Good morning and welcome to our fun facts newsletter, your first step to becoming the most interesting person in any room. We’ll be sending you digestible insights generated by our Diagnostic AI, Sphere, on brands, trends, and culture.

A couple of weeks ago, we attended the NRF Retail’s Big Show and met some of the world’s biggest retailers and other brands doing pretty cool things. Here’s a snippet from our Sphere pulls. Read more on our retail page.

‍

‍

Out of almost 3.5K tweets, we found that Rite Aid gets a lot of flak and not all of it is justified. These tweets call out the lack of safety and customer service they receive at their stores, perhaps an implication of the politics of wage and security today.

‍

‍

Scoring a good deal at TJMaxx sparks the same joy as a treasure hunt. With buzz around the looming recession growing as well, people are looking for ways to remain bougie on a budget, which is reflected in the most popular themes found in nearly 400 related Instagram posts, such as shabby chic, anti-fashion, thriftcore, and normcore.

‍

‍

It looks like shabby chic is also in when it comes to home decor. A review of nearly 400 Sherwin-Williams-related posts showed the aesthetic is a popular style for interior decoration, as well as Chic Modernist and Cabincore.

‍

‍

Forget the Statue of Liberty, Walmart is the American icon. Shoppers from all over the world pay a visit to the store for quintessentially American products, especially food, and lament about not having a Walmart in their home countries.

One of the things that makes Walmart so interesting to create content about is the unique items and dupes they carry. Gen Zs are incredibly individualistic and savvy-savers, so they love the thrill of discovering and sharing their “tips and hacks” online.

Walmart is a TikTok-approved location, with hundreds of pranks, reaction videos, and hauls being filmed at their store. While free publicity is great, Walmart should consider collaborating with these creators or incorporating this content into their own marketing strategies to keep control of the narrative and fulfill the desires of a performance stage for Gen Zs.

‍

Once lauded as ‘Disruptor of the Year’ for grocery retail, Amazon Fresh is now leaving ‘zombie’ stores across America. Search interest is low as well, with only slightly more than a million searches for the store globally. Is Amazon Fresh past its sell-by-date? And, what does this mean for other players in the game?