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![Creative Impact, Unpacked: WARC’s insights from Cannes Lions 2024](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/52425280-19e4-40ea-8f4f-53a95c1bddef/tile.png)
Creative Impact, Unpacked: WARC’s insights from Cannes Lions 2024
Effectiveness is at the core of what we do at WARC – Creative Impact, Unpacked, our new report, draws out the critical ideas from both our co-curated track at Cannes Lions 2024 and from around the festival – here’s what you need to know.
Why creative impact matters
Creative Impact was set up to explain and advocate for the role of creativity in building resilient brands and delivering commercial results. It features some of the world’s top marketing researchers and industry leaders sharing their latest thinking.
What’s in the report
11 themes ranging from the case for brand as made by digitally native companies through to research-backed creative strategies, the vitality of humour, the rise of commerce media, and – of course – what we picked up about AI. Here are the ideas that will help practitioners make a case for creativity with effectiveness at its heart.
Get the report
If you’re a WARC member, get the report here.
For a limited time only, access the report even if you’re yet to become a WARC member.
Creative Impact unpacked LIVE
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Advisory
Register for our Creative Impact Unpacked briefing to gain a comprehensive understanding of the essential levers for driving growth beyond creativity - specifically marketing effectiveness. This 1-hour session outlines the themes that WARC curated during the Creative Impact stream of Cannes Lions.
![How APAC companies can use embedded finance to raise CX and revenue](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/4fd5b988-543f-4e91-9caf-ee684a8868be/tile.jpg)
How APAC companies can use embedded finance to raise CX and revenue
Embedded finance technology can streamline payment processes, integrate financial products and services into non-financial platforms for a seamless user experience, and boost business opportunities and revenue streams for Asia Pacific companies across different industries.
Why embedded finance matters
As the digital needs of consumers and businesses evolve, there is a growing demand for integrated financial services. Financial institutions that offer embedded finance products will create value by enhancing the customer experience with new and innovative solutions.
Takeaways
- Embedded finance products make everyday activities more convenient and help retain customers in a competitive market.
- Partnering with non-financial platforms...
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![Tesco touts premium own-label meal offerings](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/5c7bb978-aca4-4d6a-ba5c-3d9fd9689495/tile.png)
Tesco touts premium own-label meal offerings
Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, is extending its upmarket Finest range as it targets consumers unable or unwilling to afford restaurant prices.
What’s happening
- Tesco is eyeing an additional £1bn in sales from its Finest range of foods. CEO Ken Murphy told the Financial Times that the quality of its range was now as good as those of rivals Sainsbury and Waitrose, if not – yet – at the level of Marks & Spencer.
- Murphy said there had been “a massive step change in our product culture, from an innovation point of view”, thanks to new hires tasked with improving Finest.
- Finest options are increasingly included in dine-in-for-two offers of the sort popularised by Marks & Spencer, with the retailer’s executive chef claiming “This is restaurant-quality now”.
- Finest represents a trade up from a core own-brand product, but, said Murphy, “it is a massive saving versus eating out because eating out has become way more expensive relative to food”.
Why own-label products matter
Own-label products were once seen as the poor relative of brands, but that’s no longer the case, as retailers pile into premium own-label offerings. Kantar data shows that, over the past 12 months, spending on supermarkets’ own premium labels has increased almost twice as fast as all their other own brands (12% vs 6.9%).
And as the big supermarkets use their clout and space to target the top end of the eating-in market, assembling entire meal options under their own imprimatur, that spells trouble for some food brands and for the hospitality trade.
Sourced from Financial Times
[Image: Tesco Finest]
![Why it's important to cultivate wellbeing in a poly-crisis world](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/e96c56a7-b926-47a7-ba53-59a8431767f1/tile.png)
Why it's important to cultivate wellbeing in a poly-crisis world
Brands and marketers can alleviate the impact of the multiple crises the world is experiencing and make a meaningful difference by helping us to regain our self-esteem and sense of control.
Why wellbeing matters
An onslaught of multiple crises – soaring inflation, the increased cost of living, climate change, mental health and social inequality – is causing people to search for a sense of control, which health and wellbeing can help to achieve. Brands can also elevate this sense of control by making a meaningful difference through leadership, distinctiveness and functional benefit.
