Founded to sell gear to outdoorsmen, Abercrombie & Fitch was once so masculine-coded that Ernest Hemingway bought guns from there (long story). Today, women make up the majority of A&F shoppers: 55%, up from 46% in 2020. A farewell to arms, a hello to mall girls?
Scroll down to read about gaming, gas prices, and government-sanctioned dating.
PS: No newsletter from us next week due to vacations, we’ll be in your inboxes again on October 21st.
Stats to power your week
🚺Another audience whose gender dynamics have changed more than you might think is Reddit. Although historically associated with programming, gaming, and science, it’s become a broad church in recent years. Its regular user base is now close to gender parity: 48% female, up from 28% in 2020. GWI USA
🏈 The verdict is in on the Sydney Sweeney spots that may or may not have contributed to sports-prediction marketplace Novig quadrupling its valuation. When asked what word they’d use to describe the ads, men mainly went for “attention-grabbing” (45%) while women went for "inappropriate" above all else (32%). A big difference for sure, but very few on either side went as far as describing it as “offensive”. GWI Pulse
🕹️ It might not be totally surprising to learn that 8-15-year-olds are most likely to use their devices / internet connection to play games for fun (65%) - just beating out talking to friends (57%). But even among girls - typically more interested in “people” than “things” - gaming is just as likely to be the preferred way to unwind. GWI Kids
👶 Government initiatives to boost falling fertility rates have reached new levels with Singapore launching a new dating app to pair up government workers. But with a quarter of its young singletons expecting to start dating in the next 6 months, how does it compare with other countries? Norway (52%) has the most active singles, with low-fertility Japan (10%) at the bottom. GWI Core
Meet the audience: Stay-put motorists
Without GWI data
With GWI data
In a 2012 press conference, Barack Obama asked the rhetorical question: “do you think the President of the United States going into reelection wants gas prices to go up higher?”. Admittedly this year is the midterm part of the cycle, but Donald Trump is facing the issue that’s afflicted many previous presidents: gas prices are rising, and consumers are feeling the pinch.
Their behavior is responding in turn: three in four US drivers affected by rising fuel costs say they're driving less, and a quarter are driving a lot less.This will have ripple effects on store visits, spontaneous spending, and out-of-home media exposure. So knowing who is choosing to curtail their movements is pretty important.
It’s an audience without much historical context to draw from - showing the importance of up-to-date research in understanding who they are. Without that, AI falls back on a suburban parent trying to make a car-dependent routine even more efficient. It makes some intuitive sense, but consumers who’ve stopped driving the most are actually older, settled households without children at home, with more freedom to choose if they make a journey at all.
Chart of the week
Spain’s government has called for a general election for November this year, with the election being pitched largely as a referendum on housing policy: one side favoring increased supply of homes, and the incumbent government making the case for increased protection for tenants - including rent controls.
As covered by John Burn-Murdoch, it’s a rare example of housing policy moving to the very top of the agenda in a high-income country. But the data shows just how divided the property-owning and property-renting classes are.
This week’s core insight is that people who rent are more likely to think that caps on housing costs - the kind proposed by the Spanish government - are effective. That might seem obvious, but consider what this data is saying: it’s not whether they want them, it’s whether they think they’ll work full stop. Material interests don’t just shape what people want, they also inform how they believe the world actually works.
More from GWI
Everyone’s talking about synthetic data, but how accurate is it really, and how do you do it right? Our Chief Insights Officer Jason Mander will reveal all in a webinar on October 15th - tune inhere.
Our director of research services Peter Kent recently joined the Leaders Worth Knowing podcast to address a commonly asked question: just what does the audience for women’s sport actually look like?
