23 August 2023

Hi folks,

It’s getting to that point in the summer where a brisk wind and changing of the leaves sound pretty nice. Alas, the pumpkin spice lattes aren’t ready yet – grab an iced drink instead, and cool off with some fresh insights.

Scroll down to read about Black Business Month, box office hits, and battling your fears (we believe in you).

Stats to power your week

🎾 The US Open (the tennis one) begins next week. While we don’t know who’ll pick up the Tiffany & Co trophy (the TiffTroph?) we do know that tennis fans are 62% more likely than the average sports fan to purchase sports collectibles – ideal to know for the pre-tournament fan week. We’ll take a pair of wristbands, please. GWI Sports 

🫶🏾 To celebrate Black Business Month, TikTok is hosting a web series that showcases Black-owned businesses thriving on the app. Over the past six months, 21% of Americans said they supported businesses that prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. This rises to 29% among Black and African Americans, and 33% among members of the LGBTQ+ community. GWI USA Plus

💻 According to a new LinkedIn report, it’s looking like AI won’t take our jobs (fingers crossed), but it is valuable to have AI skills as it may change the way jobs are done. In 12 key markets, the top activity consumers say they use AI for is work (32%), so it looks like they’re already off to a good start. GWI Zeitgeist 

💉 The weight loss trend of 2023 isn’t a diet, it’s an injection. Whether you know it as semaglutide, Ozempic or Wegovy, if you haven’t stumbled across it on social media yet, you soon will. But the idea of losing weight by these means is still controversial – only 32% support healthcare providers offering them. GWI Core / GWI Zeitgeist

💃 Barbie, Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and the Women’s World Cup have all demonstrated  the untapped potential of women’s buying power. And marketing to women can often provide a “multiplier effect” – while word-of-mouth is only the joint-4th most popular brand discovery source for men, it’s joint-top for women. GWI Core

What’s on our radar

Content moderation at scale is one of the fundamental challenges of the internet – something OpenAI is touting its ability to address with its latest release. In many ways, AI tech is still waiting for a breakout product and brand, something Google is looking to resolve by reportedly working on a virtual life coach. 

One lesser-spotted consequence of AI is the ability for well-known voices to live forever – the opening weekend of the EPL had its scores read out by the reconstructed voice of an announcer who died in 2014. A fan project repurposing voices of the (very much living) Scooby-Doo actors, however, didn’t go down well. 

Amazon is the latest retailer to add AI summaries of consumer reviews, while Australian homeware retailer Temple & Webster is leaning hard into the tech to avoid what it calls the “retail recession”. Expect a lot more of what you see when buying stuff online to be AI-generated next year. 

Aldi, the grocery retailer, is now in the sneaker game with a $13 dollar unisex shoe. 

In case you forgot, it's back-to-school season. Cheez-It and Recess Therapy are prepping by talking to kids about facing their fears and it’s all sorts of wholesome. 

UK retailers are putting their money where their undergarments are. Morrisons has teamed up with the National Health Service to include cancer advice labels in its boxers and bras, while Tesco has become the first retailer to cover the cost of value added tax in its range of period underwear.

Chart of the week

The campaigns for the 2024 presidential election are already ramping up, and people are thinking about their votes. Some of the most interesting groups to look at are those with the biggest increase in voting intention, as they will be crucial in any outreach over the next 12 months or so.

We can see three broad categories emerge: young alternative types, business travelers, and expectant/new parents. The latter two make a lot of sense – it’s natural to think more about potential trade deals (or carbon taxes) and your child’s future when it comes to election time.

This group of young extreme sports fans is even more interesting – one of the big political battlegrounds of the next year might just be the MMA octagon. 

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