MediaCat Weekly #47 — Neurodiversity in media, Coca-Cola's Xmas ad, and Gen Z's sex recession

Welcome to MediaCat Weekly, our short and sweet newsletter featuring some top stories from the past week, recent conversations, and a round-up of industry news.

This week, we continue with our November theme 'Marketing Generations', speaking to YouGov about the ad preferences of different age groups. Outside of this theme, we explore the psychology behind the rise of SMEs, why seeing through a brand is 'no bad thing', and how knowledge of awe gives brands a route to success.

We hope you enjoy the issue and our November playlist, curated by consumer psychologist Eaon Pritchard.

Wondering about my generation?

By Jenni Romaniuk

I am Generation X, often referred to as the sandwich or silent generation. Who cares? I certainly don’t. I really don’t know what this means other than I was born between 1965 and 1980.

To illustrate the irrelevance of generational labels to consumer behaviour, during my lectures for our Brand Management class I asked the students to play a game called ‘Jenni or Maddy’. Jenni being me, Generation X and Maddy being my niece, from Generation Z.

Read the article

It’s the hyperreal thing

By Eaon Pritchard

From an evolutionary perspective, the discomfort we feel when confronted with artificial humans — in ads, video games, or even robotics — stems from our evolved innate capacity to detect social and biological anomalies from just scraps of information. This phenomenon, often referred to as the ‘uncanny valley,’ describes the sense of unease we experience when something looks almost human — but not quite. 

Read the article

The end of the Gen Z sex recession is here

By Lucinda Bounsall

It’s hardly breaking news that Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations at their age (see the fear-mongering headlines about a ‘Sex Recession’ throughout the 2010s). Contrary to what shows like Euphoria (2019- ) and Sex Education (2019-2023) might lead us to believe, a 2021 survey from the Kinsey Institute and Lovehoney revealed that one in four Gen Zers has never engaged in partnered sex.

Read the article

Designing spaces for football’s fashion love-in

By Nick Roberts

No wonder fashion likes to play in the field of football culture — it’s rooted in an emotive realness where childhood nostalgia meets athletic heroism and a sense of place. This heady mix means a lot to massive audiences beyond the stadium, and fashion x football collaborations have snowballed in recent years. Creatives are out-flexing each other with culturally relevant visual cues and sophisticated styling. But when it comes to physical retail, could football clubs match the mood, with more elevated and meaningful spaces where fans can shop collections and commune with the club?

Read the article

Conversations

Talking regenerative brand design with Bob Sheard

For this podcast, our Editor Mike Piggott spoke to Bob Sheard, co-founder of brand design agency FreshBritain. They discussed how Bob got into brand design, and how he was quite possibly the first man in Yorkshire to own a certain pair of adidas trainers. They talk about how he got into buying and selling denim, and how he was once brought on board to ‘unfuck Levi’s’… in the words of the client.

Simon Akers and Jaz Poke on neurodiversity in media

In this podcast, Mike Piggott spoke to Simon Akers (founder and partner at Archmon) and Jaz Poke (Business Development Director EMEA at Omnicom Media Group), co-founders of new industry initiative, Neurodiversity in Media (NDIM). They discussed how the initiative got started and why there is a need for it in the industry, NDIM’s Manifesto and what change and action they’d like to see from industry leaders, and how there is simultaneously both more understanding of neurodiversity in the industry right now, but also still a lot of neurodiverse ignorance to overcome.

Tom Fishburne: humour is an ‘underappreciated superpower’

Tom Fishburne, creator of Marketoonist, has been drawing cartoons and making observations about the marketing industry for over two decades. This year, he spoke at Brand Week Istanbul 2024 and shared how humour can help us navigate change. Following his session, Fishburne sat down with MediaCat’s Content & Social Media Editor, Svilena Keane, to share how he became a cartoonist, why humour is an ‘underappreciated superpower’ and why creatives shouldn’t fear AI.

News

• On 19 November, the international customer insight and programmatic media activation partner, Audience Store, announced that it has joined forces with the AI solutions provider, Fenestra. The partnership is part of Audience Store’s Innovation Lab initiative, which supports its audience intelligence platform, Discover AI, and CTV solution, Targetcast. read
• Rail ticket retailer Trainline PLC has announced that it is expanding its media offering, making its first-party data available for the first time. The retailer seeks to enable advertisers to engage with consumers at key moments in a brand-safe environment. read
• The youth-focused digital video network, Next-Gen Media, has partnered with the global provider of tech solutions for OOH media, Vistar Media. The partnership will allow Next-Gen Media to add programmatic buying capabilities to its network, enabling brands and agencies to connect with young people across the UK. read

Seen elsewhere

• Media: After announcing Sponsored Snaps back in September, which will be the first Snapchat ad type that gets directly inserted into user inboxes, Snap has now announced its initial Sponsored Snap campaign, with a DM video message going out to all U.S. Snap users aged 18+ to promote the new movie Wicked. (Social Media Today)
• Media: In a first for the company, dmg media has taken an equity stake in ProRata.ai, a Californian start-up whose technology credits and pays copyright holders, on a per-use basis, when their content is used in a Gen-AI response. (Newsworks)
• Media: New research from Kantar has found that ads with positive portrayals of men are more successful. The insights firm’s study, Connecting with men: how brands can decode modern masculinity, reveals significant opportunities for brands to enhance their marketing strategies by embracing more positive and diverse portrayals of men. (Marketing Beat)
• Media: A significant uptick in account registrations since the US election has prompted a wave of new journalists and publishers to start posting to Bluesky over the past week. As of midday Tuesday it had 20 million accounts, up from 16 million before the weekend. (Press Gazette)
• Media: Ad revenue in the out-of-home (OOH) industry reached £1bn in the first nine months of 2024, according to the latest data from trade body Outsmart. This represents a 12% increase from a year earlier. For 2023, ad revenue totalled £1.3bn for the full year. (The Media Leader)

For more of our content in your inbox, sign up to MediaCat Monthly - a round-up of our best stories every month.