Takeaways
- As the world feels more disordered and...
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![Brands need to prepare for AI commerce](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/5cb28943-89b1-4b05-aabc-8c842e05abf1/tile.jpg)
Brands need to prepare for AI commerce
AI commerce is coming and “it’s going to utterly change the dynamics of how we shop online”, according to Spark Foundry MD Marcos Angelides.
He was speaking at the recent IPA Business Growth conference, where he outlined two separate trends – AI personas and AI commerce – that marketers may have to address sooner rather than later.
AI personas
- Virtual influencers are already common in China, where they can livestream all day, every day. A new development is human influencers “AI-ifying” themselves, training a custom GPT on their own library of content and then monetising the virtual version through fans paying to have conversations.
- One is estimated to be raking in $300k a month in this way and the major platforms are experimenting with creating virtual personas of celebrities.
- Brands are starting to think about how they might work with these virtual versions and how those relationships might differ from those with the real person.
AI commerce
- Angelides’ own experience points to how this might work: liking the shirt of a character in a TV drama, he took a screenshot and asked ChatGPT for occasions when he could wear such a shirt, then added a picture of himself to get personalised styling advice.
- More prompting brought a shortlist of different products from different retailers at different price points. “The only thing that’s missing is giving it a credit card and saying, ‘Go out and buy this’,” Angelides suggested.
- A similar approach could be applied to the weekly food shop, he added: here’s a family of four, two children, what they won’t eat and the budget – create recipes (with a 20-minute cooking time) for the week, order the ingredients and have them delivered by Thursday.
What it means
- “From a shopper’s perspective, from a customer’s perspective, it’s going to be amazing,” said Angelides. “It’s going to utterly change the way that we think. You focus more on the family time, rather than the shopping that sits behind it.”
- “From a brand perspective, it opens up a lot of questions. What does it mean for brand positioning when you’re dependent on an AI to shortlist the products that people select? That’s what’s coming, effectively.”
What brands should do
- Don’t think about this from a ChatGPT perspective, is Angelides’ advice. “AI effectively just works like a human. So think how would a human recommend a certain product?”
- That means considering things like search, social buzz, PR coverage. “In many ways, AI commerce is going to reinforce the importance of full touch points, organized comms – the marketing fundamentals – the only thing is some of the dynamics of how you position a brand will change.”
- Talk to influencers already working in this space as a shortcut to understanding what’s coming next; conduct AI SEO audits; create test and learn models using your own data.
Key quote
“AI commerce is going to hit us like a freight train … There won’t be a point-and-click solution anymore, just a describe-and-done model. You’ll tell the AI what you want, and then they will act as your assistant to go out and do those things for you” – Marcos Angelides, Managing Director at Spark Foundry.
![VR advertising gets people to donate more to good causes](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/e990a355-99e0-4990-9b28-76adb867bbae/tile.jpg)
VR advertising gets people to donate more to good causes
Virtual reality advertising can be incredibly effective in getting people to take action or spend more money by eliciting strong emotions, with participants in one study donating 46% more to a charitable cause when VR was used.
The study explored how VR increases people's vicarious experiences in prosocial or charitable contexts, with wider implications for brands working in e-commerce and hospitality, for example.
Why virtual reality advertising matters
The global number of VR users continues to grow steadily, reaching over 170 million this year. The new technology can be effective in engaging audiences because it has a higher degree of richness than traditional media and can elicit emotions through vicarious experiences. This means it has great potential for charitable causes as well as e-commerce, retail and hospitality.
Takeaways
- Participants in the study experienced a higher level of vicarious experience and existential guilt when watching VR prosocial advertising versus traditional 2D mediums.
- The percentage of participants who decided to donate was ‘significantly higher’ with VR (86%) than without (72%).
- Participants in the VR condition donated 46% more than those using traditional media.
- Those who don’t need as much stimulation are more immune to the influence of VR, which is a limitation.
- Given the relatively high cost of VR advertising, businesses and charities should segment their target audiences carefully.
- For ethical reasons, caution should be taken whenever evoking strong emotions such as guilt for commercial reasons or otherwise.
