#09 Digital Clothing, Black Friday Psychology & Tax Transparency
As it’s the end-of-year tradition, there are a lot of predictions coming our way in the next few weeks on the future of advertising and marketing. I can only recommend this series of posts that try to address the source of our current marketing pains. In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, and let’s get into this week’s edition.
⚡️Fast culture (something popular/trendy this week)
Digital clothing has been around for a while, but last week Hot:Second’s pop-up shop in Shoreditch attracted a lot of attention. In exchange for a donation of a piece of clothing, you could try on a digital garment of your choice.
Different behaviours have made digital clothing possible. For instance, gamers have been spending money in expensive skins for their online characters to showcase their personality since forever. Influencers are also driving this behaviour, their business depends on maintaining and reinventing their online presence (and everyone knows that returning “unused” clothes after a photoshoot is standard practice). There’s an environmental benefit in digital fashion’s minimal carbon footprint. And the fashion industry will embrace this trend at scale when it proves it can deliver profit.
What is driving this: in a world where the size of your following gives status and social capital, digital clothes that enhance our virtual identity might be more valuable than a piece of clothing.
🌎Slow culture (change in behaviours or values in society)
Seeing that today is Black Friday, a commercial event that has been happening since 1952, looking at the psychology behind the event can tell us a little bit about people’s motivations. According to this paper “Black Friday and Cyber Monday, understanding consumer intentions” even though people find CyberMonday much more convenient than Black Friday, they find more enjoyment in shopping at the mall than shopping online. Why? Consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow PhD says:
“They want to experience the excitement of the event firsthand. It’s simply an ingrained tradition for families and friends. People typically have the day off work and need something to do with out-of-town visitors. They just spent the previous day mostly indoors, eating too much food and watching too much TV. An outing at the mall is something toddlers, tweens, and grandparents can get behind, a group activity driven by a desire to be a part of the action.”
The takeout: Black Friday as a retail experience is still relevant for family brands. Even though Cyber Monday is still the most valuable day, with $9.4bn in expected spend this year, all the family activities available at the mall (flagship stores, ice rinks, photos with Santa, play areas) are an opportunity to add value.
🖌Unusual pattern (two unrelated things coming together)
Mastercard has developed two macaron flavours with Ladurée: Passion and Optimism. This is part of their strategy “Marketing 5.0, the era of sense and sensibility”. Mastercard’s CMO is quoted to have said:
Marketing 5.0 will bring humanity back into advertising after the stark coldness that the advancement of technology has brought along with it. The goal is for consumers to tune back into their senses – return to what they have long learned to tune out. To cut through the clutter of daily living with technology by taking a multi-sensory approach that will reignite a spark of passion that’s easily lost in an overly digital world.
They explain that after tackling the sight sense (by removing the Mastercard name from the logo) and the hearing (by launching a sonic brand identity), the partnership with Ladurée delivers on taste. The premise of multisensory marketing could offer opportunities for brand engagement, but the way they talk about it seems to be taken from a stand-up routine on advertising BS.
🎯Cultural insight (the insight from culture behind an advert)
Kapten is a new alternative to Uber, and here is an ad that I keep seeing on the tube (excuse the quality, but taking a picture of something on top of people’s head creates some really funny looks)
They list three reasons for choosing Kapten, one of them: “Taxes paid locally”. The conversation around taxes is more relevant than ever with so much attention on Labour’s proposed new tax plans (and the misinformation around it) and similar debate in the US. Last week I saw this article from February about Amazon paying $0 in taxes go viral on Twitter again. Kapten wouldn’t have called out this issue on taxes if they didn’t have some kind of audience data supporting it. Using tax transparency as a differentiator shows a rebalance on people’s priorities and expectations. Who knows if, in the future, paying taxes might be so unusual that it’s elevated to some sort of “doing good in the world” message.
🕶 Bonus track
TikTok of the week: There’s been a lot of conversation around TikTok’s moderation rules, how the algorithm buries political content or it’s deleted. So teens are obviously making fun of this, giving away personal info to making it easy for China to track them.
Extra links:
I’m a bit of a semiotics geek. Here is a good analysis from Crowd DNA on Dipsea’s brand and the representation of women’s pleasure
The 2019 Victoria’s Secret fashion show has been cancelled. It was only a matter of time
Excellent move: Netflix leases a movie theatre to show their own movies
A new dating phenomenon: the Micro-Breakups - Better Than Ghosting?
After Instagram’s ban on plastic surgery filters, a black market is emerging
Thanks so much for reading, and if you want to share any thoughts on this week’s edition, just hit reply to this email and I’ll get back to you, or connect with me on Twitter.
Flo
Cultural Patterns is a newsletter by Florencia Lujani about cultural insight, creativity and strategy. If you’ve enjoyed it, consider subscribing :)