In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at six stories to think about next week, including:
– Brands Are Hooked on Discounts
– Can You Be Cruel to a Chatbot?
– The Cumulative Effect of ‘Good Enough’ Attention
– Made by AI vs. Made by Human
– What’s Really Killing the Dinner Party?
– What Has the World Cup Left Behind in America?
In addition, we have ads from Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, McDonald’s Brasil, Oura, IKEA, Oat Cult, Atlassian, Mammut and TOSSR.
// Stories of the Week:
1.) Brands Are Hooked on Discounts
New research by Les Binet and Kantar’s Dom Boyd finds UK consumer goods brands spend around twice as much on price promotions as on paid media, making promotions the single biggest line of marketing spend. However, 75% of the 250 marketing leaders surveyed can’t estimate the share of their promotions that make money and 80% think many promotional buyers would have bought anyway. As Binet puts it, “Price promotions are like class A drugs: expensive, dangerous and addictive.” The habit stems from two aspects: a marketing focus on short-term volume and market-share defence over maximising returns, and a lack of measurement and evidence.
82% of marketers think their latest promotion paid off, but more than 60% of those judgements rest on personal judgement or partial analysis, and 76% say they repeat promotions without checking, despite additional IPA reporting suggesting nearly two-thirds of price promotions lose money. 91% say moving the money into brand advertising would be easy if they had evidence it would return on investment.
2.) Can You Be Cruel to a Chatbot?
Are you kind to your chatbot? Most people already show some courtesy to AI, with a YouGov study of more than 12,000 AI users across 17 countries finding 43% regularly say “please” or “thank you” to chatbots. However, Anthropic has recently written courtesy into its terms of use. Its Oct. 8th usage policy update bans “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its Claude models, filed under the same heading as harassing people. Anthropic says it applies only in “extreme cases”, and that Claude ending the chat will remain the primary enforcement. So does Anthropic know something we don’t about AI and feelings?
Not everyone thinks there is anything to protect. Microsoft AI’s code of conduct rejects “the idea that models might deserve welfare”, with its CEO Mustafa Suleyman saying “the idea of model welfare is wrong”. US voters largely agree, with 77% saying AI should always be treated as a tool and only 11% backing eventual legal rights. Alternatively though, a 2025 YouGov poll showed 10% of Americans said some AI systems are already conscious and another 45% expected them to be. Perhaps AI doesn’t currently feel when we’re cruel to it, but a majority of us expect it may someday.
AI kindness rules may be as much for users as the AI themselves. Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues that treating machines that seem conscious as if they feel nothing risks “brutalizing our minds”, suggesting the rule may be as much about the users’ welfare as the model. Whether or not AI has human emotions, it can be argued that maintaining standards of behavior is more about maintaining our own humanity.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Sacred Tech
3.) The Cumulative Effect of ‘Good Enough’ Attention
Most media time is now background time. BCG finds US consumers spent more than 13 hours a day with media in 2025 but gave only about three hours, 28%, their focused attention.
However, a new attention study shows why that ‘background time’ doesn’t have to be a write-off. Across 270 campaigns in six countries, research by attention firm Lumen and Amazon Ads found cumulative attention across exposures was eight times more powerful for brand lift than frequency. No single ad reached the thresholds for a significant lift (21 attentive seconds for awareness, 47 for purchase intent), and adding frequency without enough attention went with lower awareness (down 4%) and favourability (down 7%).
The two studies combine to make an interesting point about attention. When most viewing is half-watching, the brands that succeed may be the ones that stack up varying levels of attention across many exposures, combining ‘good enough’ attention into something more.
4.) Made by AI vs. Made by Human
Being seen as AI looks to carry a measurable cost to engagement. A USC study of about 1.14 million TikTok posts suggests an “AI-generated” label cuts likes by around 7-8%, and Bentley-Gallup’s study on AI in advertising found 49% of Americans view it negatively against 19% positively.
Alternatively, ‘Made by Humans’ has potential benefits, but they’re still being clarified. 68% of Americans, offered identical products at the same price, say they’d pick “made by humans” over 10% for “made with AI”, and more than 3,000 authors have certified 5,000 titles under the Authors Guild’s “Human Authored” seal. However, in an experiment with 654 readers, an AI label lowered ratings of a story but not what people paid to finish it. Our opinion of the work changes but not our engagement with it when it’s AI generated.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Human Detection Premium
5.) What’s Really Killing the Dinner Party?
