What’s caught our eye
This week was the annual e-commerce behemoth that is Singles Day. Over 91.2bn yuan (£9.4 billion) was spent, a 60% increase from last year. What started as an anti-valentine university group has now turned into the day where young Chinese singletons spend on themselves. This is hardly a surprise with factors such as the rise of mobile commerce and China’s improving economy. A plethora of retail sites, mobile makers and brands are benefiting from this and it’s definitely a day we need to put in our diaries. For more on Singles Day, read our blog!
What’s trending
Christmas cheer continues this week with the launch of Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, as the supermarket competes against top dog John Lewis for best Christmas ad. This year, children’s writer Judith Kerr has revived Mog the forgetful cat for the advert, making it a clear winner in most people’s eyes. In other news, Star Wars fans will be delighted with the new The Force Awakens trailer that previewed during ABC’s Thursday night primetime Shonda Rhimes block, also known as Thank God It’s Thursday (TGIT).
One to watch
We’re increasingly used to notifications being one of the main ways we get new information: it can be about our friends, events coming up in our area or even breaking news. This week Facebook launched Notify, a notifications app that gives you information on the things that matter to you. Rather than just offering generic news alerts across all media outlets, Notify lets you specify what you’re interested in and where you like to get your news, and then updates you with sports scores, weather forecasts and relevant updates as they happen. It’s only available for iOS in the US, but we can’t wait until it’s rolled out over here and we can all use it.
What we’ve been up to
This week, we attended the Festival of Marketing. The event is designed to give insight into the future of corporate innovation and authenticity in content with panel speakers such as Lauren Laverne and Chris Hadfield. It’s such a big event that attendees range from agencies like us to exciting new start-ups and huge multinational brands like Oasis and Doc Martins. We’ve come away with some great new ideas for the future as marketing gets even more personalised, real-time and engaging.