consumers would like their smartphones to recognize their daily commute and suggest picking up coffee on the way
Sounds like a job for AI personal assistants.
the ability to take photos of products they see with their smartphones and be automatically directed to the product page for purchase
The traditional search engine as a mass platform is dead.
they want integrated shopping and entertainment experiences
So do the streaming platforms, Amazon has been working at this for a while.
Moral of the story: shoppers want experiences to be low friction and multi-modal.
influencers aren’t as influential as they once were
&
the creation of modern content experiences is shown to be one of the most effective ways to build trust
But
Only 5% said they’re more likely to purchase new brands instead of brands they trust.
Is owned media the new influencer channel?
Is discovery dead?
What makes consumers trust brands?
I think this is the shine coming off TikTok.
Consumers know influencers are the new sales people and they’ve been burned one too many times by crap products, which makes them wary of unfamiliar brands too. So they’ll check out the brand’s channels to see if they’re legit, which means investing in content.
According to Etsy the trends of the season are all about whimsy, comfort, and nostalgia.
I consider this a post-pandemic rebound trifecta.
Sephora’s recent biannual sale snafu carries two good lessons.
It may be time to rethink the mass drop model since serve scaling is expensive. Ticketmaster has been getting blasted for the same thing. But if you’re going to drop, at least have decent messaging ready for when things crash.
Maybe sales can become brand holidays instead of just accounting exercises. Sephora runs two sales a year and shoppers plan for them. They don’t need to align with a shopping holiday, they are a shopping holiday for the stans. And that’s much more valuable.
Generations are garbage but the rise of dupes amongst younger shoppers is probably a sign of mainstream shopping behavior to come.
“Dupes,” short for “duplicate,” are cheaper alternatives to premium or luxury consumer products
Inflation and rising interest rates has destroyed weak brand loyalty and could make it more common for people to buy a dupe as a proof of concept purchase before shelling out for the name brand version.
The OpenAI carnival did give us marketers an early holiday gift, a reminder:
In today’s world, the story matters. You’ll either tell your story or your story will get told for you.
Being able to tell your story before someone else tells it is so important.
Who is telling yours?
(Letting the customers tell it is not a bad thing, as long as their story matches yours (or is close enough))
Ah yes, of course. Makes total sense. Only logical end point.
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023
We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
From Adweek:
Mobile and desktop ad-block rates are experiencing a gradual uptick, increasing by 11% in 2023 from 2021, according to ad-filtering tech firm Eyeo and its 2023 Ad-Filtering Report.
Buoyed by the work-from-home trend, the rate of ad blocking on desktops in the U.S. reached 27% by the end of the second quarter this year, according to the report by Eyeo. The ad-blocking rate on mobile phones is 22%.
This will increase the value of social and search advertising along with podcast (and audio more broadly), newsletter, and CTV ads.
YouTube ads are valuable when in-app.
If you don’t feel like spending your Thanksgiving arguing about gag orders or OpenAI or Fed rates, I got you covered.
Argue about how generations are garbage instead!
Long story short: they’re inexact buckets that have come to be used as shorthand.
From a marketing perspective: ditch generations as audience definitions and use actual words with actual meanings.
Do the work. Know your audience.
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