kondo agrees.

Netflix has announced a flush of new investment into Korean content, just as LVMH holds its second fashion show in the country. 

Chart of the week

With a few exceptions, social media has been free-to-use for most of its life. But within the last 12 months Snapchat, Twitter, and Meta have all introduced some kind of monthly subscription tier.

As a relatively new marketplace, the value proposition in paying for social media isn’t yet well-defined. Much of the commentary is currently around paid verification, but social media platforms could see more subscriptions if they led with beefed up security features for subscribers. Twitter Blue offers two-factor authentication, and with account security always a risk, users could be tempted into paying a fee to safeguard their information.

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