About the study
A total of 146 participants were recruited from a Chinese university to test the effectiveness of VR advertising using headsets versus traditional 2D formats (flat screens). The advertising materials were presented in the first person perspective versus third person. The authors suggest that future studies on the role VR plays in charitable causes can conduct a more in-depth exploration of different perspectives.
Sourced from the Journal of Advertising Research
![Navigating the rise and fall of trends](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/7f2d7a74-7e44-4023-9ec5-9b8cbb9ae491/tile.jpg)
Navigating the rise and fall of trends
Countless resources are dedicated to trendspotting, analysing tipping points and dissecting product adoption curves, but understanding the demise of a trend is just as crucial as predicting its rise.
When a trend’s no longer a differentiator, it’s at an end. Understanding the lifecycle of a trend – and at which points to engage or not – is crucial for brands, says Rob Allen, strategy partner at Coley Porter Bell.
Why trendspotting matters
- Brands are constantly fighting to remain special, different – and therefore valuable – in the minds of consumers. Being first to a new trend is one way to do this.
- But as more brands jump on the bandwagon, the original idea becomes fragmented and will have different interpretations. This can create confusion for consumers and make it difficult for brands to stand out.
The life and death of a trend
Trends, like products, follow a lifecycle with three phases: Genesis, the Muddled Middle, and the Zone of Indifference. Each phase presents unique challenges and opportunities for brands seeking to differentiate through trends.
- Genesis: The Birth of an Idea: Trends in this phase can be sparked by factors such as shifts in consumer desires, advancing technology or changing values. Brands need to be selective about which apply to their brand strategy, category and business offer.
- The Muddled Middle: From Niche to Mainstream: As a trend gains momentum, it enters a middle ground where it transitions from a niche interest to a mainstream concern. Brands can no longer ignore the trend, as it becomes a key factor in consumer decision-making.
- The Zone of Indifference: Once a trend reaches widespread adoption, it becomes a standard category expectation, or remains relevant to a specific consumer segment but fails to achieve mass appeal. This could be due to price barriers, lifestyle incompatibility or limited applicability.
![Big brands have attention advantages over smaller ones](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/46ee21ac-109e-4ba4-be47-e1b5b63ba86e/tile.jpg)
Big brands have attention advantages over smaller ones
Startups and brands with low awareness and equity are at a disadvantage in advertising attention, according to research by Karen Nelson-Field, founder and CEO of measurement company Amplified Intelligence.
Why attention matters
The fact that big brands with easily recognizable logos, jingles, and taglines have an attention advantage is important in and of itself, but it also makes clear a core truth: that attention is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. More established brands have a head start, especially when factoring in that attention isn’t always all-in or all-out.
Takeaways
- Consumers’ attention is not consistent throughout individual ads. There are decays in...
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![Tom Roach: measuring the relationship between brands in AI models and market share](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/17b41733-f33b-43a4-bfa8-a6e9626903d6/tile.png)
Tom Roach: measuring the relationship between brands in AI models and market share
There’s a new share in town: ‘share of model’, proposed by the strategist and author Tom Roach, which explores how brands’ visibility in the training data of large language models as a proxy for share of market.
Why a new ‘share’ matters
Earlier proxies like share of voice and share of search helped to give marketers an indication of mental availability, itself a predictor of long-term market share growth alongside other important business effects. While the biggest brands can afford market share analysis, it remains a slow-moving measure. Tools like share proxies help practitioners to make decisions quickly, often based on freely available data.
What is worth understanding from this work is how smart people are looking beyond generative AI as a tool just to speed up image and copy creation – after all, that’s hardly the expensive part of modern advertising in an age of increasingly expensive reach.
Instead, it’s about the emerging use of LLMs as a tool for individuals’ questions, especially about things that they don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of time thinking about – brands, therefore, would do well to explore the tools that help people make decisions, however big or small. If this turns out to be the prevailing use case, a brand’s mental availability may well extend to model availability.
LLMs as knowledge navigators
The rise of generative AI raises too many questions to mention but given its emerging use as a tool for parsing information, it makes sense that eventually the tools for understanding a brand’s mentions in the market will need to be able to analyse the training data of LLMs as a brand management tool.
As Tom Roach, VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish writes, the agency is exploring how such a tool might be built.
