Happy Mother’s Day, FutureParty people. Or — wait. Was that yesterday? Oh, no… But chances are you didn’t forget because Mother’s Day is one of the most widely observed holidays in the world. Technically originated by Anna Jarvis in 1907 and turned into a national holiday by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, the tradition dates back to the Middle Ages when mothers were specifically honored during the fourth day of Lent. So, now, you really have no excuse to forget.

In other news… brands worry about consumers’ spending habits, marketers worry about virtual influencers, and AI helps Bumble users become better flirts.

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• YouTube – “I Had Some Help” - Post Malone (feat. Morgan Wallen)

• X (Twitter) – Dave Grohl

• Google – Eurovision 2024

• Reddit – Chris Pine

• TikTok – “Nasty” - Tinashe

• Spotify – “360” - Charli XCX

.ECONOMY.

A drop in consumer spending is freaking out corporate execs

The Future. As high inflation persists, many consumers are more aggressively managing their budgets, prioritizing their spending on needs rather than big-ticket or recreational purchases. Because a struggling consumer usually indicates a struggling economy, this trend could not only foreshadow an amplified divide between “the haves and have-nots” but also a possible recession.

Trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents
NYT reports an increase in the number of times that CEOs and CFOs have cited “low-income consumers” as the reason for declining sales on their earnings calls this quarter. So, what’s going on with consumer spending?

• On one end of the spectrum, people are using up their pandemic savings, accumulating credit card debt, and relying on “buy now, pay later” plans to make monthly ends meet.

• On the other end, they have little-to-no debt of any kind and have accumulated nice sums from their stock-market-tied retirement accounts to fund vacations and expensive nights out.

Stretched too thin
While mainstream brands like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and KFC are seeing the average consumer pull back, less price-sensitive industries like travel and hospitality are still seeing people book flight, hotel, and restaurant reservations.

In other words… people with tighter belts will spend less amid economic uncertainty, and people with extra cash will always spend money — no matter what the economy looks like.

68.4% of you said you were Homeowners in Friday’s poll: Are you a renter or a homeowner?

“Since 1980!”

“Homeowner and also accidental landlord. Our starter home has now become a rental property after we up-sized to meet the needs of our growing family.”

“(Still living with parents to save money).”

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT HIMS & HERS.

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Media, Music, & Entertainment

• Concord Chorus’ $1.5 billion offer for Hipgnosis Songs Fund is final, potentially ending a bidding war for the home to the music catalogs of such artists as Neil Young and Justin Bieber. [Read More]

• Netflix is expected to land the media rights to the pair of NFL games slated for Christmas Day in a first-of-its-kind deal. [Read More]

• Prime Video has just closed a deal with AT&T in which the telecommunications company will be the main sponsor for 21 WNBA games streaming on the service this season. [Read More]

Fashion & E-Commerce

• The “ugly beauty” movement, which rejects conventional beauty standards, has been trending on social media likely because people “have gotten bored of fake, filtered perfection.” [Read More]

• The Way Upfronts saw A-listers like Mark Wahlberg, Scarlett Johansson, and John Legend pitching brands at the first-of-its-kind event from Hollywood producer Michael Sugar. [Read More]

• Avenue Sports Fund and Stephen Curry, along with Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala, are establishing a TGL (golf league) franchise in the Bay Area with a brand identity that pays homage to the team’s Northern California roots. [Read More]

Tech, Web3, & AI

• Apple wants to revolutionize iPhone productivity with real-time AI transcription for Voice Memos and Notes in iOS 18, letting users see running transcriptions of their audio recordings in both apps. [Read More]

• Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is imagining a world where “AI dating concierges” can court each other on people’s behalf and help them become better flirts on the dating apps. [Read More]

• Meta is harnessing publicly available Facebook and Instagram photos to power its text-to-image generator model Emu, capitalizing on a bottomless archive of visual content. [Read More]

Creator Economy

• Stanford, Harvard, and MIT are among the top universities for graduating entrepreneurs with investor backing in the past year. [Read More]

• Prime Hydration, the sports beverage brand from creators Logan Paul and KSI, is facing a California lawsuit over downplaying the presence of harmful chemicals in its packaging. [Read More]

• Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine is producing Influenced, a new creator-led talk show for Prime Video that bridges the gap between social media and TV. [Read More]

.MEDIA.

Virtual influencers divide public opinion

The Future. Virtual influencers — digital personas that sell products like human influencers — are growing more popular as the technology develops, and the influencer economy grows. If virtual influencers catch on, they’ll probably take a major chunk of revenue away from their human counterparts.

Less than human 
Digital influencers have advantages — and drawbacks — that humans lack.

• Digital influencers are cheaper, requiring no wages or human expenses. In some cases, substituting one for a popular human influencer could reduce the cost of promotional material by 98%.
  

• They also have flexible schedules, can do anything required of them (like dangerous stunts), and have reputations completely under brands’ control.
  

• On the other hand, digital influencers lack emotion and can’t handle complex emotional ads as well as humans can. They also have high upfront costs.

Death of the salesmen
Regardless of their downsides, virtual influencers will likely outcompete human influencers over time (barring regulation) because they have a different cost structure.

While established human influencers fetch higher sums as they grow more famous over time, virtual ones should get cheaper as more of their content is made and can be reused as training data.

So much for moving up in the world.

.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT FINANCE BUZZ.

Some of the best credit cards for balance transfers

Did you know that some credit cards can actually help you get out of debt faster? Yes, it sounds crazy. But it’s true.

The secret: find a card with a “0% intro APR" period for balance transfers. Then, transfer your debt and pay it down as much as possible during the intro period.

No interest means that you can pay off the debt faster. 

Check out the full list of cards you can use to do this here.

• Listen: The If Books Could Kill podcast tracks how author and financial journalist Michael Lewis fell for Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud in his book on the subject, Going Infinite.

• Read: Insider covers a leaked internal document from Google that shows the company’s strategy for capitalizing on concerns over a looming TikTok ban to increase ad revenue on affiliated platforms.

• Watch: New Balance's seven-minute short film focuses on the company’s popularity within specific subcultures.

Sike.

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE

Today we get into how the fashion industry is struggling to find buyers and investors, the popularity of March Madness, and how albums are now franchises.