Having friends over for dinner used to be a regular occasion, but now it’s becoming a rare luxury. Data for Progress has found the share of Americans who entertained at home in the past year fell from 88% in 1995 to 67% in 2026. By Derek Thompson’s calculation across two surveys, monthly hosting has dropped from 42% in 1975 to 12% now.
So even as we spend more time at home, we’re less likely to invite others over to join us and host. What’s driving it? The Guardian points to the effort hosting now takes, with one reader saying “it feels like you’re just a spectator to your friends’ evening”. Additionally ‘shame’ about our homes or the cost of feeding a crowd may be to blame. No matter the reason, the dinner party looks to be one casualty of a social life that has shrunk at home and away.
6.) What Has the World Cup Left Behind in America?
This summer’s World Cup was billed as soccer’s big moment in America, and the final was, with 66.4 million viewers across Fox and Telemundo, the most-watched soccer match in US history.
The wider legacy for long-term soccer viewing in the US is only now coming into view and it looks to skew younger. Nielsen Sports finds Premier League viewing among 18 to 34 year-olds up 20% so far this season. A Morning Consult poll sees Gen Z soccer fandom up 16 points since May and Gallup has soccer at a record 9% as Americans’ favorite sport to watch.
The legacy looks less like a bigger audience than a younger one, with the clearest measured uplift around the Premier League. Despite a wider reach for the overall tournament, its legacy may be more specific across specific audiences and teams.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Spectacle as Belonging
// Ads You Might Have Missed:
Breast Cancer Foundation NZ – “Save your life. Rinse. Repeat.”
In a survey of 1,000 New Zealand women aged 20 to 44, 94% said breast checks matter, but only 37% did one in the past month and 82% said they are easy to forget. Over half of those who do check do it in the shower, so Taika Waititi has directed a shower film asking women to check while they wash, and Glow Lab is printing the reminder on its body wash. The campaign sets out to entertain while building the habit into routine.
McDonald’s Brasil – “Happy View”
For Children’s Day on 12 October, McDonald’s Brasil and Hospital CEMA have turned a Happy Meal box into an eye-screening kit, with refraction lenses from +2 to -3, a pinhole test and an eye chart, plus free screenings for children at a São Paulo restaurant from 10 to 12 October. About 20% of school-age children have a vision problem, so the box stretches a brand asset to make a potentially scary experience more familiar.
Oura – “Wear Your Best Life”
How do you champion a product in advertising, when you’ve worked to make it less obtrusive and noticeable in daily life? Oura’s new ads make hands the people, as dancers, violinists, jugglers and fingerboarders walk, skate and swim through a one-tenth-scale city, all while putting the Oura ring at the forefront.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Custom Over Algorithm
IKEA UK – “Storage is Sexy”
Dating is hard. Most would say it’s harder than putting together an IKEA unit. IKEA UK has combined the two through a dating show in which singles choose a date by inspecting three PAX wardrobes before they meet the owners. Over two 10+ minute episodes the brand shows that “Being organised can be the hottest thing a person can be,” and how you keep your clothes can show how you can sort out your love life.
Oat Cult – “Tiramisù”
Oat Cult has taken a unique direction on how to talk about convenience. It launches a tiramisu variant of its overnight oats with a two-minute, black-and-white folk horror film. As villagers sacrifice their treasured possessions to a hole in the ground, they’re rewarded with sprays of coffee-and-chocolate oats back on their faces. The longform storytelling commits to the mechanic, making something memorable.
Atlassian – “Williams F1 Team Pack”
Atlassian has built AI agents modelled on five members of the Williams F1 team, from drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz to a car build technician, which any Atlassian customer can add to their own teams. The sponsorship forms into a product instead of just a logo on a car.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Collaborative AI
Mammut – “Unwellness Retreat”
Mountaineering brand Mammut is taking three American wellness creators up a mountain and out of their comfort zone to show where growth truly happens. As the influencers swap sleep tracking and power yoga for ice climbing and a snow bath, the brand simultaneously puts their perspective on show while subtly critiquing the wider wellness industry.
