Gwyneth does it again ??

Hi folks,

After helping grow the wellness industry, and then embodying quiet luxury during her court case this summer, Gwyneth Paltrow’s chaotic TikTok promoting a probiotic might just be the next marketing breakthrough she spearheads. Expect the sound of steamed milk memes to carry us through to the end of 2023.

?Scroll down to read more about Threads use, Air Jordans, and the downfall of fun holidays.

Stats to power your week

?? Hype around Meta’s new app Threads has dropped off a bit after its explosive first week, but there’s still strong demand to use it in future – over half of its early users say it’s “very likely” they’ll use it on an ongoing basis. But this depends on nailing the use-case, and our research shows those early users are expecting more of an X/Twitter style “information network” than a social one.? GWI Zeitgeist / GWI Core

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?? A holiday is often the thing people will splash out on most in a given year, which makes vacation attitudes a great place to see cost-of-living concerns up close. Last year, fun mattered more than cost in deciding a holiday destination – in 2023, the reverse is true. GWI Travel

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?? With the latest wave of our USA Plus dataset, we have even more insights at our fingertips about how America is changing during these turbulent times. One particular highlight – the number who have boycotted a brand or organization has grown 33% since Q1 2023. GWI USA Plus?

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?? Before Barbie, there was Air, the Ben Affleck-directed piece about the origins of the Air Jordan brand where product placement is the film. But do these movies actually impact sales? On current evidence, absolutely – ownership of Air Jordan products in the US is up 31% year-on-year, while the number who’ve bought one in the UK is up 77%. GWI USA / GWI Core

??? We talk a lot about parenthood in the world of marketing, but what about grandparenthood? We had a theory that grandkids’ influence makes grandparents more interested in youth topics – but on testing, it turned out to not actually be true. It’s non-grandparents who are more likely than other Americans over 65 to be interested in virtual reality, go to Starbucks regularly, and listen to music from the 2010s. GWI USA

Chart of the week

If you come across a female electrician or a male makeup artist, you’ve encountered someone quite rare – these are the jobs most likely to be done by the other gender.?

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A surprising footnote to this data comes from our GWI Kids dataset, which shows us that boys (38%) are much less likely than girls (52%) to think people of their gender can do any job they want to.?

As the writer Richard Reeves puts it, much time and effort has (rightly) been invested in connecting women to opportunities in STEM, but less attention has been paid getting men into jobs like nursing and primary education. And without some persuasion, it looks unlikely the next generation of young men will change that.

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