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A ‘Squid Game’ star’s phenomenal Instagram engagement boosts Adidas and Louis Vuitton: Datacenter Weekly
Amazon under siege
In a Reuters special report headlined “Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show,” Aditya Kalra and Steve Stecklow note that the retail giant has been repeatedly accused of “knocking off products it sells on its website and of exploiting its vast trove of internal data to promote its own merchandise at the expense of other sellers”—accusations it has denied.
But Kalra and Stecklow got their hands on internal Amazon documents related to the company’s private-label products in India, and they “reveal how Amazon’s private-brands team in India secretly exploited internal data from Amazon.in to copy products sold by other companies, and then offered them on its platform.”
Additional context: “The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns. The aim: to identify and target goods—described as ‘reference’ or ‘benchmark’ products—and ‘replicate’ them.”
More: Reuters notes that an Amazon private-label brand called Solimo that began in India—and whose development benefited from Amazon’s use of internal data—is now also offered in the U.S.
Keep reading here.
See also: “Amazon Challenges Record $865 Million EU Data-Protection Fine,” per Bloomberg News.
Untrustworthy
You just can’t trust ad people—at least according to a new global poll from Ipsos. The company surveyed 19,570 people in 28 countries across the world, including the U.S., and found that advertising executives are among the least trusted professionals. (Doctors are the most trusted in the U.S. and globally, according to the poll.)
An Ipsos spokesperson, summarizing the poll’s findings, tells Ad Age Datacenter that “just 13% of Americans and 15% of people globally trust advertising executives. In the U.S., the only professionals trusted less than advertising executives were politicians, who were only rated as trustworthy by 9% of people.”
More details from the poll here.
Publicis power
“Publicis Groupe’s revenue rose 11.2% in the third quarter on an organic basis,” reports Ad Age’s Alexandra Jardine, “boosted by some major new business wins and the strong performance of Epsilon and Publicis Sapient in the U.S., leading the holding company to raise its forecast for the full year. In results that exceed analyst expectations, Publicis’ biggest markets all reported double-digit organic revenue growth, with the U.S. growing at 10.9%, Europe at 10% and Asia at 12.5%.”
Essential context: “The latest quarterly revenue figures demonstrated not only recovery from the pandemic,” Jardine adds, “but significant increases over pre-pandemic levels recorded in the third quarter of 2019.”
Keep reading here.
Brand game
In “How ‘Squid Game’ is winning attention from brands,” Ad Age’s Ethan Jakob Craft notes that the stars of the Netflix hit series—including actress and model HoYeon Jung—have seen their Instagram followings explode, and reports that Jung just got tapped as Louis Vuitton’s newest “global house ambassador.”
Now, Datacenter Weekly has new data from influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ that gives some insight into what brands get from leveraging Jung’s Instagram power.
• CreatorIQ says that Jung, @hoooooyeony on Instagram, is averaging 2.5 million likes per post over the past 90 days—which includes a period of relative global obscurity, because “Squid Game” only premiered worldwide on Sept. 17. (As of this writing, she has 20.4 million followers. At the end of August, she had just over 406,000 followers.)
• A post announcing her Louis Vuitton partnership has racked up 7.6 million likes and more than 37,500 comments since it was first published on Oct. 6.
• In addition to Louis Vuitton, Jung also has a new deal with Adidas. (See “‘Squid Game’ Star HoYeon Jung Fronts New Adidas ‘Adicolor’ Campaign,” from Footwear News.) A post announcing her Adidas partnership has racked up more than 9 million likes and 43,200 comments since it was first published on Oct. 5, per CreatorIQ.
ICYMI: P&G dominates in worldwide marketing
“Procter & Gamble Co. is set to reclaim the top spot among the world’s biggest advertisers, displacing Amazon,” Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson reports. “Ad Age Datacenter estimates the packaged goods powerhouse spent $11.5 billion on worldwide marketing in the fiscal year ended June 2021, putting P&G in position to be No. 1 in the next Ad Age World’s Largest Advertisers ranking.”
Keep reading here.
Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell
• “U.S. retail sales unexpectedly rise in September despite shortages,” per Yahoo Finance.
Essential context: “Supply chain crisis causes demand surge in resale sites and marketplaces,” from Ad Age.
• “American Consumer Delinquencies Plunge to a Record Amid Recovery,” per Bloomberg News.
• “Higher inflation squeezing U.S. consumers as food prices, rents accelerate,” per Reuters.
• “Jobless claims drop to a fresh pandemic low,” Fox Business reports.
• “A record 4.3 million workers walked off the job in August,” NBC News reports.
Essential context: “Why Literally Millions of Americans Are Quitting Their Jobs,” from Time magazine.
+ ICYMI from last week’s Datacenter Weekly: “U.S. advertising employment rose by only 1,000 jobs in September as nation’s job growth slowed,” per Ad Age Datacenter.
Speaking of jobs ...
The Digital Analytics Association Virtual Career Fair is set for Wednesday, Oct. 20, 1-4 p.m. Register here.
Marketing on purpose
Datacenter Weekly readers are invited to download a free copy of “Brand Purpose,” a new white paper that examines how consumers value brands with a purpose, what media choices can say about a brand, and what Gen Z expects from brands and employers. Ad Age Datacenter produced “Brand Purpose” based on data and analysis from Kantar.
Get it here.
Just briefly
Pandemic watch: “COVID-19 was the No. 1 killer of Americans age 35 to 54 last month, and No. 2 overall,” The Week reports.
Hack job: “Hacks and data breaches are all too common. Here’s what to do if you’re affected,” from The Washington Post
No-code: “Funnel, a no-code tool for marketers to organize disparate data sources, raises $66M in ‘pre-IPO’ round,” per TechCrunch.
After the cookie crumbles: “Watch live on Oct. 19 at 12:30 p.m. ET: How Salesforce and WPP are helping brands confront the cookieless future,” from Ad Age Studio 30.
The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.
Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf.
This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.