TOSSR – “Adopt a Maggot”
Australian bin-bag subscription startup TOSSR has opened an adoption scheme for the maggots its stronger bags have left homeless. Consumers can adopt a named maggot (Jason, Big Lil, Lady Goo Goo) and get a certificate and 20% off a first subscription.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Chaos as Entertainment
// Sunday Snippets
// Advertising & Branding //
– Suicide prevention charity CALM is handing out an anthology of 14-line poems at train stations, Tube stops and pubs, one line for each of the 14 men estimated to die by suicide in the UK every day, with a blank page after each poem for readers to write their own. [Charity]
– Carl’s Jr. New Zealand will swap a screenshot of a one-star review left at a rival burger chain for a free Famous Star. [Advertising]
– Swedish insurer Hedvig and perfume house CRA-YON have made a car air freshener that moves from crisp top notes to smoke and burnt rubber “to remind the driver of the ever-present accident”. [Advertising]
– For Suntory Oolong Tea’s 45th anniversary, a Shibuya backstreet has become “a foreign country”, where visitors switch their phones to airplane mode at the entrance, the signs are in Chinese only and stall staff speak only Chinese. [Food & Drink]
– To remind Canadians that Hulu’s shows sit inside Disney+, billboards cut the Disney wordmark down to “Dis” and set Hulu’s green “Hu” beside it to ask “Hu Dis?” over tight crops of Hulu talent such as Kim Kardashian’s eyes. [Branding]
– In Sour Patch Kids’ first UK ads, special-build posters show the sweets attacking the Oreo posters beside them. [Advertising]
– In Brazil, Ford put up a run of billboards on the road to São Paulo’s airport, each showing a Bronco Sport a little muddier than the last, under the line “Not every design comes from the factory.” [Advertising]
– California Pizza Kitchen is giving away up to 25,000 free 7-inch “Apology Pizzas” to say sorry for retiring Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Shrimp Scampi and Pear and Gorgonzola pizzas. [Food & Drink]
– Wet Ones has put close-up photos of hands posed to look like bare bottoms on New York street screens, bus shelters, wrapped buses and in Times Square, built on research that over half of Americans admit using hand wipes on intimate areas, to say the wipes are “just for hands”. [Advertising]
– John Cena shares the screen with three grizzly bears, a raccoon and a kitten in a clean-energy campaign that leaves out the climate, from Our Energy. [Sustainability]
– Ramp has hidden Tony Hawk on a 2006 Wall Street trading desk as “Tony Stock”, in a series styled like his skateboarding video games, with playable levels on its microsite and an invitation-only finale with Hawk and Bam Margera on the New York Stock Exchange floor on 17 October. [Advertising]
– Korean apartment brand Swichen’s “Great Housework” film is made entirely of folding towels, washing dishes and taking out food waste shared across a family. [Advertising]
– Ricola is bringing back “Wer hat’s erfunden?”, the line it ran from 1998 to 2014, now with a cashier asking the famous question, a young shopper who doesn’t know the answer (“wrong age group”) and a marmot mascot, Ric. [Advertising]
– On has cast Zendaya as an action hero in a city chase to launch the second collection she co-designed with the brand. [Fashion]
– KFC Italia has brought back two fried-chicken focaccia sandwiches for the first time in seven years, judged in a mockumentary by New York actor Fabrizio Brienza. [Food & Drink]
// Marketing & Media //
– AdImpact expects $11.6 billion of political advertising this midterm season, more than the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential election, with $2.6 billion of it on connected TV. [Advertising]
– OpenAI will add image ads to ChatGPT in the US later this month. [Media]
– TikTok has introduced Buy Direct, letting US shoppers buy straight from a brand inside the app. [Social Media]
– One big digital agency told Digiday its coding agents now run 36 to 48 hours unsupervised, and token costs now sit in the same talent budget as salaries. [AI]
– Paramount’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery has closed, putting HBO, CNN, CBS and Nickelodeon under one company called Skydance, with about $80 billion of debt. [Media]
– In Bentley-Gallup’s survey, 47% of Americans say businesses should take a public stance on current events, down from 51% last year, and 56% of employees would rather their own employer stayed quiet. [Branding]
– Guinness is the only alcohol brand YouGov finds most considered by every UK generation, from 30% of Gen Z to 28% of Baby Boomers and older, while Peroni climbs with age and Smirnoff and Kopparberg fall away. [Food & Drink]
– UK museums are licensing their collections to hotels, paint makers and fashion brands as funding is cut. [Branding]
– HubSpot is cutting about 660 jobs, 7% of staff, and rebuilding its teams around customer outcomes rather than products; its CEO says the cuts are “not driven by AI-related efficiencies”. [Work]
