Accidental Insights Issue #2
The difficult, second newsletter
Thank you all for reading the last newsletter and subscribing to it. Some people dropped me DMs telling me they really like it, which feels great and gives me the energy needed to keep writing this.
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Here comes a new download of eight different insights that hopefully will make you rethink your strategies and tactics or help you generate new and unexpected ideas to take your brand to the next level.
Have a great read.
/Johan
INSIGHT DOWNLOAD
The most interesting things I’ve read, seen, thought about, or debated the last two weeks. High and low.
→ Millennial Millionaires. I recently came across two interesting data points: Millennials and Gen Z make up 40% of new Ferarri buyers (33% increase since 2023) and constitute 25-33% of bidders at major auction houses. I also checked some other data, and Millennials account for 45% of all global luxury spending, and Gen Z accounts for 25%. So even if most wealth sits on baby boomers, most luxury spending sits at the younger generation.
→ Green goes dark mode. I wrote in the last issue about the shift to dark mode away from Obamacore. This year's Sustainable Brand index confirms that the Swedish shift is real. Since the peak year 2020, the number of consumers discussing sustainability sometimes or often has been down 10 pp to 64%. The effect on purchase decisions is also down 10 pp to 64% from the peak year 2021. Yet 55% of Swedish consumers are still positive towards sustainability communications, so there is still some light out there.
→ Get that tracksuit on. Tracksuit has carved out a space in the “brand marketing thought leader” world alongside the likes of WARC, IPA, and System1. Their report, “The Awareness Advantage,” together with TikTok, broke the marketing-geek-internet. NZ-based strategist and planner James Turman is a co-founder. I read his book Future Demand a couple of years ago, and it has been the playbook for helping early-stage startups and scale-ups with brand strategy. Recently, they released the report “Entertain or Die” stating that brands that entertain grow faster. It may explain the strategy behind this Insta post a reader sent me and wanted me to write about.
→ Power of print. J Crew recently dropped its second print catalog after its return in September last year, and Canvas8 posted a trend observation about print. Andres Lokko wrote in SvD about small and obscure printed fanzines popping up as a countermovement to mainstream culture. i-D announced its comeback in print last year, and the first issue of the resurrected magazine landed quite recently. Fotografiska has an exhibition dedicated to Maurizio Cattelan magazine Toiletpaper. In a time when digital text and photos are a free commodity, print is an experience worth paying a price premium for.
(i-D Spring 2025 Issue)
→ Brand x performance. WARC published a new report a while ago called The Multiplier Effect. It states the obvious – that brand and performance markeing isn’t an either-or choice but that the best strategy is to combine both. Nothing new under the sun, but loads of good graphs and figures to use to convince your CFO to do the right thing. For instance, ROI increases by 90% when moving from a performance strategy to a performance + brand strategy, and ROI decreases by 40% when moving from a combined approach to only performance marketing. Also, this model will probably show up in every planner’s deck in the forthcoming 3-6 months:
(Source: WARC)
→ Blue and yellow teeth. The Swedish dental care market seems to be experiencing a huge facelift. A couple of years ago, Aqua Dental – a dentist chain with an Aqua Di Parma-esque visual identity started popping up. DentMe has started to push a dentist subscription combined with interiors that look like a hotel lobby. Selahatin and Aurezzi are two Swedish brands that have launched lines of ultra-premium dental care products. Aurezzi also launched a 24k gold brush last year. However, profits is yet to come. Selahatin and Aurezzi had profit margins of -97% and -400% last FY. Aqua Dental's losses are shrinking, but they still fail to reach profit, and DentMe hasn’t released any financial records yet. Either investors overestimate people's willingness to care about their gums, or they invest their money wisely to establish a new category. On the other side of the pond, however, the sentiment seems to be moving towards celebrating dental imperfection.
