In line with people “adding luxury and indulgence around the margins,” the self-gifting trend is forecast to grow this year.

Most holiday shoppers (83%) plan to buy themselves a gift this year, up from 76.2% last year, according to JLL’s holiday shopping report.

Survey says…

69% of consumers worldwide say email is their preferred communication channel with brands

Brands need to be cautious about sending too many emails, because 25% of consumers worldwide unsubscribe from brand email and texts at least once per week

The bonus for brands is the first-party data email sign ups collect.

The bigger your list, the smaller your ad budget can be (depending on your business goals).

If you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will do it for you.

-Deb Chachra

via A Learning A Day

• Consumers continue to focus on value, and are responding to price reductions

• Smaller form factors — minis — also drove growth, “with travel on the rise and consumers looking for a little bit of affordable indulgence for at-home, too.”

These insights are from Target’s Q2 earnings call.

This was the trend of the summer: reining in COVID revenge spending but still adding luxury and indulgence around the margins, just downsized.

This holiday season projects to be a value bonanza

Video is the most compelling form of content: 63% of B2B buyers say that short-form social video content helps inform buying decisions, with 80% of those who consume video content saying that video-focused influencer content is one of the most trusted forms of content in B2B.

B2B buyers, they’re just like us!

Short form video has taken over. (Of course, this also means a new format / medium is next.)

• When you are running prospecting ads at a large scale, you often need to “over explain” the benefits and value props in your ad.

• If this isn’t a retargeting campaign, then it’s considered cold traffic. For this audience, simplifying the product and re-iterating all of the key value props is a must to get the most out of your media at scale.

• My favorite framework is to first write out how you would explain what you’re selling to a friend over text. Then write out the answer to, “Why did you buy this”, but think of someone asking that in a condescending tone. Combine that and you have an amazing prospecting ad.

I love a question that makes you alter your perspective, so the “why did you buy this” idea above is right up my alley.

Fun listen about Formula 1 as a brand and it’s accidental rise in popularity.

Pandemic + Netflix doc + TikTok + creator economy = Formula 1’s (American) ascension

Doc popularity was a surprise to Netflix.

Now there’s a major sport with a differentiated audience demo compared to the legacy leagues.

We study the macroeconomic implications of narratives, defined as beliefs about the economy that spread contagiously. In an otherwise standard business-cycle model, narratives generate persistent and belief-driven fluctuations. Sufficiently contagious narratives can "go viral," generating hysteresis in the model's unique equilibrium. Empirically, we use natural-language-processing methods to measure firms' narratives. Consistent with the theory, narratives spread contagiously and firms expand after adopting optimistic narratives, even though these narratives have no predictive power for future firm fundamentals. Quantitatively, narratives explain 32% and 18% of the output reductions over the early 2000s recession and Great Recession, respectively, and 19% of output variance.

For all our advancements, we’re still a storytelling species subject to animal spirits. Interpreting the shadows cast by the communal fire and sense making through story.

Narratives matter.

Glamming up a robot risks overpromising what the robot as a product can actually do.  That risks disappointing customers. And disappointed customers are not going to be an advocate for your product/robot, nor be repeat buyers.

Replace “robot” with whatever you sell.

Marketing and selling is a series of promises made to a potential customer. The product better keep—or better yet, exceed—those promises.

The spectacle should be ancillary to the product—an attention magnet. The spectacle shouldn’t be the promise.