📰 Growth Daily - Thursday, Jan 19

1 - Unique Signals About 2023 Consumer Behavior

📰 TL;DR - The National Retail Federation is holding its "Big Show" this week and there is always some juicy nuggets to come from the meeting of the retail minds! This year is no exception. It seems the consensus is that a few pandemic-era consumer behaviors are not going away as fast as many retail leaders anticipated. Examples include:

1. Consumer's preference to stream at home instead of going to movie theaters

2. People are still dipping into savings to spend a lot more than on average, which is normally the opposite when we have this level of inflation

3. Consumers are still weighing "value" as one of their leading indicators in making decisions like they did during the pandemic

💡 Insight - Our take is simple, some things will never go back to the way they were pre-pandemic and we aren't upset that one of those things is consumers' above-average spending habits! The article clearly articulates that consumers' cash reserves are dwindling as they try to keep up their shopping addictions, sorry we mean habits, they built during the pandemic. 

You can read the article here...

2 - The First Real Twitter Alternative?

📰 TL;DR - A startup codenamed "T2" is working fast to capitalize on the growing disinterest in Twitter. They just raised $1.1m from some really interesting angel investors like Bradley Horowitz (the guy who built Googe's failed social network Google+ among other projects), Katherine Maher (the former CEO of Wikipedia) and others including former Twitter Director of Engineering and the former Head of News Partnerships at Google. Just reading through the list of angel investors, it's pretty clear that if anyone was going to recreate twitter, it would be this team. 

💡 Insight - This is the first time since Clubhouse that there seems to be a real contender for a new big social network to join the stale list of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, and Tik Tok. It's early days as there is not even an app yet.

However, we feel it's our job to be the first to tell about new social platforms that pop up so you can capitalize on that juicy "underpriced attention" so we'll keep you updated!

You can read the article here...

3 - Facebook Changing Its Stance On Nudity?

📰 TL;DR - Meta's independent Oversight Board just called for changes to its rules around displays of nudity. The changes come on the heels of the board's recent ruling taking down two posts from an account managed by a couple who identify are transgender and non-binary. After the board reinstated the posts post an appeal by the account, they are now essentially calling for an update to the internal guidelines of how moderators should assess these situations, saying:

“This policy is based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies. Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale.”

💡 Insight - Meta calls the board a "project" but we are happy to say that Growth Daily is a huge fan of Meta's Oversight Board for a bunch of reasons! And we wish they would expand the board to make many necessary changes we have wanted for years. If anyone on the board is listening, drop us a line because we are happy to help crowdsource a list of other topics for you guys should really cover next!

You can read the article here...

4 - Robinhood Is Launching A New Media Arm

📰 TL;DR - Robinhood acquired the stock market newsletter "Snacks" a few years ago and has invested heavily into growing it since. This week they announced they will be using Snacks to springboard a new media division called "Sherwood" that will be led by a veteran editor and media entrepreneur.  This new division will begin selling ads in its media publications / channels as a separate revenue stream to the app's normal streams.

💡 Insight -If you have been a subscriber of Growth Hacks Weekly for a while, you might remember we called this exact move "The Greatest Growth Hack Of All Time" in a recent newsletter edition. We believe every company doing over $5m a year NEEDS to have a separate media business unit besides their marketing department that manages a separately branded media business. They can sell ads (or subscriptions) to offset the cost of running the media business unit while they subtly plug their main brand in.

🙏🏼 Pro Insight - Robinhood is just joining a long list of brands like Stripe, Hubspot, Salesforce, and more who are using this playbook to drive a negative CAC.

You can read the article here...

5 - The E-Trade Baby Is Coming Back To The Super Bowl!

📰 TL;DR - The infamous start and sassy E-Trade baby is making its return to the Super Bowl this year in a new spot that will air in the first quarter. E-Trade's parent company Morgan Stanley said:

“E-Trade from Morgan Stanley has a long and storied history of Super Bowl spots that has helped us develop a connection with investing consumers that is hard to find across the financial services industry..."

💡 Insight - May we ask:

You can read the article here...

Some things in this newsletter (particularly the things with a *) may be a sponsored post or Growth Daily LLC may be getting a small commission if you sign up. 

** If you also want to get in front of our audience, fill out this short form.