– A study of 1.5 million AI search sessions across 175 websites finds revenue from AI search has more than tripled in 13 months, up 321%, while revenue from ordinary search grew 28%. [AI]
– Reading 35 years of the Wall Street Journal, an NBER paper finds bad news lingers longer than good news on every one of 12 economic topics, most of all on security, corporate strategy, health and housing. [Media]
// AI & Tech //
– Norway has become the first country to propose a temporary ban on AI glasses in public places, from parks, beaches and playgrounds to gyms with changing rooms, concerts and sports events. [Tech]
– An AI safety researcher got Meta’s Muse to reveal instructions telling it to run an hourly process that creates and updates “a page for every person in the user’s life”, including people who have never used Muse, Gizmodo reports. Meta says an agent “needs to have context about you and those you interact with”. [AI]
– The Verge has collected what frontline staff hear from customers who trust ChatGPT over them, from restaurant guests who turn down the sommelier with “No, I’ll just ask ChatGPT” to diners with shellfish allergies insisting “ChatGPT says there’s no shellfish in this”. [AI]
– Since the US government started calling AI “Super Intelligence”, Slovenia’s .si web domain has been outselling .ai, with 46,066 new registrations in September. [Tech]
– In a virtual-reality office experiment with 189 workers, an AI assistant that looked like a woman was paid 10% less than an identical one that looked like a man, for the same work. [AI]
– AP-NORC finds 64% of Americans think AI is developing too fast, including 54% of Republicans, and only 10% plan to use AI to decide who to vote for in the midterms. [AI]
– Audible now lets listeners talk out loud with Renfield inside its Dracula audiobook, an AI character who answers back, in a beta for US and UK users. [AI]
– Across 37 countries, Pew finds more people now say social media is bad for democracy: in Germany the share rose from 41% in 2022 to 61% and in the Netherlands to 70%, while 64% of Americans already said so. [Social Media]
– Google Labs has launched Playground, which turns a text prompt into a browser game anyone can publish to a public gallery, with leaderboards, for US users over 18. [AI]
– In Stack Overflow’s survey of more than 30,000 developers in 169 countries, only 6.6% are prepared to trust AI with important decisions, and 78.7% say knowing the source matters when judging AI-generated code or answers. [AI]
– YouGov finds the share of British women using Reddit has risen from 11% to 19% in four years, closing on men at 26%. [Social Media]
– San Francisco now has a “midlife hacker house”, a $4 million home where founders in their 40s to 60s who have already sold companies vibe-code together on $140 “grounding” sheets. [Tech]
// Retail, Food & Drink //
– About 70% of GLP-1 users have dropped at least one clothing size, according to Coresight, and 65% buy the same item in several sizes, with 83% of those keeping the extra sizes expecting to shrink further. [Retail]
– Starbucks has opened six small-format cafés, including in San Antonio and Manhattan, that keep the seating in a fraction of a normal store’s space, after closing its pickup-only stores in 2025 as “overly transactional”. [Retail]
– Refused a licence to sell alcohol in its east Belfast store, Lidl opened a pub inside it instead, called the Middle Ale, named after the middle aisle, which now needs bouncers on busy nights. [Retail]
– Woolworths will sell a $10 insulated bag made to look like the bag its hot roast chickens come in, known in Australia as the “bachelor’s handbag”, from 14 October. [Retail]
– For its 90th birthday, Kraft Mac & Cheese is moving into its first new category in decades with Cheesy Ramen, $2.99 microwave bowls arriving in April 2027 in a $2.7 billion US ramen category growing 9% a year. [Food & Drink]
– Crocs bought the charm maker Jibbitz for $10 million in 2006; its charms sold more than $270 million in 2024, and Crocs now sells pearl and gold “shoelry” priced up to $850 in New York. [Fashion]
– Through 1 November, Espolòn Tequila will pay half of a ride-hailing fare, up to $25, after, it says, surge pricing pushed Halloween fares in big US cities to eight or nine times normal last year. [Food & Drink]
– Japan Post is selling frozen ready meals through post offices from 8 October, ordered on in-branch tablets, online or by phone, with surplus-food marketplace Kuradashi. [Retail]
– Oktoberfest’s tents are still limited to the same six Munich breweries, under rules the city council re-adopts every year, and this year about 7 million visitors paid €14.80 to €15.90 a litre. [Food & Drink]
– Target’s holiday toy catalogue now turns a child’s handwritten wish list into a digital one with a scanner, and every printed page carries a QR code. [Retail]
