LSN : News : LG unveils two-wheeled AI agent designed for smart homes

Tinder tackles Gen Z loneliness in new brand film

It Starts With A Swipe by Tinder, UK

UK – Dating app Tinder has launched a new ad for its UK audience, redefining the brand’s messaging to appeal to swipe-fatigued Gen Z and modern relationship priorities.

Created by W Communications and taking a localised marketing approach, the brand film follows Ava, a young woman who is feeling lonely after moving to London. She downloads Tinder and is pleasantly surprised by the wide circle of relationships – platonic and romantic – the app unlocks.

Part of Tinder’s It Starts With A Swipe campaign launched in 2023, the ad reframes Tinder as an app for companionship as much as romance or sex. But with evolved dating apps such as Summer, Ilios and Snack establishing themselves as the Next Generation of Dating Apps, designed to better suit Gen Z’s relationship priorities and digital behaviours, can Tinder’s new messaging compete?

Strategic opportunity

Companionship sells when it comes to Gen Z. How can your brand provide digital spaces that foster kinship between your customers that can be translated into offline friendships and relationships?

LG unveils two-wheeled AI agent designed for smart homes

LG Smart Home AI Agent, South Korea

Korea – LG Electronics has introduced an innovative smart home AI agent at CES in January 2024 to redefine the concept of a zero-labour home. This two-wheeled robot integrates multi-modal AI, robotic capabilities and advanced communication to serve as a comprehensive home manager.

Fuelled by Qualcomm’s Robotics RB5 platform, the AI agent navigates independently, understands emotions, controls smart home devices, and acts as a pet monitor and security guard. LG envisages liberating users from household chores and aims to establish itself as a dominant player in the smart home market.

With its unique two-legged wheel design, the AI agent combines voice and image recognition with natural language processing, offering verbal interaction and expressive movements. It connects with smart home appliances, analyses real-time environmental data and autonomously patrols the home.

In our Home States Futures: Residential Retail macrotrend, we analysed how AI-powered companions and their artificial emotional intelligence are the next step for smart homes – providing comfort and tailored solutions for consumers while collecting data seamlessly.

Strategic opportunity

Develop strategies to ethically collect and analyse data from smart home devices, providing practical insights for improved product development and customer experiences

Carrefour supermarkets ditch PepsiCo products to denounce unfair pricing

Europe – French supermarket chain Carrefour has announced it will stop selling products from PepsiCo brands in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium. The group will drop brands including Pepsi-Cola, Doritos and 7Up as a protest against PepsiCo’s pricing strategy, deemed unfair by the retailer.

While inflation is falling in France – down to 7.1% in December 2023 compared to 16% in March 2023, according to TradingEconomics.com, many manufacturers are reluctant to bring prices down. Carrefour, one of the main retailers in the country, has called some recent price hikes ‘unacceptable’ and halted sales of all products from the PepsiCo group. Where products including Lay’s, Doritos, Benenuts, Alvalle, Lipton, Pepsi, 7Up and Quaker used to sit on shelves, Carrefour left empty spots with notes explaining why the brands are no longer on sale.

In October 2023, the supermarket giant rolled out in-store signage spotlighting shrinkflation – when product sizes are reduced but the retail price remains unchanged. Carrefour is setting a new standard for brands, acting as an ally against the cost of living crisis by actively protecting consumer rights and advocating for their purchasing power.

Wholesome, Australia

Strategic opportunity

Follow Carrefour’s example of advocating for its consumers. Can you use your platform not only to denounce unfair practices, but also to put pressure on the stakeholders that aggravate the issue?

Stat: American Gen Z love influencer brands like no other group

Kin Euphorics, US

US – In an exclusive report released in December 2023, Morning Consult suggests that Gen Z adults are the most likely to buy from a brand founded by an influencer.

Among a representative sample of 2,201 US adults of all ages, 53% of Gen Z adults said they had purchased a product from a brand founded by a social media influencer within the past year or more than a year ago. The figure is much lower for the average US adult (30%), highlighting higher levels of trust among Gen Z for influencers’ brands.

Morning Consult also analysed how Gen Z and Millennials’ strong support has turned influencer brands like Rare Beauty and MrBeast Burger into significant players. Founded by former Disney Channel actress and musician Selena Gomez in 2019, Rare Beauty was on track to surpass £236.9m ($300m, €274.8m) in sales in 2023.

Young, social media-savvy consumers surveyed expressed interest in influencer products, particularly in the food and beverage, apparel and beauty categories. The high customer satisfaction rate of 80% and favourable perceptions demonstrate the promising future of influencer-owned brands, one of the many revenue streams we analysed in Web Summit Lisbon 2023: The Future of The Creator Economy.

Strategic opportunity

Consider exploring partnerships with influencers and their brands to tap into their established trust with a younger demographic who are engaged, and who consume influencer content and purchase their products