After disappearing during Covid, live music is back and bigger than ever. In 2024, spend (in the UK) was up 35% on pre-pandemic 2019 – largely driven by big tours like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Sam Salama
The pandemic had surprisingly little impact on the values of the UK mainstream (defined as the middle 50% of the population by household income).
In 1953, climbing Everest was the pinnacle of mountaineering. It took roughly 30 years for the first 300 people to reach the summit, but in 2019 that number ascended the mountain on one single day – a remarkable upward trajectory.
A fantastic Reddit thread shows how even the best movies can sound awful, depending on the framing. Who would have thought Star Wars could be reduced to that…?
According to a (rather old) longitudinal study, only 40% of people have stuck to their resolutions after 6 months. The issue is not knowing how to quit smoking or exercise more – it’s taking the steps to do so.
The NYT’s purchase of Wordle, as Shane O Leary puts it, had a “rising tide lifts all boats effect on their gaming vertical.” It brought in tens of millions of people to the app and doubled the number of weekly users for non Wordle games.
But not according to actual purchase data, which shows that the differences are marginal. And where there are slight skews, it’s mainly because older groups buy the category less often – so they simply have less opportunity to shop around!
And yet, as Grace Kite shows, campaign ROI is highest when 40-50% of the budget is spent online. Just because they’re unconventional, it doesn’t mean they’re ineffective.
It’s a phrase used time and again in brand tracking, but as Andrew Tenzer points out it’s not particularly helpful: it means many different things, depending on who you ask.
The most successful sitcom of the 90’s was a product of pet peeves. As Jerry Seinfeld explains, “it’s very important to know what you don’t like. A big part of innovation is saying, “You know what I’m really sick of?”” As viewers of the show will know, what makes it special is the relatability of the characters’ problems.
As Andrew Tenzer shows, marketers get this question very wrong; significantly overestimating the level of consumers’ extrinsic aspirations.