The idea
Share of model is a theoretical proxy for mental availabilty based not only on the number of mentions of a brand in LLMs (as a proportion of all mentions of the brands in a given category) but on positioning through the help of clustering positive/negative associations compared with the competition.
What an AI large language model ‘knows’ about a brand is effectively a result of the sum total of all the stuff in the training database that has to do about a brand – “its touchpoints, its communications and, increasingly, the new content each model can find on what consumers think, feel and do in relation to it. All in one place, and all for free, or at least without the need for costly surveys and panels,” Roach writes in Marketing Week.
Does it work?
Ultimately, Roach explains, the theory will only come good if it is possible to demonstrate a relationship between share of models and market share. If so, can a brand’s position and mentions in a model even help to predict market share gains? Can it help to inform communication strategies?
For more on the topic, it’s well worth reading through some of the conversation Roach started on LinkedIn, including:
- The probabilistic nature of LLMs
- LLM training schedules
- The relationship of media spend to LLM mentions
Some of the biggest hurdles, of course, depend on the integrity of the data itself and, then, of the practitioner’s ability to get the LLM to reveal it. While in its infancy, Jellyfish’s tool will be one to watch.
Sourced from Marketing Week, WARC
![How CTV can capture the affluent Indian consumer in festive seasons](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/522fa609-cf0c-45c4-a8ee-f3c44b00c4c2/tile.jpg)
How CTV can capture the affluent Indian consumer in festive seasons
Before connected TV (CTV), reaching affluent audiences used to be challenging because of fragmented media consumption and short attention spans – but CTV’s premium content and ability to deliver personalised ads during the festive season is a growing opportunity for marketers in India.
Why connected TV matters
Connected TV’s premium content and flexible viewing experiences attract an affluent audience. Brands can tap CTV’s personalised advertising capabilities to effectively reach and connect with high-spending consumers during festive seasons to drive sales and brand loyalty.
Takeaways
- The rise of CTV is creating a two-tiered media landscape, with affluent consumers migrating to...
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![How Solo Stove's Snoop Dogg collaboration showed the value of outsized fame for business effect](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/80afdd6d-1a85-4a21-8a1b-4722fa13548c/tile.png)
How Solo Stove's Snoop Dogg collaboration showed the value of outsized fame for business effect
Solo Brands’ viral (and very funny) partnership with Snoop Dogg, which saw the world’s most famous smoker announce that he was giving up, was one of the marketing stories of 2023 – but when the company’s CEO left in early 2024, it set off a debate about whether celebrity partnerships yield business effects or whether they’re just a short-term stunt.
Speaking on the Creative Impact track at Cannes Lions 2024, Solo Brands’ CMO Luana Bumachar and The Martin Agency CEO Danny Robinson were in Cannes to set the record straight and to reveal that the real story was more complex. ...
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![It’s not political advertising as usual as CTV grows in US](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/6ac66a9b-5ec7-4e83-907d-36168fd1b12c/tile.jpg)
It’s not political advertising as usual as CTV grows in US
As the US presidential election looms, more American viewers than ever are showing a preference for CTV over traditional linear TV, with implications for the political advertising landscape.
According to a study* by LG Ad Solutions, a company specializing in cross-screen advertising, viewers across all political parties are watching less linear TV than 12 months ago: Democrats 27% less; Republicans 35% less; and Independents 39% less.
Why CTV advertising matters
According to forecasts by analytics firm AdImpact, CTV ad spend is projected to go up by 24% compared to the 2022 midterms to $1.34bn, surpassing Google and Facebook ($1.2bn), and doubling the projected combined spending on network cable, satellite, and radio ($671m). Political advertisers need to consider adapting their media strategies to take account of changing viewing habits and the targeting capabilities of CTV.
Key findings
- 84% of adults in the US (with internet) have a connected TV.
- 69% of adults (35+) prefer streaming free video content with ads (FAST) vs. having a subscription without ads (SVOD).
- 74% of CTV viewers prefer seeing ads that are relevant to their interests; this rises to 80% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans. Independents are marginally lower at 73%.
- 48% of adults (35+) feel that streaming TV ads are more relevant to them vs. traditional TV ads.
