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Unexpected recurring payment from an unknown brand name showing up on a bank statement? That happens regularly, with 36% of Brits spotting a scamscription or payment trap in 2023. Considering that inflation ranks as the number one concern for the 25th consecutive month, this is becoming more of a concern.

From LatAm to Asia, the subscription economy is booming, with consumers appreciating the convenience, cost-effectiveness and personalization these services provide. Yet many people don't realize they're signing up for a recurring payment: per Citizens Advice, 13 million Brits (26%) accidentally signed up for a subscription in 2023. Auto-renews, free trials and unclear terms are the most common reasons.

We know England can be prone to the odd spot of rain ☔😉, but wet days are becoming more than a mild inconvenience. Three in five English adults say extreme weather affects their ability to be active. According to the UK's Football Association, 30% of community pitches are flooded for two months of the year, resulting in an estimated 120,000 lost soccer matches annually.

Recognizing the impact of flooding and unusually heavy downpours, UK sporting body Sport England has announced Every Move, a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the effects of climate change. Planned initiatives include restoring flooded pitches and making swimming pools more environmentally and financially sustainable. Sport England has also warned of funding cuts to organizations without robust sustainability measures in place by 2027, stating: "It's time we moved from informing and encouraging to enabling and requiring."

Findings from Sport England's recent survey of sports clubs and other stakeholders underscore the need for change: 4 in 10 organizations are already affected by disruptions to play caused by weather events, and 59% state that funding for environmental initiatives is the type of support they want most. As Sport England says, "While it might not be convenient or easy, we have to act now."

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P.S. The accompanying image isn't a random cute pic. Since harvest mice are suffering from a loss of habitat, Wimbledon tennis balls are donated to conservation programs around Britain to serve as spherical mouse homes.

Just under 16 minutes. That's how long it takes to get a mental boost from exercise. The ASICS 2024 State of Mind Study reinforces the positive impact of exercise on psychological wellbeing and identifies a direct link between exercise in teenage years and mental health in adulthood. The study, which surveyed over 26,000 people across 22 countries, also reveals that 57% of the Silent Generation were active daily in their childhood, compared to just 19% of Gen Z.

It could get even worse for the next generation – whose members handle iPads before their third birthday and spend 2.48 hours a week shopping online (US kids 8 or younger). So it's time to nudge kids and teenagers, from Gen Alpha to Gen Z, to swap their digital playgrounds for IRL exercise. It's likely to help them feel more energized (30%), confident (21%), focused (19%) and relaxed (23%), equipping them with life-long mental resilience.

Unsurprisingly, sportswear brands are taking the lead:
🏊 adidas enters the move-to-earn scene with 1,000 NFTs
🏃 Saucony challenges phone users to run further than they scroll
🧘‍♀️ Nike and Dove's Body Confident Sport builds body confidence in girls
🤸 In a generational flip, ASICS' Little Reminders sees 7-to-8-year-olds remind adults to exercise

OpenAI just announced a major upgrade to its flagship product. Judging from demo videos, GPT-4o ('o' for omni) will bring unprecedented levels of natural conversation to ChatGPT. While previous versions of the app's voice mode featured a noticeable lag, the new model takes an average of 320 milliseconds to respond to audio inputs, approaching the speed of real-time human conversation. It's also able to react to video input, express emotion, crack jokes and interpret tone and sentiment in a speaker's voice.

As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman notes in a blog post following the announcement, "... the new voice (and video) mode is the best computer interface I've ever used. It feels like AI from the movies; and it's still a bit surprising to me that it's real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change. The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different."

Hardly a coincidence, then, that the female voice in OpenAI's demos bears a striking resemblance to Scarlett Johansson...

Even if your products don't include 🥤👗🧴 and your brand isn't one of the top polluters like The Coca-Cola Company (11%), PepsiCo (5%) and Nestlé (3%), keep reading anyway... 🤓

Historically, the burden of dealing with plastic waste and pollution has been unfairly placed on consumers. But, as young and old alike grow increasingly skeptical of climate actions, their call for robust regulations is intensifying. Enter the UN global plastic treaty, slated to be nailed down by late 2024. This pact will mandate action across the entire lifecycle of plastics, from extraction of fossil fuels to end-of-use disposal.

Instead of waiting for nations to agree on how to tackle plastic pollution, start scrutinizing your products and packaging today. How could your brand ditch single-use and reimagine long-lived plastics?

A particularly controversial use of generative AI has emerged among Asian consumers — ‘bringing back’ the dead for purposes that range from personal to political. During election season in India, former movie star-turned-political hopeful Vijay Vasanth released an AI-manipulated video of his late father, H. Vasanth Kumar, endorsing his candidacy. H. Vasanth Kumar, who died in 2020 from COVID-19, was a well-known local businessman and former parliamentary representative, making his posthumous appearance particularly impactful.

In China and Taiwan, start-ups are developing consumer-facing apps that use large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to recreate the personas of deceased individuals and pets. These AI chatbots allow users to engage with their lost loved ones for comfort and closure. It particularly resonates with consumers in markets where governments keep tight controls over religion and spirituality, therefore limiting traditional avenues for people to deal with bereavement and ‘the afterlife.’

The application of AI to ‘recreate’ deceased individuals highlights some of the most fundamental questions surrounding the use of AI. From an ethical perspective, how will the blurred lines between real and artificial impact human psyches and interactions? At the regulatory level, how can governments prevent misuse without stifling innovation?

