The Best From The US In February

Everything you need to know about tech, retail, and marketing

Nike x Jordan x Snapchat

Brand Awareness

Public perception was in focus this month. Brands distanced themselves from the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the wake of the Florida school shooting. In a “watershed moment”, Dick’s Sporting Goods banned the sale of assault rifles, whilst United Airlines, Delta, MetLife, FedEx, and others removed their NRA member discount. This followed Unilever’s very public proclamation that Google and Facebook had to “clean up their act” with regards to illicit content or the company would stop advertising on their channels. (P&G echoed the sentiment.) Bank of America went further, hiring a ‘Brand Safety Officer’ to ensure its ads do not appear alongside salubrious material — with good reason, according to The New York Times. Guess’s share price fell c.14% when model Kate Upton tweeted “It’s disappointing that such an iconic women’s brand @GUESS is still empowering Paul Marciano as their creative director #metoo”. Lululemon CEO Laurent Potdevin stepped-down over “poor behaviour”. Lastly, the newest social media craze, ‘Vero’, is already facing calls to boycott owing to its CEO’s ‘shady’ past.

Tech Talk

Snapchat’s redesign is here to stay according to Evan Spiegel. Despite user grumblings download numbers jumped +76%. Better still, earnings outperformed expectations. Then came ‘Snap Store’ and a genuinely excellent partnership with Jordan, who used AR to sell ‘AJ III Tinkers’ exclusivelythrough the app! Becoming an eCommerce channel would propel Snapchat’s importancemeteorically. It all looked rosy until Kylie Jenner tweeted “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me…”. The markets reacted by wiping $1.3bn off their valuation.

Twitter posted its first quarterly profit for over 11 years! Yet the $91m is a drop in the ocean versus their $2bn in accrued losses. Facebook is testing a ‘down vote’ button for users to question the authenticity of a post. Although it will not stop around 3m US and UK under 25s leaving in 2018, apparently. Instagram have rolled-out ‘collection campaigns’, letting viewers buy without leaving the app: Birchbox and Revolve were amongst the first to try it out.

Whole Foods products will soon be eligible for Amazon Prime delivery. Excellent long-read on the cost of Amazon warehouses to US cities. A fulfillment service is coming: ‘Shipping With Amazon’ will initially only serve third-party sellers but expect it to become a faster delivery ‘perk’ for Prime members. Finally, they agreed the $1bn purchase of ‘Ring’, who make smartphone-enabled doorbells (for not-at-home drop-offs).

Small But Important

• Good piece on how QVC survived the Amazonian onslaught. This customer relationship is ripe for ‘voice commerce’, with viewers simply instructing Alexa to buy an item with no call or credit card needed.
• Walmart debuted 4 fashion lines, including a plus-size one. Intriguingly, they are in talks to acquire c.15% of ‘Flipkart’ — Indian online retail is expected to reach $200bn by 2026.
• Saks Fifth Avenue’s fortunes have been put in the hands of Helena Foulkes, who joins from CVS. L2 might point her in the direction of menswear, which is due to grow 5% in the next 2 years, outperforming womenswear, yet is often “overlooked”.
• L.L. Bean (and others) revised their lifetime return policy citing $250m paid-out for goods that were in ‘destroy quality’, upon receipt. This figure was more than total sales of the ‘Duck’ boot over the last five years! One disgruntled customer has filed a lawsuit.
• Macy’s released a modest line, Verona Collection, and pretty good trading results. (Performance was bolstered by real estate sales.) They also revealed ‘The Market @ Macy’s’, in-store pop-ups that aim to drive footfall.
• Patagonia launched ‘Action Works’ a microsite to ‘match’ like-minded activists.
• The game may have been excellent but the Superbowl’s fripperies were a little weak. Here are all the ads — the ‘winner’ was probably Tide.
• In an attempt to catch adidas’s game-changing Ultra Boost, Nike released Epic Reactand Under Armour, ‘Hovr’. This battle is going to be fun to watch!
• Uber settled with Waymo over claims that it stole trade secrets (around 14,000 files). The latter received a 0.34% equity stake in Uber (c.$245 million).
• Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Citi have banned the purchase of bitcoin via their cards, understandably, as half of 2017’s cryptocurrencies have failed. Yet companies like Starbucks are increasingly looking to utilse ‘blockchain’: De Beers are running a pilot scheme to see if the tech can help them retain diamond authenticity and privacy; L.L. Bean will use it to track garment wear and tear. (But what does the consumer get out of this data exchange?)
• Fox News, like ESPN, will soon have a streaming service — ‘Fox Nation’ — with original programming “for superfans” but zero content from the flagship channel. Good luck.
• The world watched as Elon Musk sent one of his cars into orbit (safely landing the booster rockets too!); stranger still is the $10m he made from selling flame-throwers.
• Lucas Warren, who has Down’s syndrome, became the face of Gerber.
• The San Diego Girl Scout council was unsure what to do when one ingenious member sold 300 boxes of cookies outside a marijuana dispensary.
• And finally! A Maine court ordered Oakhurst Dairy to pay-out around $5m in ‘owed’ overtime to drivers because of a missing Oxford comma in their contracts. Clearly Vampire Weekend were wrong…