- 93% of CTV users across all parties multitask while watching TV. This includes gaming, messaging, social media, shopping, and even streaming other content.
- In the last 12 months, 10% of viewers across all parties have removed subscription apps.
*The Big Shift: Political Edition surveyed over 900 US CTV users who affiliate with a political party in February and March 2024.
Sourced from LG Ad Solutions
![Brands see trend-based social content growing](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/8128fd96-3ded-41af-aa73-fdf7c1c92326/tile.jpg)
Brands see trend-based social content growing
Three-quarters of marketers plan to increase trend-based social media content over the next 12 months, according to new research from creator agency Billion Dollar Boy.
By the numbers
- One in five brand social media posts are already dedicated to trend-based content.
- Nine in ten creators report trend-based social media content outperforms non-trend-based content.
- Four in ten (44%) say such content is more likely to drive new followers and to have a bigger reach (44%).
- A similar proportion (43%) say such content drives more engagements than non-trend-based content, while over a third of (36%) say it drives more conversions.
- One in five consumers (18%) say they would be more likely to make a purchase or consider making a purchase as a result of viewing trend-based content, while one in four (27%) say this content increases brand recall.
Why trends matters
Leveraging trend-based content not only enables brands to become more agile in responding – where appropriate – to developments in culture, but it can also help brands drive greater impact from their creator partnerships. And brands are apparently looking to do just that as nine in ten creators (89%) have been approached to make more trend-based content over the past 12 months.
But beware the pitfalls
Consumers are divided in their view of brands that jump on trends. Plus, there are plenty of other things to take into account, as the agency’s report* shows, including: short lifespan of trends (29%); brand guidelines (29%); lack of an interpretation of the trend which is authentic to the brand identity (29%); lack of an original or unique interpretation of the trend (26%); lack of creator trust (26%); sourcing and contracting the right creator partner (25%); internal approvals (24%); lack of partner agency trust (22%); legal challenges (20%).
Key quote
“Brands often struggle to balance engaging with fleeting trends and ensuring long-term success. As brands are increasingly collaborating with creators to participate in trends, the key isn’t just about picking the right trend, it’s also about choosing the right creators to partner with” – Christopher Douglas, Senior Manager of Strategy at Billion Dollar Boy.
*Finding Success with TikTok Trends is based on a survey of more than 4,000 consumers, 500 content creators and 500 senior marketers and brand managers across the US and UK.
Sourced from Billion Dollar Boy
![Colgate Palmolive thinks holistically about media strategies](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/f4554717-1ea4-4b6f-8d8f-accb28204bc9/tile.jpg)
Colgate Palmolive thinks holistically about media strategies
Colgate Palmolive has transferred management of its retail media investment programme into a broader “consumer experience and growth” department, as it aims to focus on “jobs” over “tactics”.
Building a ‘media-to-shelf’ strategy
Speaking on a panel at a Kroger Precision Marketing event at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2024, Diana Haussling, Colgate Palmolive’s North America CMO, told the audience:
- Colgate Palmolive aspires to be “people-obsessed” and focused on the insights behind consumer behaviour. These insights are then used to determine budget allocation.
- Retail media spend is deployed throughout the funnel, and not just as a means of...
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![Cash-strapped Brits looking for deals, IPA finds](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/80b3bacc-525f-4dde-85a9-d1d67a1b1a5c/tile.jpg)
Cash-strapped Brits looking for deals, IPA finds
Almost half of British consumers (45.9%) are actively looking for money-off vouchers, up 10% from last year and almost 45% higher than pre-lockdown, according to newly released data from the IPA.
The IPA research* – which monitors people’s daily lives and media habits – found that British consumers are still grappling with the effects of the cost-of-living crisis and looking for deals and discounts that will save them money at the till.
Why consumer sentiment matters
Even though interest rates are coming down and inflation has slowed, British people are still struggling to make ends meet. The IPA finds that over a third (38%) aren’t coping on their current income. Faced with economic uncertainty, the cost of an item becomes of prime importance and can lead to trading down.
Key findings
- Over a third of consumers (34.7%) often check the comparative online price of a product while looking at it in-store, up 6% year-on-year and 28.3% higher than pre-lockdown in 2020.
