The scrap for the UK’s best Christmas ad is well underway. And this year the crown might go to an unlikely candidate – Charlie’s Bar in Enniskillen. As Binley Mega Chippy and capybaras have already shown us, the growth of TikTok is letting unsung heroes challenge the big boys.
Scroll down to read about an ascendant Aldi, a Tijuana tipple, and the allure of pseudo-French branding.
Stats to power your week
✉️ Quiet quitting is never far from the headlines, but who exactly is most likely to quit their job? A quarter of waiting staff plan to walk out in the next 6 months, but the job role with the fewest potential quitters is, appropriately enough, risk consultants (1%). Seems like they decided the risk isn’t worth it. GWI Core
🥗 Is the paleo diet facing its own Ice Age? All diets have their moment in the sun before falling out of the cultural zeitgeist, and it looks like it’s paleo’s turn to exit stage left – the number who follow it globally has dropped 24% year-on-year. GWI Core Plus
đź›’ The online shopping basket is a leaky one. 28% of global consumers abandoned an online purchase in the last week alone, with the most common reasons being finding a cheaper alternative, and then discovering shipping costs too much or takes too long. GWI Zeitgeist
♟️ We recently said bok to the latest arrival to the GWI family, Croatia, which became the 53rd market in our Core survey. Here’s a fun fact about the Land of a Thousand Islands – it leads the world for interest in board games. Little wonder when the šahovnica, the country’s coat of arms, is an actual chess board. GWI Core
🍫 As Mars acquires the premium chocolate brand Hotel Chocolat, we’ve unwrapped the details on who exactly enjoys their products the most. Near the top of the tree, with 32% enjoying a taste of the Chocolat, are people who visit Pret a Manger. It seems like if you like one British brand with a French name, you probably like them all. Call it that je ne sais quoi. GWI Core / GWI Core Plus
What’s on our radar
Quibi may have folded in 2020, but there’s increasing investment in premium short-form content. Adam McKay-backed series Cobell Energy recently premiered on social platforms, while “microdramas” have been a thing in China for a while. Meanwhile, The Amazing Digital Circus has enjoyed great success from its YouTube pilot.
As consumers are focusing more on their pursestrings than brand purpose, businesses are following. The bigwigs in adland are talking about reaching “peak purpose”, while Wall Street is pulling out of sustainable investing.
A study of 12,000 children in the United States found no evidence that screen time had a negative impact on brain function or wellbeing.
Whisper it, but communications around climate change might be entering a new stage: one of cautious optimism. And English wine is one example of how climate change is already disrupting consumer markets.
Paying for social media was at one time a fringe idea, but more platforms are offering premium tiers, with Snapchat testing a monthly subscription and Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) trialing pay-to-view content.
With OpenAI’s image generator Dall-E now baked into ChatGPT Plus, more and more AI-inspired memes are emerging. A current favorite is “make it more”, where ChatGPT is encouraged to visualize progressively spicier ramen, among many other things.
Chart of the week
As a viral tweet from last year explained, if you see people wearing tweed and corduroy in the aisles of Aldi, then you know there’s some big changes going on in supermarket shopping habits.
Thanks to an uncertain economy, consumers of all income levels are trading down to some degree – even households with an annual income in the six figures.
Part of it is a pattern we observe time and time again when a recession or inflation hits. Sometimes consumers tighten their belts because they have to, others do because they want to be seen as being prudent. Perceptions may also be shifting about where high-quality products can come from, and how much they actually need to cost.
Local lowdown
Mexican Irish Cream
For many households, the winter season isn’t complete without a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream in the house. But the taste for Diageo’s cream liqueur goes far beyond its homeland. Despite the name, you’re actually more likely to find a Baileys drinker in Tijuana than Tipperary.
To those who might be more used to sipping it in front of a fireplace at Christmas, the Baileys offering does look a little different in Mexico. A few years ago Diageo launched an exclusive churros flavor (now available in some other markets too), and you can also find it in a multipack DIY version of the local favorite cocktail, the corajillo.
So next time you quaff a glass, a Salud might be as appropriate as a Sláinte.