– Americans will spend $13.5 billion on Halloween, according to the NRF, and Deloitte finds more shoppers will buy it at the grocery store (55%) than at a specialty Halloween shop (36%). [Consumer Behavior]
– Constellation Brands is buying SpikedAde, a vodka drink in sports-drink flavours with zero sugar and 100 calories, for $75 million upfront and up to $278 million more over five years if it performs. [Food & Drink]
– Absolut’s next Artist Edition puts KAWS’ XX eyes and CHUM character on the bottle, following last year’s Keith Haring edition. [Collectables]
// Sport & Entertainment //
– Before Lionel Messi’s last match for Argentina on 6 October, adidas released a film on its social channels in which he narrates his international career, “Me voy en paz” (“I leave in peace”), and switched its accounts’ profile pictures around the world to Messi. [Sports]
– Erling Haaland is suing Norwegian Air over a World Cup post that gave one of its planes his blonde ponytail, captioned “We’ve never looked more Norwegian”. [Sports]
– The Miami Heat will play one night as “Vice City”, with new uniforms and a custom court, on 18 November, the eve of Grand Theft Auto VI’s release. [Gaming]
– In Pepsodent’s first move into sport, Indonesian para-archer Kholidin, who lost the use of one arm in a 2017 accident, draws and releases his bowstring with his teeth, and the brand is providing his periodontal care before the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya from 18 to 24 October. [Sports]
– Ahead of its 16 October release, the Street Fighter film has posted images of street signs with “FIGHTER” added in the game’s logo type, from New York’s 42 Street subway sign to London’s Regent Street and Sydney Harbour Bridge. In Times Square, performers fought one-on-one on a live stage while the crowd pressed the buttons of an oversized console. [Advertising]
– Panda Express says its Roblox and Fortnite worlds lifted consideration from 64% to 67%, and it now updates them monthly, including an obstacle course called the Panda Express Obby. [Gaming]
– The San Jose Sharks opened their season by projecting sharks swimming under the ice, turning the rink into an aquarium before puck drop. [Sports]
– Brisbane 2032 has revealed its Olympic and Paralympic emblems, a pink cockatoo and a sulphur-crested cockatoo whose crests trace the shape of Queensland. [Sports]
– In a Talker Research survey for Hormel, 39% of US fans prefer a “homegate” to a parking-lot tailgate, against 24% who prefer the stadium lot, and 61% say the pregame beats the game. [Sports]
// Life & Society //
– Gallup finds 44% of US adults aged 18-29 are “thriving” so far in 2026, on pace to be 20 points below the 64% of 2010, while the over-65s are at 53%, up from 38% in 2008. Among the over-65s, 59% say they have enough money to do everything they want. [Health]
– Southwest’s “Enter Airplane Mode” gives 1,000 to 10,000 Rapid Rewards points to customers who upload a screenshot of the phone notifications they have been ignoring, aimed at the 76% of Americans in its survey who report burnout. [Travel]
– ONS figures show only 7.2% of 18 to 24 year-olds in the UK now smoke, down from 25.7% in 2011 and below the 12.4% of 45 to 54 year-olds. [Health]
– Manulife’s Asia Care Survey finds 75% of people in Japan are anxious about elder-care costs but only 6% have consulted a financial professional, and its campaign introduces “wealthspan” next to healthspan in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Shinagawa stations until 15 December. [Finance]
– Northwestern Mutual finds 73% of US adults would rather receive long-term care at home, rising to 83% of Boomers, yet 54% have no financial plan for their own care. [Finance]
– The WSJ finds fit women posting flexed biceps rather than abs, partly because, as one historian puts it, “there’s no pill, there’s no surgery” that gets you sculpted biceps. [Health]
– A new, unofficial Department of New Yorker Verification will certify transplants who reach 1,000 points: 50 for each year in the city, plus “suffering points” for bed bugs, muggings and alternate-side parking. [Culture]
– A crowdfunded film of Britain’s climate “emergency briefing” has been seen by an estimated 185,000 people at more than 3,400 screenings, and its makers want the government to broadcast one in primetime. [Sustainability]
– Fora finds that 78% of US families planning a multigenerational trip who need an accessibility accommodation would pay more for a trip that works for everyone, while 90% of its travel advisors say online accessibility information can be incomplete, outdated or contradictory. [Travel]
– In Fourthline research, 78% of 6,000 Europeans would accept slower bank identity checks if they cut fraud, while appetite for security steps that go unexplained fell from 55% to 42% in a year. [Finance]
// Until Next Sunday
As always, let me know what you think by email (dubose@newclassic.agency), website or on LinkedIn. You can also listen to an audio summary and discussion of each week’s newsletter on Spotify. We’re also on TikTok!