- Over half of consumers (55%) say they will switch brands to make use of a coupon, up nearly 3% yoy and 18% from 2020.
- 43% of consumers continue to use a range of supermarkets for their weekly grocery shopping, up slightly from last year (42.7%) but considerably higher than 2020 (37.5%).
- 31.7% of consumers report going to the pub/bar each week, down 6% yoy, and lower than in 2020 when it was 34.2%.
- Weekly restaurant visits stand at 25%, which is lower than the pre-lockdown figure of 30.6%.
Key quote
“As we see from the data, many consumers are still struggling on their current income and as a result of the strain on their purse strings are having to make considered cost-based purchasing choices. A focus on value for money and rewarding loyalty may therefore prove vital for brands and their agencies in terms of their communication with their customers in these ongoing tough economic times” – Belinda Beeftink, director of Media Research, IPA.
*The findings for IPA’s TouchPoints 2024 are based on data from over 6,053 British adults (15+ and older).
Sourced from the IPA
![65% of Indian CEOs doubt marketing's commercial value](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/3eee9e47-d0d2-4c6b-b071-c3707d1d82fd/tile.png)
65% of Indian CEOs doubt marketing's commercial value
A crisis in confidence about marketing effectiveness in India is caused by factors such as an expectation mismatch among the C-suite, according to research by The Womb India, in collaboration with Quantum Research and The Effectiveness Partnership.
Why effective marketing in India matters
The C-suite debate comes into sharp focus because marketers feel the global economic uncertainty squeezing their budgets and ability to deliver growth. In India, this debate also comes at an inflection point for one of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing advertising markets to harness its economic momentum effectively.
The expectation mismatch
- 60% of...
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![How Shein is softening its image ahead of its IPO](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/acd5e6e4-e327-4927-a566-7417b2b00a6b/tile.png)
How Shein is softening its image ahead of its IPO
Fast-fashion titan Shein is pledging investments in the UK and Europe to tackle the sector’s waste problem, amid frequent criticism of the company’s business model, and as it gears up for its stock market listing.
Why Shein’s charm offensive matters
No stranger to marketing to consumers, Shein – like other ultra-cheap supply chain innovators such as Temu – now faces the challenge of bolstering its reputation among legislators, regulators, and investors.
What’s going on
It’s making changes to some of its suppliers – though the vast majority remain in China – but the tax loophole that exempts items under a certain value on a per-parcel basis is now under threat from new European rules. As a result, the company has started to talk up its commitments to both Europe and the UK with a €200m investment in a “Circularity Fund”, which will entail:
- “Investing in early-stage start-ups working on textile-to-textile recycled materials innovation and related areas.
- “Entering into offtake agreements or other commercial partnerships with more mature start-ups with existing production capacity in textile-to-textile recycled materials or new and emerging preferred fibres.”
In context
It’s worth noting that €200m is a drop in the $2bn (€1.8bn) ocean that were its profits last year. But it comes amid not only scrutiny but also envy as established firms like Amazon mull similar offerings.
Its ferocious growth is also critical to online advertising growth. China-headquartered companies in the online commerce space – Shein began in China but is now based in Singapore – are now vital to companies like Meta, not only by providing spending themselves but also by driving other Chinese companies to copy its advertising lead.
It’s not the company’s first charm offensive in its long road to IPO. Back in 2023, the company sought to nearshore to Mexico and Brazil to bolster its position in the US while partnering with Indian giants like Reliance Retail to improve its standing in the subcontinent.
Following a stalled US listing – a result of allegations of forced labour in its supply chain – the company filed confidentially for a London listing in late June.
Sourced from Shein Newsroom, CNBC, WARC
![Ipsos explores threat of AI to market research](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/49c141a6-bec9-4e08-bca8-1291995e0e26/tile.jpg)
Ipsos explores threat of AI to market research
Ipsos has identified several new AI threats to the online collection of data for market research purposes, concluding that the industry will need to adopt a ‘multilayered approach’ that includes learning and adapting continuously.
The market research company tested how likely it was that ‘bad actors’ would manipulate surveys, given how much easier the emergence of new technology can make it. While it found very little tampering in the experiment, the US and India have emerged as potentially higher risk for this activity.
