Swifties Takeover and Halloween Trends! | Weekly Digital Marketing Update 10/27

On today's episode of the of Record podcast, will it be kosher for women to dress like Taylor Swift on Halloween? TikTok leaves the small screen and moves on to big screens, and we talk about the most popular costumes this year on this week's of Record. Of Record is a podcast focus on the marketing and advertising industry from the perspective of industry expert Joe Clements. Joe Clements is a co founder of Strategic Digital Services, a digital marketing firm based in Tallahassee, Florida, and founded in twenty fourteen.

Everybody, welcome back to another episode of the of Record podcast. I'm your host, Joe here with Kirsten once again, back and Alex Yes, sir, and we have, as always, miscellaneous agglomeration of stories I've pulled from the Internet minutes before this podcast. So much is happening? Yeah, just kidding.

I've actually had some of these for a couple of weeks. So first story is, let's talk a little bit about Halloween trends. Out of NPR. It's a pink Halloween.

Here are some of the most popular costumes of twenty twenty three. Kirsten Any guesses what's on top. Barbie Barbie. That's right, Bluie is big this year.

The h This is from the National Retail Federation, and of course the staples remained popular, which is vampires. The National Retail Federations has five point eight million people are planning to dress like a witch and two point four million people has a vampire spirit. Halloween says. The pop culture costumes are Barbie is in the lead.

A lot of Barbie is what we're seeing. And when I say a lot of Barbie, I actually mean a lot of variants of Barbie's Western Barbie Skating, Barbie Skating Ken and not of course from the Barbie movie. She's got a lot of outfits. Yeah, we also have some Wednesday Atoms, Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles for the kids, and nineteen eighties costumes for eras.

Costumes are in this year. As far as people dressing as throwback things, I thought you were meant eras like Taylor slip. Oh yeah, we'll save that for that would be a good transition if I had hit that next with me. All right, any thoughts on the costume madness.

I think what we're seeing is that the Barbie movie was so so well planned in terms of its marketing, because you couldn't release that in the summer and have the costumes ready by September August when they started coming out. They had to have planned this early last year late last year, done the merchandising deals in advance so that those costumes would be ready for this year. And I think they've done a fantastic job. We saw We've been saying that about the Barbie movie for months now, like the strategic like marketing of that movie was insane and it still continues to still be pretty insane.

I mean, like everything had a brand deal with Barbie, and if you didn't, they were pretending like they would do like the Pink Sale or something like that. Like anything that was Barbie Kore was like Barbikore. Like I said, like Ruggable a rug company had a Barbie deal. But you can't forget about the power of Margot Robbie either, Yeah, because when she was in suicide Squad, everybody was Harley Quinn.

Oh good point. Yeah, you're right. The So some interesting other stats on this is Halloween spending this year nationally is going to be twelve point two billion, which is up two billion dollars from last year, which is kind of a nuts increase and a very mature market like this. It's essentially a twenty percent year over year increase, and of course there was a little bit of it was down over the pandemic.

But you know, even in twenty nineteen, total spending was only eight point eight billion on Halloweens. So like, up, big, big, big, big time since twenty nineteen. Yeah, that's a huge lift. That's much more than any other holiday.

I'm actually surprised by those numbers. A lot of people, I mean I've said it before, have realized like they maybe took it for granted before COVID, like, you know, going on, I don't really want to go out tonight. I was one of those people. Now I'm like, any opportunity to go out, I'm like, I'm not gonna miss this one because there might not be tomorrow.

Yeah, I'll tell you what it looks like. The growth is, so the average person is spending one hundred and eight dollars and twenty four cents on Halloween. Wow, that's up from one hundred and two dollars and seventy four cents in twenty twenty one. What it appears to be happening the increase in that spend.

And I'll give you some options. Are people spending more on children's costumes, adult costumes, or pet costumes. I was gonna say, oh, it's probably kid costumes because all the COVID babies are getting older. I'm gonna say it's adult costumes.

Yeah, same adults. It is. In fact, you know, children are a little bit up from say one point two billion in twenty nineteen to one point four eight billion dollars in twenty twenty three. Pets are up from a half billion dollars to roughly seven hundred million dollars.

But the big mover is coming in adults, from one point five billion to two billion dollars in one point five billion twenty nineteen to two billion dollars this year. So it looks like to me what people are doing is they are significantly ramping up not just the number of adults stressing up, but the quality and sophistication of the costumes. Yeah, I agree. What do you think is driving this?

The costumes of the Halloween stores are just kind of I don't know, you can settle for like a lower quality version, but a lot of people now I think they want to get like detailed the upsell Yeah yeah, like they'll get individuals for that Halloween yeah look better. Yeah. I always fall for the upsell kit, like the Spirit Halloween Premium, and I'm like, oh, well, there's the up cell on the uh, you know whatever. The the helmet.

I want that real helmet or that real crown. I don't want that foam one. Give me that ten one or whatever it's made out of. But cycle like, why are we seeing an increase in adults could have always been dressing up in elaborate Halloween costumes.

What has happened in the last five years where like now everybody is like couse playing super hard. We're in an artistic renaissance. I think you want to get into my astrology thing, I can save that for later. Or a vast array of mental illness and delusion the last conjunction with which artistic renaissance really is mental illness and delusions.

So we're in the same conjunction that we were in during like the like Renaissance period and other big art movements. I think people are very creative now. I feel like that's the trend is to be unique, It's to be colorful. I said this on a podcast a while ago, that like the trend of the like decor being very plain is out, like the maximalism is big, Like we've like entered a shift of doing more, like have more, being extra, being dramatic, like and I don't know, like I I, yeah, I guess you could have said that, like adults could have been dressing up this entire time.

I guess people just want to have more fun now. Yeah, And I kind of I kind of wonder if that's not do The rise isn't due entirely to the number of adults who don't have children. So it's like a it's become a big like nightlife weekend. And it always had been previously, but people with kids were like, h home with kids, so you'd like half ass here costume and the kids you'd buy your kids their costume.

But if you don't have that expense and you're still going out, it's almost it's almost reminds me of it's becoming a little bit of a carnival. Yeah, period. It kind of is like we've like said, like you know, it's the one time you can be somebody else and it is like socially okay to be a power ranger for a whole day. It's the most social night of the year.

It is in my opinion too. Yeah, people are much more talkative, much more each other. You can approach anybody. Which is this weird thing where is what's happening?

Is it mirroring virtual life? Is what goes on when people are dressed up and out for Halloween? Is that a lot like the life people have inside of video games? And so it feels more comfortable.

You're like, goodbye a week about my dream of being a wizard to die I mean playing Harry Potter and everybody goes along with it. Yeah, and people think you're cool. The more you get into it, the more cool people think you are. Yeah.

So if you are like same in games, the more elaborate or rare your skins are, the higher your status is. Yeah, you're more serious you take you know, you're probably a better player. Like there's a lot of like boundaries. I feel like that get put down also, like from a social perspective during Halloween that like you're inviting people to talk to you and you're open to it, and then like you also like are engaged and want to like you always have like an icebreaker.

I like your costume, I like your wig. Yeah, like, oh you you watch this TV show too? You saw that movie too. It's like the easy It's almost like at a wedding, like everyone kind of has some Yeah, oh, how do you know the bride?

How do you know the group? Right? Where are you from? In theory?

And my guess would be in the past and not so long ago. In the past, everyday life was like that, Oh that shirt looks great, those are great shoes, that's great pants, like people would say that. Now, I feel like there's some social block people have on basic approaches like that, and so now we need like this over the top like a signaling thing to open that door to where people are comfortable with it. Yeah.

So other than Barbie, are there any big, big costumes you expect to see out Oppenheimer are with a sig and a trench coat and a hat Bobenheimer, Well, you know, Oppenheimer, they didn't jump on that trend as well as Barbie did. I don't think they are going to be a lot of like home costume made costumes. I guarantee we'll see some Oppenheimer's running around. I guarantee we will too.

You know what else I think we might see Taylor slifts. I think that that's going to be an extremely popular couples costume with wearing a Travis Kelsey jersey. Yeah, and then it can I just say one thing real quick, Yeah, those couples. And if you're listening and hear those couples, I'm giving you a fair warning.

You are in a toxic relationship. You may know it, you may not, And you're gonna get married to this person. Absolutely hate this person. You will get divorced.

Just putting it out there because she's gonna be like even going to meet Travis today. I want to be Taylor. I don't know, But which era of Taylor. Oh, she is a lover lover with the like the one she comes out with, like the bejeweled like Leo tar.

This girl wants. This girl wants to wear bejeweled leotar. Okay, well this was my other question on the Taylor Swift. I can see you can pull off anything in a couple's costume or a group costume because it's not really a statement.

It's like a story. Yeah, can can women dress has Taylor Swift and it's like, Oh, that's a great tailor Swift outfit, or does everybody kind of look askance at it, like like meaning that like they're like, oh, that's not a really good tailor And she thinks she looks like Taylor. Yes, I don't think so, okay, because I know we talked about the impersonator thing before. That's a different scenario where she actually is pretending to be Taylor Swift.

Halloween, anyone has the opportunity to be Taylor Swift, and I'm that same like threshold. It's just some people are gonna do better than others. It's it's I think girls are gonna love other girls that are Okay, I'm curious. I'm gonna asks count count when we go out and see who uh, who's who?

Yeah, but and what eras they're gonna be, which I think will be reputation and lover and maybe, like tell you what this makes me think of. There needs to be like Halloween weekend being go oh I can make a car, Yeah, that'd be great. I can do that, yeah, sell it on the internet. Uh.

So I got my transition because another enlightening story I found out of the State of the Screens newsletter is Taylor Swift did, in fact hit her one billion dollar tour, and some of the figures on this are absolutely insane. And specifically, what I find me is not as much the tour but the movie itself. So the movie did in its first couple of weeks about one hundred million dollars in North America alone, thirty million international totaled at about one hundred and thirty million dollars.

That would make it one of the top movies of the year. And it is only where we're at here, and this is only a few weeks in so to give you an example, Barbie did one hundred and sixty two million dollars in the opening weekend, and Taylor Swift did one hundred and thirty million dollars in the opening weekend, Jesus, and it did thirty million dollars in pre sales on the first day, which is the number one pre sailing movie of all time, Jesus. So I think what is interesting is that it only costs sixteen million dollars to produce is what it's estimated, which means that it's already like coming close to ten xing the ROI on just the movie that's actually really interesting that it costs them sixteen million.

It just goes into show, like how much like video production technique went into rigging those cameras that spin and that are wired up. Because think about it, I mean, like the tour itself, it's like all the setup is done, Like they're just putting the sixteen million to like the film would be just editing it, recording it, the sound, and that's pretty much like it. What's interesting to me, And it makes sense why those production costs are lower than like a Barbie movie it you know, it's essentially adding a marginal cost onto the tour itself.

Yeah, the the tour was doing eighteen million dollars a night approximately. Taylor Swift keeps thirty five percent from tickets seventy percent for merchandise, which means that Taylor Swift made about four hundred and five million dollars on the tour. About eight million per night is what Taylor Swift took, which means that the margin on the movie is much much much higher. She would almost be better off hour for hour time wise making movies other forms of media than the tour, right, and the tour seems like this baseline thing.

I mean obviously it did really well, but it's a lot of time to do that tour, and like her margins on it were thirty five percent. Yeah, I think the numbers would be different though, if like she only did like a like a on set tour thing. There was no actual physical tour. It was just like a recording of her performing on the stage pretend like people wanted to go see that movie because of the hype the concert created, you know, when it first started, people were like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing to ever have happened on the planet.

I agree, But if she had a more built out media apparatus where let's say she's not just doing a movie about a tour, there's movies she's producing, directing, putting her name behind. There's a Taylor Swift you know, production house, a Taylor Swift network. I think what you see there is the type of brand power similar to an Oprah, where she can put her name on it, her heft behind it, and then it becomes very successful for her. I think she totally should be doing that, like she would do great like Hallmark esque kind of sort of movies.

She has been in movies, and I don't want to say, Kats is a good example, but she wasn't Kat. Yeah. The movies she's been in have flopped. Yeah, I think I don't necessarily think she needs to be in the movie.

She just needs to like write it or produce it, or produce it, or be a part of it, or do the music or you know, have something like that where she has a scalable media enterprise. I don't think people would be as interested in something if she was not featured in it, Like her physically needs to be a part of it. Like agree, some people like to watch her, they don't like, Yeah, it's nice to listen to her. I actually think more people like to watch her than even listen to her music sometimes.

