Holiday Predictions & Twitter Chaos
HOW PEOPLE WILL BE SHOPPING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON
The period between Black Friday and New Year's Eve makes or breaks so many businesses' annual numbers that some brands are already working on their 2024 campaigns. That's why there has been so much interest and curiosity about how the swirling mess of economic uncertainty is going to affect this year's buying behaviour.
We looked at several sources to boil it down for you and found the following:
Nearly 60% said the current economic uncertainty has prompted them to spend less this holiday season, although it's not clear how much less
71% of respondents said they would consider a store payment plan or financing option to cover the cost of their purchases — a quarter of those people said they had never used financing options before
48% said they are shopping earlier to get the items they need
73% expected price increases during the 2022 holiday season
One area that is particularly interesting this year is the types of gifts people are planning to buy for their friends and families. The top 5 categories are:
Experiences (34%)
Fashion and apparel (30%)
Gift cards (29%)
Beauty and personal care products (29%)
Footwear (28%)
In the retail world, much has been discussed about the pendulum swing from offline shopping (pre-COVID) to all-online (COVID) and back to physical retail (post-COVID), so the question is: Where will people actually be shopping this season?
Oracle’s research suggests we'll see a small, but meaningful, increase in offline shopping this holiday season. Per the survey results, 43% of consumers plan to shop mostly in stores, but 23% are shopping in-store and online. A JLL survey found that just under two-thirds of shoppers are spending their holiday budgets in stores, a bump up from 58% in 2021.
So what?
This year there will be more brands chasing smaller budgets and they're going to start their holiday campaigns earlier than ever. For businesses that don't have massive budgets, there's no sense in competing on price, so we're going to need to do what we do best: Connect directly with our audiences and tell a compelling story.
Fortunately, the platforms have been out hustling just as hard as the rest of us getting ready for the season. Nearly every social network, SaaS company, and service provider has tried to help us out by publishing a holiday marketing guide. We read as many as we could get our hands on and summarized them into this holiday starter pack for you:
Holiday Shopping Data Sources:
WHAT'S HAPPENING AT TWITTER? EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, IN 11 LINKS OR LESS
I seriously debated whether we should include anything about the drama at Twitter HQ because it seems like it's all that anyone is able to talk about lately. However, since the purpose of this email is to keep you up to date with what is actually going on and why it matters (or doesn't), here's a rundown of where we are, and what (if anything) might change:
The $44 Billion acquisition of Twitter by the self-anointed Meme-lord, Elon Musk, was forced through by courts after he tried a variety of different ways to get out of the contract.
Almost immediately, Musk announced that Twitter would introduce blue-checkmark verification for anyone who paid $20 per month, and anyone who's currently verified would have 90 days to pay or lose their status.
Author Stephen King did not hold back about his feelings in a Tweet, saying that they should pay him, not the other way around. In what appeared to be the most bizarre, and public, negotiation of all time, Elon countered, asking King if he would accept $8.
Eventually, the company officially announced verification for $8/month.
At this point, it appears that the blue check will be available only to individuals, not brands, and that verified accounts will get preferential treatment in the algorithm and in replies.
Amidst all of the checkmark friction, there was an alarming spike in racist language, among other hate speech, in Tweets. The theory is that users felt safe because of Elon's very public stance on absolute free speech.
General Mills, Mondelez, Pfizer, Audi, and many large agencies have pulled their ads from Twitter, saying that they are waiting to see what happens with the shakeup.
Musk reported a "massive revenue drop" and attributed it to activists who are overreacting.
Meanwhile, perhaps the most heartbreaking part of all of this has been the least reported: The actual humans who run Twitter. Since its inception, the people at Twitter have always been one of the most optimistic parts of the Internet, and many of those people are now losing their jobs. Twitter was started as a way to bring people together and democratize communication. For over 15 years, people went to work in hopes of creating something special, which fostered a culture that has never quite been seen before, and may never be again.
Now, Elon has claimed to be firing as much as 75% of the current workforce, including nearly all of the senior leadership, apparently breaking a whole bundle of labour laws along the way.
Now it seems that he has already been walking back some of those terminations, asking some fired employees to return to their roles.
For a look behind the scenes at what it's actually like to work at Twitter right now, listen to the latest episode of the Hard Fork podcast where they used AI voices to anonymize and interview two current employees about their experiences.
Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting