EU Parliament votes in favor of 1-year delay for EUDR

Creative and analytics teams are drastically different disciplines, driven by different personalities and workflows, which means that merging them takes purposeful planning. The timeline is the first big challenge. The creative team looks ahead, creating new campaigns to be launched in the future while analytics teams review the past, examining what happened and translating that into recommendations that apply to the creative team’s work. Additionally, the speed at which the creative team moves is another difficulty, making the task of stepping into the communication flow feel like stepping into a four-lane highway. But, it’s worthwhile! Data-driven creative performs better due to increased relevance and enhanced understanding of customer behavior. see more at: https://www.jschmid.com/blog/left-brain-creative/

The controversial Kids Online Safety Act, which was passed by the Senate earlier this week, reportedly will not move forward in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill aimed to address potential harms associated with social media use by teens, including depression, eating disorders, and online bullying. The measure would have required tech platforms to guard against those harms when implementing design features such as personalized recommendations, notifications and appearance-altering filters.

Female shoppers are spending less than their male counterparts. During the first half of 2025, year-over-year demand for discretionary products among women fell flat, while unit sales from men were up 3%, according to Circana. Female discretionary spending grew 1% during the same period, while male spending rose 2%.   The firm noted that discretionary spending has been challenged by elevated prices across retail food and beverage, non-edible consumer packaged goods and general merchandise “Female consumers are critical to retail performance, representing more than half of annual spending, and those purchase decisions,” said Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry analyst for Circana. “Shifts in spending behavior among female consumers reveal signs of broader consumer changes brewing.” Women seem to be opting for purchases that allow them to spruce things up, rather than a bigger ticket spend. Between January and June 2025, the majority of the pullback in spending among female shoppers impacted furniture, apparel, juvenile products and housewares.