Last summer you couldn’t move far without seeing shade #DA1884 – which you might know better as Barbie Pink, the undisputed color of 2023. But for anyone wanting to jump on the seasonal design bandwagon this time around, #8ace00 is the hex code you need – the acid green shade picked by Charli XCX that’s becoming more visible during this “Brat summer”of ours. Bring on the memes.
Scroll down to read about ketchup collabs, Cristiano Ronaldo’s heart rate, and a non-alcoholic opportunity.
Stats to power your week
🍷 Non-alcoholic beer is the most popular booze-free beverage around the world. But it’s not the one people want to drink the most. That honor actually goes to non-alcoholic wine – so whoever cracks the taste formula has a strong potential market as their reward. Get those grape-crushing feet at the ready. GWI Alcohol
🍅 Heinz has produced some eye-catching brand collaborations in recent years, including cult fried chicken brand Morley’s and fashion brand Kate Spade. Inspired to look into our own data, we can reveal the label with the biggest overlap of ketchup superfans (AKA, daily consumers) is actually Barbour. Wax jackets are harder to stain, we guess. GWI Zeitgeist / GWI Core
🫡 Are “quiet vacations” the new quiet quitting? It’s best not to let social media trends guide you away from what people are actually thinking – since 2020, there’s been a 15% increase in the number of UK consumers who describe themselves as career-focused, and a 15% increase in the number who describe themselves as money-driven. GWI Core
🔨 One place where a career focus is lower on the agenda is Greece, where only 11% describe themselves as career-focused – something to bear in mind as the country introduces a six-day working week for some industries.
😳 In cooler news, LG is taking care of flustered customers with a new initiative: “Menopause Mode”, an integration between a smartwatch app and air conditioning unit that helps cool down those experiencing hot flashes. With 1 in 5 women worldwide experiencing menopause, it’s a significant and often neglected market. GWI Zeitgeist
What’s on our radar
Voice recording is time-consuming, difficult (there are a lot of words you soon realize you don’t know how to pronounce), and people often like a big name reading to them. AI audio platform Adthos is adding hundreds of new voices and languages, while ElevenLabs has signed deals with the estates of dead actors for posthumous voiceovers.
AI is also making rapid inroads into fashion. Footwear company Yume Yume has turned to AI for its latest campaign, though some designers and brands are receiving backlash for their use of the technology.
Our research shows cinemas have struggled to recapture their customers post-pandemic, and we’re seeing signs of that as Cineworld mulls closing a quarter of its UK cinemas. Screens are having better luck in France, where the country’s annual cut-price ticket scheme has set new records.
New wearable, interactive technologies are giving sports fans opportunities to get more intel on what they’re watching. Fitness band Whoop is measuring Cristiano Ronaldo’s heart rate during a penalty shootout, the ATP tour has permitted wearable devices for tennis players for the first time, and UK company Feldspar is developing an innovative sensor-enabled running track.
One of our key predictions in our annual Connecting the Dots report was increasing interest in combat sports, and in particular, WWE. More brands are paying attention to this trend, with Manchester City Football Club and restaurant chain Bojangles signing new partnerships with the wrestling organization.
We also predicted waning interest in veganism and meat-free products, something that seems to have come to pass with McDonald’s announcing it has no plans to roll out its McPlant burger beyond its two test cities.
In 2006, the phrase “google it” entered the dictionary, a symbolic moment that represented how the search engine had become the go-to for finding information fast. Eagle-eyed observers of the recent UK election coverage might have noticed one of the pundits using ChatGPT to sense-check information – perhaps its own symbol of changing search behaviors in 2024.
Chart of the week
In our Core survey, people answer questions about what they’re personally interested in, but also what they talk about online. If you look at the interaction of these data points, you’ll find something very interesting. Some topics drive more online discussions among their fans than others, and this chart highlights the interests that most compel their followers to share their thoughts publicly.
Perhaps surprisingly, the topic with the most online commentators isn’t politics or even sports, but fashion. On the one hand it’s quite a light-hearted insight – is a new collection as important as an election? But it also demonstrates just how central it is to personal identity among its fans, that more people want to share their opinion on it than anything else.
And if you’re wondering which interest has the “quietest” followers, that honor belongs to fine art (10%). If someone dared to suggest the Mona Lisa wasn’t actually that good, maybe they’d come out of the woodwork?
Local lowdown
The music streaming capital of the world
Virtually all human cultures create and celebrate music in some form. But in our digital age, one country in particular has benefited from solid infrastructure to get better connected with music streaming, which in turn has made music even more important to its consumers.
That country is Chile, whose consumers lead the world for using the internet to access music, streaming music for more than 4 hours per day, and listening to share with family and friends.
Chile punches above its weight with internet access, thanks to a competitive telecoms market. The country has one of the fastest average broadband speeds of anywhere in the world, and just recently declared internet access a basic service (like water and electricity). And a side-effect of this provision – you get a lot of people able to play their favorite reggaeton tracks anywhere they want.
