#NFR 48 - Influencers, Addiction & Dealers

Your weekly dose

June 15, 2022

✉️ Moment of the week:

Hello everyone 👋 I’ve got some news…

🚀 I work in Growth for an amazing D2C brand called Life Supplies

♻️ We’re on a mission to reduce plastic waste, starting with your bathroom essentials

✅ We’ve just launched our super exciting website!

👀 If you’ve ever found one of these newsletters remotely interesting or valuable…

Please can you head to the website, scroll to the bottom of the page and subscribe to our newsletter ❤️

🐦 Inspirational Tweet

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🤖 eCommerce News:

“The LTK app is the best place to discover and shop styles from creators. Creators are real people who do the work of online shopping, curating, and trying amazing styles to save shoppers effort, time, and money. This is why more and more people are shopping through creators,” said Kit Ulrich, general manager of the Consumer Platform at LTK, in a statement.”

“Founder Pavel Durov confirmed today a paid offering is coming later this month which will go above and beyond the current free experience — so a premium offer — without, per the post on his Telegram channel, any negative changes to existing features for (non-paying) users.”

“E-commerce platform Gander announced today the closing of a $4.2 million seed round co-led by Harlem Capital and Crossbeam Venture Partners. The seed adds Gander founder Kimiloluwa Fafowora, 26, to the growing list of Black women who have raised $1 million or more in VC funding — a feat no more than 250 have hit. Fafowora told TechCrunch that the idea for Gander came from her desires as an online shopper looking for an easier way to conceptualize the items she sought to buy.”

“Amazon is tapping into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer this morning announced a new feature called Virtual Try-On for Shoes that will allow customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phone’s camera. The company says the feature will help brands to better showcase their products while also informing customers’ purchasing decisions.”

“Also today, the search engine said it’s grown global usage to 20 million monthly active users — up from 15 million between mid-2019 and 2021 — and is now serving half a billion searches each month. Usage of the search engine is highest in Germany, France, the U.K. and the U.S — and Ecosia tells us it’s looking to capitalize on the opportunities presented by a growing audience of climate aware, and often young, users.”

“TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technology. Its addictive nature has been the subject of numerous psychological studies and parents’ concerns, as TikTok becomes one of the most used apps among children. Instead of dialling back its digital dopamine dispenser, TikTok is today rolling out a new set of screen time features designed to put users in better control of their TikTok usage.”

“The e-commerce market is on track to pass $5.5 trillion in revenues this year, which speaks not only to how much consumers are shopping online these days but also to how many businesses there are out there now selling to them. Today, a startup from Gothenburg, Sweden, called Juni is announcing $206 million in funding — a $100 million Series B and a further $106 million in debt — to build out an e-commerce-focused neobank, designed specifically to cater to that growing group of retailers with tools to help them run their business.”

“Pepper Content, a content marketplace that connects global brands such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Adobe with over 100,000 creators, has raised $14.3 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand to the U.S.”

“In its second Investor Day, streaming service Spotify updated the financial community about its potential for further growth and monetization, despite the overall economic downturn impacting the tech sector. The company spent a good portion of its presentation specifically focused on podcasts, which it said had been “largely unchanged” for years before it entered into the market, due to the limitations of RSS.”

“Twitter’s future may still be undecided, but the company is continuing to move forward with product releases in several key areas of focus including, as it turns out e-commerce. The social media platform today announced another expansion of its online shopping efforts with the launch of a new feature, Product Drops, which will allow online merchants to tease their upcoming product launches.”

“This has certainly raised some eyebrows among social media and privacy analysts. Today, TikTok has started showing users in Europe, the UK and Switzerland new, in-app notifications informing them of changes to its data collection policies. Essentially, TikTok’s saying that if you have not consented to personalized ads in the past, which TikTok has to allow as part of the EU’s data privacy provisions, you’ll soon get a form of personalized ads anyway, based on your in-app activity. TikTok appears to be looking to use a technicality to maximize the performance of its ads, even among users who have opted out of personalized targeting.”

“Anker, an Amazon-native electronics brand from China, did over $1 billion in sales on Amazon in 2021. It is the most successful brand built on Amazon, yet the brand has been aggressively diversifying beyond it. In 2011, then-Google engineer Steven Yang left California to start Anker in Shenzhen. The brand focused on launching batteries, chargers, power banks, cables, and other electronics on Amazon. Since then, the company has expanded into more categories and introduced more brands like Soundcore and Eufy.”

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🎶 Tik Tok Ad Of The Week:

Donny The School Dealer - Revolut

Summary of the ad ➡️

Two schoolboys are on the hunt for a chocolate bar at school. They bump into “Donny” the school dealer and buy a chocolate bar.

The boys use the card to pay and then get into a conversation about the Revolut metal card he has.

Why was this good?

✅ Nostalgia - So many people have experienced someone at their school selling sweets during break time so brings back some fond memories

✅ Humour - Using a debit card to buy chocolate at school & then explaining to the “dealer” about your cashback card is just a funny combination. Donny the dealer then has a lightbulb moment after hearing about the favourable rates abroad, realising, “ I can go global here” 😂

✅ Influencers - The Four Brothers came up the ranks over lockdown and are one of my favourite accounts to follow. Instantly recognisable to their audience & I’m sure instantly winning some new fans with this advert

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📈 Trends Of The Week:

Miniature Appliances

“Small living is getting even smaller.

The average size of a newly built studio apartment in the US decreased ~14% from 600 sq. ft. in 2009 to 514 sq. ft. in 2018.

This doesn’t even hold a candle to studio apartments in Japan, which can be as tiny as 290 sq. ft.”

Data for the US (Source: RentCafe)

(Source: Google Trends)

Mini living spaces are driving demand for mini appliances. Sellers on Amazon are making bank, according to Jungle Scout data. For example:

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✍️ Poem Of The Week

 A Dream Within A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the less gone?All that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roarOf a surf-tormented shore,And I hold within my handGrains of the golden sand-How few! yet how they creepThrough my fingers to the deep,While I weep- while I weep!O God! can I not graspThem with a tighter clasp?O God! can I not saveOne from the pitiless wave?Is all that we see or seemBut a dream within a dream?

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Happy Existing 👋