29 April 2026

Hi folks,

It's a big weekend for fashion. The stars will be walking the Met Gala carpet on Monday. And The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens this Friday — same cast, same director, same withering stare, twenty years on.

It's the story of an iconic legacy brand fighting to stay relevant in a landscape it no longer recognizes. The film is fiction. But that challenge will be familiar to many.

Scroll down for European travel, fossil fuels, the high street, and the biggest turnoffs on electric cars.

Stats to power your week

✈️ With reports that European airlines may have only weeks of jet fuel left, some travelers will be considering adventures closer to home. People who holidayed domestically in the last six months were 54% more likely than average to have booked an experience like a spa trip. They also eat out more, visit museums and galleries more, and are more likely to spend a day at a theme park. GWI Core

🟣 Claire's closed all 154 UK and Ireland stores this week. The brand that pierced a generation's ears couldn't survive Shein and Temu. The number worth holding for any brand targeting young people: the share of 12-15s shopping online has increased by 40% since 2021. Gen Alpha still likes being in a store. They just don't need one to buy. GWI Kids

🌍 50+ nations met in Santa Marta, Colombia this week for the first ever talks on transitioning away from fossil fuels. The US, China, India, Russia and Japan weren't there. Among consumers, 38% say helping the environment is one of the most important issues facing the world, and 49% believe it will get better in the next six months. GWI Core

👟 On Sunday, Sabastian Sawe became the first person in history to run a sanctioned marathon in under two hours — 1:59:30 at the London Marathon, wearing Adidas. The shoe, three years in the making, is now the most talked-about gear in running. Runners are 39% more likely than average to discover new brands through celebrity and influencer endorsements, and 35% more likely to notice in-store displays. GWI Core

Meet the audience: Moviegoers

Researchers at the University of Bristol have built a 35-seat Smart Cinema that measures heart rates and biometric responses while people watch films. The premise: what an audience feels in the moment could be a more honest signal of what they think of a film than what they remember when the lights come up.

It's a useful frame for thinking about who actually goes to the movies. The assumption is familiar — teenagers on dates, families with restless kids, retirees on a weekday afternoon. 

But moviegoers typically skew Millennial. They make up 40% of the audience, 23% more likely than average to be there. These are people in an active life stage — 55% more likely than average to be expecting a child in the next six months, 58% more likely to be getting a new pet, and 46% own a dog. 9.4% are in the highest income bracket, 82% more likely than average. And the occupation that overindexes most? Software developers, 95% more likely than average to be in that seat. 

Interestingly, only 41% say they're interested in film and cinema — 10% below the average person. Whatever is drawing them to the movies, it isn't simply a love of film. Importantly for marketers, moviegoers are also 43% more likely than average to discover a new brand from an ad on the big screen. It's one of the last places where their phone stays in their pocket. GWI Core

Chart of the week

Last week, the world's largest EV battery manufacturer unveiled a battery that charges from near-empty to almost full in six minutes. The EV industry has spent years focused on two problems: cars cost too much, and there aren't enough places to charge them. Both are reasonable things to work on.

The chart tells a different story about what consumers are actually worried about. Battery lifetime and driving range sit at the top, concerns about whether the technology itself holds up, not whether it's affordable or accessible. Further down, two findings are easy to miss but hard to ignore: 16.9% worry their EV will lose its value faster than a conventional car, and 11.6% fear the technology will date quickly, like a smartphone that can no longer run its apps. These aren't fringe concerns. They're the anxiety of buying into something that's still visibly evolving.

It turns out the price tag is a hurdle, not a brick wall. The bigger distance to close is convincing consumers the technology will go the distance.

More from GWI

• Gen Alpha might not pay the bills yet — but they're already influencing what goes in the cart. Find out who they really are.
• The gap between what consumers say about big issues and how they show up is rarely simple. Connecting the Dots 2026 gets into why.