At Ikea, you have to walk through the entire maze-like store to get to the checkout, and if you buy something, you have to assemble it all yourself. Hardly easy, but nowadays how many other stores are people genuinely excited to visit?
All Threads
When asked in general terms, most people say that immigration is too high and the government is spending too much money. But the story is more nuanced when it relates to specific examples: the public actually wants more migrants who are highly skilled or in social work. We can’t expect to understand complex topics with generic prompts.
To calculate inflation, the ONS uses a typical basket of goods to work out the rate at which costs are rising – but the average doesn’t reflect most people’s experience. For instance restaurants have a strong weighting on inflation, but they have little impact on elderly people who don’t leave the house. Meanwhile cigarettes have a weak influence on the calculation, but tell that to the chainsmoker who buys a pack a day.
Have you been in an accident that wasn’t your fault?
Contradictions are hardwired into humans. We are natural born worriers – to prevent harm from unknown threats – but we’re also wired for curiosity: a trait that gave our ancestors access to new sources of food, water and tools. This is why we can love and loathe uncertainty, depending on the context.
The food delivery business is slowly becoming an advertising business: a quarter of its revenue comes from brands promoting on its website.
Covid killed the ability to travel overseas, but not the desire to do so. In 2024 a record number of passengers travelled through Heathrow airport (83.9 million), making the need for a third runway greater than ever.
Apple raises the price of its phones with each new model, and yet consumers continue to buy them. To be fair this is also driven by the addition of new product features, and not just price.
When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod to the world, he didn’t say: “the iPod. A 5GB MP3 player”. He said, “the iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket.”
Actually, London gets 562mm per year on average; a bit less than Malta (592mm) and Rome (586mm), and about half of the annual average of Sydney (1,222mm) or New York (1,059mm).
Barclays and E-Trade both use this insight in their advertising, but the latter is more engaging because of the adult voiceovers and the humorous scripts.
Itsu started out as a sushi restaurant, but it’s morphing into a supermarket range: close to half of its revenue now comes from grocery products.
When the biscuit was losing out to competitor biscuit brands in supermarkets, its owners made a clever change: they moved it to the cake section. Suddenly the comparative set changed – shoppers realised they could get a box of 6 Jacobs Mallows for the same price as 2 cakes – and sales rebounded.
In the UK, older groups prefer Sean Connery as James Bond and younger groups prefer Daniel Craig – simply a function of who they grew up watching.
Spectre opens with an incredible shot of Daniel Craig, as James Bond, pursuing a villain through a Día de Muertos parade in Mexico City. The parade actually never existed before the film, but it was so popular that it prompted locals to put on their own real life version which has been running annually ever since.