Extreme heat has been affecting large regions of Asia in recent weeks. Countries are recording all-time high temperatures, and the heatwave has taken a hefty toll on human and animal lives. In response, governments and brands are launching immediate crisis management measures.

In the Philippines, Valenzuela's municipal government introduced free mobile showers to combat excessive heat and water shortages. The mobile showers make stops at different neighborhoods, allowing citizens experiencing water shortages to cool off and freshen up free of charge.

McDonald's Philippines is also bringing back its Night Classroom initiative. Nationwide, 107 McDonald’s outlets will serve as study hubs until 4 a.m. daily until the end of the month. Dedicated areas within each restaurant are outfitted with wide tables, appropriate lighting, charging stations and free unlimited Wi-Fi — offering students an air-conditioned environment for post-school study sessions.

The World Meteorological Organization reported that Asia is the world’s most disaster-prone region amidst accelerating global warming. Besides short-term mitigation, long-term systemic solutions are urgently needed. For example, Singapore's government plans to coat buildings with reflective paint, after a study from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU) found that it cools urban areas by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celcius.

From repurposing branded spaces to rethinking infrastructure planning, what role might you play in helping consumers and communities cope with a hotter planet?

While AI image generation tools offer vast and exciting possibilities, the shadows of deepfakes, opacity and bias also loom large. As the line between real and artificial blurs, consumers demand authenticity and transparency. Nearly nine in ten agree with the statement "It's important that an image is authentic," and 78% affirm that "It's getting to the point where I can't tell if an image is real."

Those numbers are from a new report by Getty Images, Building Trust in the Age of AI. Getty summarizes its findings as follows:

• People don't want to feel that they have been fooled or lied to — 98% of consumers agree that 'authentic' images and videos are pivotal in establishing trust
• Industries with high levels of consumer trust such as healthcare/pharmaceuticals, financial services, and travel are increasingly expected to be transparent
• People feel less favorably towards brands that are using AI generated visuals to create people or products

Considering initiatives like Snapchat's AI labels and OpenAI working on detection tools for images created with DALL-E, what's your 360° strategy for AI transparency?

Across Latin America and the Caribbean, 27% of people over 15 are excluded from formal financial services, and only 30% have obtained a loan from a financial entity in the past year.

Aiming to help unbanked and underbanked people level up, Ecuador-based Banco del Pacífico has found a novel way for them to build their credit scores. With 'Banca Gamer,' the bank now recognizes assets held in gaming accounts — think skins and other collectibles with monetary value — as collateral for securing a loan.

To broaden your brand's reach, why not follow Banco del Pacífico's lead and embrace a wider definition of savings and investments? Which untapped digital assets do your (potential) customers hold?

Earlier in 2024, The Guardian launched Reclaim your brain, a free email aimed at helping readers spend less time on their phones. The newsletter is a five-week coaching program with evidence-based assignments and readers are coached by science journalist Caroline Phinney, who wrote 'How to Break Up with Your Phone' back in 2018. 

As reported by NiemanLab, "the newsletter quickly garnered 100,000 sign-ups" and became The Guardian's fastest-growing newsletter ever.

Two hours a day spent scrolling through Instagram and TikTok adds up to a whopping 30 days a year. People are increasingly aware of the vast amount of time they dedicate to their screens. As their unease deepens (along with aches in necks and shoulders), many are seeking ways to proactively manage their digital consumption rather than being passively overwhelmed by it.

Brands have countless opportunities to help customers slash their screen time and boost their wellbeing. From making apps less addictive and sending fewer promotional emails, to providing customers with delightful things to get up to IRL. Whose side will you be on...?

One hundred and fifty-four. That’s how many times members of Gen Z pick up their phone every day. In a world that often feels overwhelming, phones offer escapism. They promise to alleviate FOMO or provide an illusion of control. But do they really help? More often than not, no. Most online spaces don’t offer respite; they simply add to the noise and many are addictive by design.

Gen Z — both your consumer base and your workforce — needs strategies to declutter their digital lives, calm their minds and reengage authentically with the world.

According to recent reporting by IPSOS, shoppers trust humans more than AI when it comes to product recommendations: 89% trust advice from friends/family, compared to just 51% for an e-commerce site's AI recommendations based on purchase history and 38% for generative AI tools like large language models.

However, the more familiar people are with generative AI, the more likely they are to trust suggestions by apps like ChatGPT or Bard: 81% of frequent generative AI users, compared to 34% of people who rarely use gen AI.

Shoppers want AI to assist and explain rather than directly recommend products. The top use cases were finding deals (24%) and explaining product differences (19%), rather than making direct recommendations.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued a newly updated policy statement on climate change. Children are uniquely vulnerable to health impacts wrought by a warming planet, and pediatricians are prime witnesses to those consequences. Unambiguously, the AAP states that climate change threatens children's health.

As reported by Grist, the group is encouraging its members to incorporate climate change counseling into their clinical practice. Their advice addresses the nuts and bolts of adaptation, underscoring that climate change is here now: "Assess climate risks and recommend climate solutions when screening for and addressing social determinants of health such as energy, food, and housing security. Educate families on regional climate and health risks and protective strategies. Use existing anticipatory guidance as a framework for discussing climate change solutions. For example, encourage active modes of transport or promote consumption of plant-based proteins to reduce carbon emissions and promote health. Encourage family choices that reduce fuel consumption and promote mobility, such as utilization of public and active transportation, and fuel-efficient vehicles."

🩺 Whether your organization operates in healthcare or an entirely different industry, how can you help your customers adapt to the effects of climate change? Which practical advice and solutions can you offer?