Many thanks to those of you who filled out our reader survey. So what did we learn? For starters, you want to see more audience profiles in the newsletter, so this week we’re debuting our new “hot take” feature to shine a light on some of our audiences’ more unexpected or counterintuitive characteristics. Enjoy!
Scroll down to read about emotional support kangaroos, the Catholic revival, and our first hot take, on why Hooters is more woke than you think.
Stats to power your week
🦘 What the Balenciaga Pope was to photos, the emotional support kangaroo appears to be for videos - a cunning AI creation that’s fooling many people online. To give an idea of how hard it is to tell what’s real, in the aftermath of the deceptive pontiff photo in 2023, we found only 3 in 10 were confident in their ability to know if content was AI-generated. GWI Zeitgeist
🎶 The vinyl revival of recent years has been so successful, it’s hard to believe at one point DJs were suggesting some 18-year-olds had never even seen a record. But even as young people flock to LPs, it’s worth remembering those aged 65+ (13%) are the ones who most prefer listening from a turntable. GWI Core
🦮 Animals are getting pampered. Premium pet brand Lily’s Kitchen is on the march in the UK, with the share who buy its pet or dog food doubling since 2021. Nestle’s acquisition a year before has no doubt kept tails wagging up and down the country. GWI Core Plus
👩❤️👨 Nature or nurture? While we can’t fully determine what shapes male and female identity, we've spotted a pattern in our data - some attitudes consistently differ across countries. In every market we cover, women are more likely to be fashion-conscious, care about their appearance, feel it’s important to think positively, and value family time. Men, on the other hand, are universally more interested in tech trends and news. GWI Core
What’s on our radar
Mary Meeker - the venture capitalist known for her annual “state of the internet” trend reports - has compiled a whopper of a deck covering trends in AI, and it’s a goodie. Meanwhile, an experiment using “Am I The Asshole?” posts on Reddit shows just how sycophantic AI can be.
Renewed interest in Catholicism isn’t just due to the recent papal election and Conclave. France is reporting an increase in adult baptisms, while young American Catholics are attending Mass more often. And as the sociologist Alice Evans reminds us, much of the world’s future working-age population is extremely religious.
We’ve covered vibe coding before (writing software with natural language, especially for non-experts), but it’s had a shot in the arm in recent days. The Wall Street Journal’s run a piece on it, while music producer Rick Rubin is comparing it to punk. Meanwhile, record labels are reportedly in talks to license their music to AI firms Udio and Suno.
Google’s Veo 3 video generating model has created a Ghibli-style viral phenomenon, but it’s not just about getting realistic-looking fakes, as creators are teasingly labeling their real videos as AI-generated. For artists whose style feels similar to AI, the ambiguity can lead to backlash.
The energy drinks trend (one we called for this year) shows no signs of slowing. Celsius is broadening its outreach beyond fitness fanatics to firefighters and nurses, while Anheuser-Busch is tapping into another trend - combat sports - to roll out its latest energy drink product.
A side effect of climate change is traditional summer events having to move to accommodate heatwaves, like what’s happening in Japan. And tourism habits are also shifting in response to extreme heat.
Chart of the week
As mentioned above, Google’s Veo 3 is just the latest in a number of impressive AI tech releases which have provided breakthroughs in rendering realistic video, imagery, audio, and text. Given these new capabilities, you’d assume consumers are getting more excited about the possibilities of AI-generated media.
But the reality is very different - consumers haven’t really become any more interested in it, even as the underlying technology improves. As we often see in our research, tech capability’s one thing, but consumer appetite for it is another.
There are some exceptions, though. Consumers have become more receptive to AI-generated podcasts (perhaps helped by the release of Google’s NotebookLM), while progress has also been made for AI-generated ads. Maybe human advertisers need to up their game?
🔥Hot take
Punchy perspectives, with data that nudges the narrative
“Hooters is more woke than you think”
Since iconic (b)restaurant Hooters filed for administration earlier this year, we’ve been digging into its audience. The stereotype is lonely old men looking for a bit of company and titillation - but the data tells a different story.
For starters, 3 in 10 of Hooters’ clientele are women. “Very liberal” Americans are just as likely to go there as “very conservative” ones. And “very religious” Americans are actually more likely to visit regularly than the average consumer.
That last group offers a clue: many Hooters fans are Hispanic, with particularly strong representation among Colombian expats. In much of Latin America, attitudes toward bodily display differ from those in the US - beauty pageants, for example, are well-established - and some of its Colombian franchises lean more family-friendly than risqué.
So in the event Hooters is no more, and you’re imagining who’ll mourn it the most, it might be time to rethink the picture. The brand's cultural footprint was broader, and more diverse, than its reputation suggested.
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