That's an interesting limitation on her brand, which may be true, is that it actually can't extend past her, which means that she has to constantly increase the price that she sells for Yeah, because it can't really scale much more than it scaled, but it scaled pretty big. There's some other stats I got here is that she generated more economic activity for her Glendale, Arizona concert than the super Bowl. In February. She generated two point five super bowls worth of economic activity every weekend for twenty weeks, which means that instead of your city trying to court the NFL, your city should probably court Taylor Swift.

You'd be better off, seriously, And like, we know women are consumers, Like they buy a lot of stuff and they're happy to buy it. Her whole brand is for women mostly, Like, so like you're bringing girls out to Glendale, they're gonna be like, oh, we got a brunch. Oh, we gotta take pictures here, we gotta get drinks here, we got like like they're gonna gotta get my outfits. They're gonna have like six outphits, Like dudes, if they're going to the super Bowl, Like, I'm gonna wear my jersey, I'm gonna buy bro, Yeah, a couple of my thirty dollars bud Lights and then that's probably maybe the bros aren't drinking bud Lights anymore.

Okay, sorry Midellas. So the other thing they did with the movie is she cut her own distribution deal with AMC theaters. I think that's crazy and really smart. And uh, she already has a deal with Netflix where the film gets to go to net Flix after thirteen weeks.

B Uh. I in my Stalk World. I was really hoping AMC would do a lot better. It did not.

The Stalks Stalks, It just did not move AMC stalk and I was I mean, I was about to like double down on some shit on that and now we're explicit. Sorry, lost my train of thought to deal with AMC. So she distributed it directly, has the deal with Netflix for streaming after thirteen weeks, so man, which I think means that it comes out right around Christmas on Netflix. Oh wonder if it's on the thirteenth of December.

When did when did the film release? I mean, we can do that math the twenty let's ask the internet. I think it was like two Fridays ago. Oh, it's longer than that Tator Swift movie.

Really date October thirteenth, it is, it's her birthday. So I mean, what's thirteen weeks from October thirteenth? Oh wait, Oh, I can't do math. It might be January.

Ah yeah, January twelfth. January twelfth, which is probably just as valuable for Netflix because that's when they tried to get people back on the platform. And so I thought the Taylor Swift numbers, it may be the most successful single series of events media wise ever done with the layering of the tour and the layering of the movie and the merchandise. So then they tucked Travis Kelce in there nicely, like yeah, to keep the to keep the energy going around the film or at least time.

Oh yeah, yeah, And she's doing her album. She's been re recording. She's about to release nineteen eighty nine. Rerecorded Taylor's version, she did read, she did, yeah, all them now she's already done.

Right, that was the one that came out last week, right, I don't know the purple one. Oh yeah, that's speak now. Yeah. So that's the Taylor Swift update.

Pretty incredible run, which isn't over because the tour extends in the next year. Yeah, go see her worldwide. Oh no, yeah, she's coming back here. Yeah, there's a whole you know, eighth city American tour going on next year.

One of the things I've seen is a lot of the acts, the big acts that were touring this last summer have already scheduled tours for next summer, which which means that the expectation is that they haven't exhausted the market yet. Yeah, but they're doing smaller cities in general. So I don't have a good transition from Taylor Swift to this one. But uh, there is news that Amazon is considering offering veterinary telehealth as it looks to compete with Walmart.

Dude, I love this idea. I didn't et Okay, first of all, I didn't even know you could do that with Walmart. Yeah, I didn't either. I also don't know how pet telehealth works.

Well look here this now. I love telehealth for humans, but this is even better for pets. Nobody wants to drag their mutt. Yeah, nobody wants to corral their cat and they feel so bad for them to go get poked and prodded if they have an like ear mites and just need drops like everyone like it's it's like when you have a sinus infection.

You know you have a sinus infection. I need to get mymoxacillant. Like these are things that like do not require eating up like two hours hours of a doctor's time, two hours of your time, and like gas to get there in emotional stress, like I think it's so good for like please like ear might and ear infection. Hold that camera up there, yeah yeah, like just be like, look like this is a picture of their eye.

They have an eye infection. Oh yeah, it's it's literally checking the boxes. And I say that about human things all the time too. I'm like, there's no reason to like, it's just it's a waste of time.

Like I can get a prescription if I'm sick through teledoc and two minutes or less, and it is and then it's getting filled at the pharmacy fifteen minutes later. It's amazing. So you're a yes on the pet telehealth. Yes, And then I don't I mean obviously like you can't administer a raby shot, but like I don't know, it could just send you the box of vaccines, like, hey, cham it right here.