Why it matters
Ensuring data quality is a top priority for both market research agencies and...
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![Why not listening is costing companies money](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/d5706367-8d22-4977-bc08-dc17e783b400/tile.jpg)
Why not listening is costing companies money
It’s getting harder to make smart business decisions because of the noisy and overloaded world we live in and this comes at a huge financial cost, says TedX speaker, author and behavioural scientist Nuala Walsh.
The average Fortune 500 company loses $250m per annum as a result of not properly tuning in, Walsh estimates. “We misjudge a lot more than ever before. This isn’t just about who you hear, but it’s also about who hears. And Harvard suggests that your decisions are no greater than a coin toss,” she told an audience at Nudgestock 2024, the behavioural science conference hosted by Ogilvy Consulting.
Why tuning in and listening matters
According to Walsh, we hear what we want to hear and this selective way of listening leaves us exposed to huge risks. The result is that people tend to jump to conclusions and develop biases that entrench their views even further. In the case of a company or a brand, there are risks to making decisions based only on limited or faulty information, such as being cancelled because of misjudging the mood.
Takeaways
- Walsh identified several decision-making biases or ‘misjudgement traps’ that arise from not listening properly, including believing you are right despite evidence (certainty bias) or a crowd-based bias based on faulty groupthink, as well as power-based biases that drown out other voices.
- Walsh called these traps ‘pervasive’ and said that success is no immunity to falling into them.
- One solution is ‘decision friction’, or taking the time to reinterpret what someone has said to you. Don’t take it at face value, advised Walsh, just “because it’s someone who’s popular or familiar to you or someone that you like”.
- Another solution is to make ‘decision rules’: for example, you can make a rule to ask at least three different people about something before making up your mind, or telling yourself never to make a big decision on Fridays.
The big idea
“If you tune in, you hear what other people don’t, you gain a source of advantage that other people just don’t have. And not only that, but you do make smarter decisions in time, on time and over time” – Nuala Walsh, adjunct professor, Trinity College, Dublin.
![X stutters while Threads struggles](https://cdn.warc.com/Images/Feed//en-GB/8a09c590-f531-4a39-ab73-febb4d034d67/tile.jpg)
X stutters while Threads struggles
Despite Elon Musk’s conciliatory tone at the recent Cannes Lions festival, advertisers are yet to return in numbers to his X platform; at the same time, Meta’s rival Threads platform has yet to really take off.
By the numbers
- Threads now has 175 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted recently. While that’s 25 million more than in April it’s still tiny in comparison to sister brands Instagram (2 billion+) and Facebook (3 billion+). Daily user numbers are estimated by Sensor Tower at 38 million.
- At X, the number of monthly users is claimed to be 600 million while daily active users stand at 251 million, per the Financial Times.
Where the problems lie
- “Threads still seems like a platform in search of a mission,” Lia Haberman, digital strategist and author of the ICYMI newsletter, told the Washington Post. “The focus isn’t news. It’s not about visual creativity or video, like Instagram or TikTok. So what is it?”
- “Threads is low stakes,” according to one content creator, but in an attempt to change that perception, Threads is now offering cash incentives to creators who can generate engagement on the platform.
- In Cannes, Musk declared himself a fan of entertaining advertising and talked up the targeting capabilities on X while also suggesting “brand safety should no longer be an issue”. But it seems that advertisers aren’t buying that.
- Adweek reports that spending on the platform is down 20% in 2024 to $628m (figures from MediaRadar), while the number of companies advertising is down 11% (from nearly 12,000 to 10,600).
What are the prospects?
- In a presidential election year, the volume of (divisive) political content on X is worrying many advertisers who aren’t convinced that brand safety issues have been resolved.
- And whatever the targeting capabilities Musk promises, some advertisers point to the available ad products being less competitive than those on rival platforms.
- “If Threads was a start-up we wouldn’t be questioning whether it had made its mark,” according to Haberman. “They’d burn through their VC money and then quietly fold or be acquired by another player. I don’t see how Mark Zuckerberg continues to pump money into a platform where the biggest draw so far is that it’s a less toxic alternative to Twitter.”
Sourced from Washington Post, Financial Times, Adweek
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