→ Gen anti-fem. A global study has found that Gen Z men are the generation that is the most prone to believe that women's rights have gone too far. Also, in Ungdomsbarometern, we can see a shift where Swedish youth believe gender equality is important, dropping from 40% to 32%. Since the U.S. election, Scott Galloway has been podcasting about how Trump won because he won the “manosphere podcasts". The New York Times has an article about “conservative Cosmo” mediahouse “Evie”. The dark vibe shift is real.
→ Cool kid gaming. Last newsletter, I shared a link to Coperni’s PFW show, which was held in adidas Arena with 200 gamers playing Fortnite. Now, Anti Social Social Club has launched a collab with Assasins Creed. Balenciaga pioneered this a couple of years ago, but it was maybe the start of a trend rather than a short fad. Beyond that, Harmony Korine is launching a gaming division of EDGLRD and premiering it with an arcade-style FPS. Last year, Diesel launched their “play” bag, which in inspired by joystick controllers.
→ Social is the new ism. I had lunch with a client/friend the other day told me and she had spotted the importance of someone in charge of “social wellness” in modern workplaces. Later, I received a newsletter from Digitas about socialization. Also, an article in SvD stated that the most important preparation for a potential war isn’t prepping – but social relations. Simultaneously, young people go to clubs where phones are banned. Many people have pointed out a loneliness epidemic both among young and old people; hence, we are reacting where the power of social relations makes a comeback.
→ Let’s put the end in trend. Over the last ten years, agencies have filled up their strategy teams with cultural experts trying to find ways to hijack pop culture and bring their client brands into it. (Hey, when I was Head of Strategy at NORD DDB, my formal title was Head of Cultural Insights and Strategy.) However, we might start to come to an end. Design Rush writes about “anti-trend branding.” Tracksuit (as mentioned above) did a research piece a couple of months ago, finding out that while Brat Summer was huge among marketers, regular people didn’t see it as a major cultural event.
→ Tie break. The New York Times and the Financial Times write pieces about women who have started to wear ties. Fanny Ekstrand goes tie game strong on her Instagram, as do Malmö-based 7ebra on their new single. New design agency Fang, consisting of newly examined Berghs students, launched with press photos featuring all women in ties. I had a conversation with an agency CEO who had started thinking about wearing a tie and maybe shopping for one until she realized that her husband’s closet was filled with ties he never uses anymore. Perhaps tie-mania is the sign that we have now started to see the beginning of the end for corpcore.
OUTBOUND INSIGHTS
I read, listen to, and watch lots of stuff. Some ladder up to bigger insights, and some are just great reading in their pure form. I’ll share them here.
📰 Rachel Karten on brands jumping on Substack
💡 I love this concept for a European rail network
📰 BOF demonstrates that all fast fashion brands are not the same – Uniqlo is something different.
🔈 Dr. Karen Nelson Field on the attention economy.
📰 Shintaro Yamamoto is the Dr. Frankenstein of shoes
🔈 Tasteland interview about Gen Z and perfume with Trey Taylor
📰 Klarna X Doordash – eat now, pay later.
📰 H&M is bringing in the AI models.
📰 For Asian Gen Z, perfume is value-for-money luxury.
📰 Gen Z prefers creator content over premium TV and movies.
📰 Gen Z is changing how Americans drink coffee.
BEYOND INSIGHTS
Stuff that’s relevant for anyone in marketing. Hence, exciting job openings, new third places to do freelance work from, or random gossip.
💼 Pophouse is looking for a Head of Marketing and Media to ABBA Museum and AVICII experience as well as a Comms Manager. Great chance to join one of the coolest companies in Stockholm.
🏙️ A House is pushing hard for its new, soon-to-open location in Sickla. I’ve been an A House member since I started working independently and am a huge fan of what they are building. I love that they are scaling their business, even though the location feels slightly off.
💼 INGO is looking for an account manager with international experience. Go, go, go!
That’s all for now. See you in two weeks. If you enjoyed Accidental Insights, please forward it to your colleagues.