Mike's Industry View - Issue #139
AI / Creativity
AI's Latest Job? Designing Cool T-Shirts — www.wired.com That attractive design on your T-shirt wasn't made by some hipster artist. It was produced by a neural network.
Balmain reveals line-up of virtual models for latest campaign — www.independent.co.uk
More recently, brands have begun casting social media influencers whose large followings have made them extra valuable. However luxury French fashion house Balmain has taken things in quite a different direction, making an impact with virtual models.
Business/Marketing/Adv
Millennials are buying your values not your products — www.thenational.ae Companies miss the mark when their marketing campaigns revolve around a specific product or discount
Amazon’s Most Ambitious Research Project Is a Convenience Store — www.bloomberg.com Jeff Bezos and his company have spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars getting rid of cashiers. Will it pay off?
Why Diet Coke is considering stripping its name from some cans — adage.com The brandless cans have been distributed at events and might get wider play at retail next year.
Interestingness
From Brandless to worthless with a lot of capital down the drain — loosethreads.com
Last week The Information reported that Brandless, which sells private label-priced goods without any of the infrastructure of a retailer that sells private labels, is falling apart at the seams.
Education publisher Pearson to phase out print textbooks — www.bbc.com Pearson says students will only be able to rent physical books as it makes all products "digital first".
Wellness
Are smartphones the new 'opium of the people'? — www.bbc.com Religion is in the ascendant across the world, but it has a new, powerful rival - the internet.
Platform News
‘Hard to justify investing resources': Publishers still cautious on IGTV efforts with lack of ads — digiday.com Instagram’s improvements to the product -- previewing IGTV content in Instagram’s feed and supporting horizontal videos -- have kept publishers interested.
Exclusive: Britons abandon Facebook as usage plummets by more than a third — www.telegraph.co.uk The amount Brits are using Facebook has plunged by more than a third over the past 12 months, new research indicates, in sharp contrast to the company’s official statistics.