More Than Just Data: Venus vs Mars, GenZ Questions, and Not on Brand.
The Mendoza Line is a baseball term for having a batting average (which you get by dividing a player’s batting hits by their total at-bats) of .200. It’s considered the threshold for Major League Baseball; you’re passable in the big leagues if you’re over .200, but it can be grounds for getting traded or downgraded to the minor leagues. The name comes from Mario Mendoza, a player from the late 1970’s for the Mariners and the Pirates, who ended up with a career batting average above his namesake jargon. Not sure if this is a point of pride for the Mendoza family, but the term is a universal one in baseball.
The more conversations I have with people about AI, the more I am convinced that we need a Mendoza Line for AI advancements and tools. There is so much promise with AI in so many fields, but with this promise also comes the inevitable dark side of the technology. Bad uses of technology is not a new phenomenon, but the scale is now so large that the possible negative outcomes should absolutely be considered. If we were all good actors, we would not have to worry about the negative possibilities, but the percentage of bad actors is certainly high enough that negative outcomes is something we need to keep an eye on.
Unlike the Mendoza Line, where there’s a clear threshold for what is good and what is bad, the potential use cases for AI are much more complicated as are the possible positive and negative outcomes. There are more individualized issues that don’t necessarily impact society as a whole in the short term (for example, Sam Altman having a very odd attachment to a certain 2013 film ends up with Scarlett Johannson possibly taking OpenAI to court almost a decade later), and then there are much larger issues, such as the ability to alter election outcomes and perpetuate massive financial fraud. These clearly have much bigger societal effects. Given the complexity of the outcomes, the measurement of good vs bad is also going to need to have more depth and nuance than a simple, “is it above or below a threshold?”
I wonder if ChatGPT or Gemini can come up with a useful formula?
As always, here is some of the data that caught our eye this week.
1)??? Party = #1 Again
Trendency’s latest newsletter pointed out the partisan effect on Americans’ feelings towards the economy. This was not exactly shocking, but our latest Consumer Trendwatch went a little deeper on these numbers and found the effects of partisanship are even stronger than income when it comes to how Americans are feeling about their own economic situation. Overall, 29% of those making more than $80,000 feel that they are doing better than last year, while 35% say they are doing about the same, and 33% say they are worse off.
Among Biden voters, the higher the income the more likely they are to feel better off economically than they did last year. Indeed, 19% of Biden voters who make less than $40,000 feel that they are better off now compared to last year, while 34% of those making more than $80,000 feel the same way.
Among Trump voters, income has less of an effect on the positive end of the spectrum with just 11% of Trump voters who make less than $40,000 and those who make between $40,000-$80,000 feeling that they are better off compared to a year ago. Just 15% of Trump voters making more than $80,000 feel the same way.
On the negative end of the spectrum, Biden voters follow an inverse pattern of the positive views. One-third (33%) of the President’s supporters who make less than $40,000 feel they are worse off compared to a year ago. Among those who make more than $80,000, the percentage drops down to 15%.
Among Trump voters, the pattern is reversed so, the more money they make, the worse off they tend to feel about their economic situation. Just under a half of Trump voters who make less than $40,000 feel they are worse off compared to a year ago, while 59% of those who make more than $80,000 feel the same way.
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2)??? 436K
Understanding consumer trends among generations is usually a waste of time for the olds; you are unlikely to get a convincing answer as to why a Stanley Mug was a thing. Sometimes these fads can be perplexing, but other times they are downright bewildering. Take, for example, the release of Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. The number of times the songs were streamed were not surprising, but apparently the album sold 1.64m physical units in the first week of sales. When the numbers came out, my assumption was this was all records, but that would be incorrect. Yes, 859,000 vinyls were sold but there were also 759,500 CDs ordered by fans. What shocked me the most was that 21,500 cassette tapes were sold.
Huh?
Apparently, there were 436,000 tapes sold in the US in 2023. Tapes! A far cry from the 450 million sold in 1988. But, much higher than the 81,000 sold in 2015. I have so many questions, including: do people even have cassette players anymore?
3)?? -6
In case you missed it, May 21st is International Tea Day. Clearly, everything has its day, but grumpiness aside, if you had to name a tea drinking country, what would be the first country that pops in your head? The UK feels like a good call, but according to Statista Consumer Insights, just over half of 18-54 year olds in Great Britain (58%) drink tea on a regular basis. Granted, this is higher than the US (49%), but only 3 points higher than Germany (55%) and well behind Turkey (87%), Kenya (82%) and Pakistan (82%). The UK is even below Ireland (64%).
Feels like a rebranding is going to be needed soon or the tradition of high tea might be a thing of the past.
We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition and, as always, we look forward to your thoughts and hearing what stories caught your eye this week. Have a great long weekend (for those in the US).