Yeah, there's especially put on your ar goggles, put on your apple your Apple vision and and they'll be an ar thing right over your dog shows a tutorial right right to jam the needle. Oh my god, no, yeah, d iy. But like especially for like especially ear infections and stuff like that, like everyone like it's red. They're hanging their head to the side, they're flopping their ear, their pawd at it like it's and some dogs get them routinely too, like if you have like a hound, they get them all the time.

But I just think that like for it just saves time and stress. Like I hate taking pets in the vet so much so I could see it you still have to do the yearly appointment to get the check up on stuff. Yeah, I think it is notable to me that Amazon is starting to It's so dominant in so many areas, it's starting to push boundaries in things like nobody really even thought to ask for so veterinary telemedicine. Well, I think they're even starting it for humans too, because tell a doc now you can do a prime care visit with them.

They will mail you a blood pressure cuff that you can do on video in front of them. So this is for somebody that's like obviously not getting like you know, like blood drawn or like any like physical tests. If you're just there for like a like a check in, you're like, I feel good, I don't have any weird lumps like that. It's kind of I don't know.

I think it's helpful. Yeah, I mean I think it saves people times time most of the time. Yeah, So last story, TikTok bets people will watch videos and ads on bigger screens, So they're getting into the out of home offering on airplane TV screens, on billboards, so billboards that play TikTok content and ads and other screens. The third option will run TikTok content on screens and bars, restaurants, airports, and other locations.

So similar to the CHIVETV atmosphere we've talked about how that would be good for them. Yeah, our place is just gonna start installing vertical TVs. I don't know the answer. That's interesting.

They should because it's wonky having it on a horizontal They should. And it doesn't take anything but to just configure the TV, like I mean, it's not hard. So the TikTok content play outside of TV make or outside the phone makes sense to me because we've talked about the people who use TikTok. It's essentially replacing television, so it makes sense that it would go on to be on screens that you would normally associate with just television.

Yeah, sometimes I do that. I'll like airplay it on my my TV and just like scroll, especially if I'm watching with a bunch of friends, like and we're just like hanging out, like bored. Well, everybody group TikTok session together on my TV. I did that with some friends at the pool.

We were drinking and like we had an outdoor TV and we were just like swiping through. Were like in tears with some of them, Like it was it was some good stuff. That's an interesting like turning into a group phenomena, which is what the ones at the bars, restaurants, hotels would do. M do you think it's an advertiser?

A placement in that stream is valuable because you're not swiping and you can't swipe out of the ad. Yeah, I guess it could work. I was say first, I was like no, because I have now like every time I see sponsored or like it just starts to look like an ad, I just swipe. I don't even know what it is.

I just like instinctively move on. But because like you wouldn't be able to got to get you with that stuff that doesn't look like an ad. I mean I think ads like like if you had Chive TV and like you were watching ads, like I'm I watched that at the bars probably more than anything else that's on the TV screen. Yeah, I watch it too much.

Is actually like pointless for me to go out with people if that's on, because I can't stop looking at it. But then it's fun because then like everybody's sitting there going, oh no, I just ignore everybody like I can't. It is like the perfect timing and content that I just lose track of whatever's going on, devastating to my social life. I just hope I'm never at like an important business meeting and it's onto the background.

You're in like a really nice debt restaurant, but in the corner you could see Chive TV on. You're like, yeah, shit, that guy jumped out of an airplane and his parachute didn't open. That cow walked over that guy. All right, are we out of stories in the queue?

Any other stories to cover before we close up? Wrap up? Let me double check real quick. Nope, that's it.

We're good. That's all all right everybody. If you liked what you heard, please leave us review on your podcast app of choice. Until next time.

This has been the of Record. Podcast. Of Record is hosted by me Joe Clements with the assistance of producer Alex Reinhard. Of Record is produced at the Trailway Studio in Tallahassee, Florida.

Our theme music is composed and performed by Rob Goki Special thanks to our entire team here at SDS. You can see more information about the show on our website podcastirecord dot com. As always, we'd appreciate your reviews and ratings in your podcast app of choice. These ratings and reviews help more people discover the show, which helps us keep delivering quality content each week.

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