KC DEBRIEF WEEK 25, FRIDAY 2024/06/21

DIGITAL TITANS

_Meta forms new Wearables group and lays off employees. Meta’s Reality Labs is undergoing its biggest restructuring in years by separating into two orgs: Wearables and Metaverse. A small number of employees have been laid off as a result.

_Tik Tok Rolling out AI generated Creator Avatars. Symphony Digital Avatars, which are available in two varieties: stock or custom. Stock avatars are based on paid actors from a diverse range of backgrounds, nationalities, and languages. They are available for commercial use. Custom avatars, meanwhile, are created to resemble a specific creator or a brand spokesperson and speak multiple languages — allowing the accounts that utilize them to reach foreign audiences while retaining a specific likeness. Regardless of which type of avatar is used, videos that use them will be marked with an “AI-generated” label.

ALSO

Millennials Love Tiktok Shop. Millennials are the most consistent social media shoppers, using shopping features on all platforms at higher rates than the general population, particularly Facebook and YouTube. Gen Z adults and millennials use shopping features on other apps at similar rates, well ahead of older generations. Gen Z are the bigger users of TikTok, but millennials are more likely to say they use TikTok Shop relative to their platform usage: 37% of millennials say they’ve made a purchase on TikTok Shop.

ALSO

TikTok is copying Instagram again with Whee. TikTok recently launched a new Instagram-like photo-sharing app called Whee, TikTok is explicitly positioning Whee as an app for sharing photos with only your closest friends. “Capture and share real-life photos that only your friends can see, allowing you to be your most authentic self,” according to Whee’s Google Play description. “Whee is the best place for close friends to share life moments.”

_Software giant Adobe accused of 'trapping customers’. The US government has sued software giant Adobe, accusing it of violating consumer protection laws with "hidden" termination fees and a convoluted cancellation process. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said the firm had failed to clearly disclose its terms to customers, including the year-long length of a subscription and charges that would be triggered for cancelling early. In its complaint, the agency said Adobe had refused to modify its behaviour because it would hurt the company financially. Adobe disputed the claims and said it would fight the lawsuit.

_Brands are turning to Pinterest for Gen-Z audience and organic growth potential. Late last year, luxury brands told Glossy that Pinterest was emerging as an important marketing channel to reach their customers. Now, brands are catching on to another important demographic they can reach on Pinterest: Gen Z.According to Pinterest, Gen Z saves more pins on its platform than any other cohort, particularly in the collage format.

_Netflix is debuting its own malls in 2025. The Future. Netflix announced the first two locations of its brick-and-mortar Netflix House retail and entertainment destinations, now slated to open in 2025. If demand is high, don’t be surprised if the streamer opens a full-fledged theme park built around its hit franchises.
Netflix is one step away from giving its IP the Disneyland treatment.The first two recently teased Netflix Houses will be built in former department stores in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and Dallas, Texas, and will have more than 100,000 square feet of space.

PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE

_US surgeon general wants social media warning labels. One of America's most senior health officials has called on the country to impose smoking-style warning labels on social media platforms. Writing in the New York Times, external, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said social media increased the risk that children would experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. He wants people who visit these platforms to be shown a message warning that they are "associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents”.

_13 Tees that nail the inside jokes from memes this summer. While regular merch is tired (RIP to the “Mommy’s Little Meatball” shirt my friends made me buy on a whim in Little Italy last summer), graphic T-shirts with a built-in wink and nod are everywhere — the funnier and weirder to decipher, the better.

AI AI LA LA LAND

//The Pixelbot 3000 turns simple AI prompts into Lego mosaic masterpieces. This custom printer uses DALL-E 3 to turn anything you can think of into brick-built art. The mosaics assembled by the printer are limited to a much smaller grid that’s just 32 x 32 Lego tiles in size, but instead of resizing the image generated by DALL-E 3 to make it smaller, the Pixelbot 3000’s code divides the AI-generated image into a 32 x 32 grid and samples the color of the center pixel in each square. This results in a high-contrast scaled image that produces a better mosaic in the end.

//McDonald'sAbandoning AI-Powered Drive Thrus After Embarrassing Failures.Fast food chain McDonald's is giving up on its AI-powered drive-thru system, following a string of hilarious yet infuriating failures that resulted in unlucky customers ending up with over $250 worth of chicken McNuggets and unwanted packs of butter.

_What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal. “Interesting take on the reality of the Ashley Madison site and its attendant 2015 scandal. It was mostly men, talking to company-created bots, designed to keep them sending, and paying for, subscriptions. It is, the author argues, a predecessor and proof of concept for too much of the social-media universe we now have, which should only get worse as AI makes the bots more convincing.”

_Forbes accused Perplexity of stealing text and images in a "willful infringement" of Forbes' copyright rights. Forbes sent a letter to the CEO of AI search startup Perplexity accusing the company of stealing text and images in a "willful infringement" of Forbes' copyright rights, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Axios. Why it matters: Publishers fighting to protect their intellectual property are stuck in a game of whack-a-mole as they confront not just the biggest AI companies, like OpenAI or Google, but also smaller AI startups.

_Nanotechnology is reaching a powerful, potentially dangerous new phase. Molecular machines could prove dangerous to humans for the same reason they’re powerful against pathogens: natural selection hasn’t prepared us for them

BRANDS

_One of the most prominent sponsors of the Olympics wants to use some of its ad dollars to put on a show it hopes will be as must-see as the sports extravaganza itself. Procter & Gamble, which has enjoyed global rights to use the Olympics and the Games’ signature rings in its advertising since 2010, is backing away from the heart-tugging ads it has run in the past that spotlight how the maker of Tide, Crest and Pampers supports athletes and their families. In their place? A new six-episode competition series for NBC’s Peacock streaming hub called “The Other Games” that have teams of comedians and influencers vying to win game that involve P&G products including Swiffer and Cascade. The show will debut on Peacock just ahead of NBC’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

MMM OF THE WEEK

_Oscar Mayer Made Its First Beauty Ads, But There’s a Twist. Oscar Mayer smokes its thick-cut bacon for 12 hours. To draw attention to that fact, the brand took an unusual approach that hijacks beauty advertising.The campaign, by agency Johannes Leonardo, features a series of 15- and 30-second spots that start simply, with shots of the meat slowly cooking and an explanation about how that process imbues it with a strong, smoky flavor.The commercial break then transitions to what seems to be an unrelated spot: an archetypal promo for a lip gloss promoting its long-lasting shine or a razor offering a close shave. In both cases, the actors are interrupted by an overpowering smell, with Oscar Mayer revealing that the bacon is still smoking.