LSN : News : Thought-starter: Is it time for banks to prioritise financial inclusion?

Converse focuses its lens on London’s female creatives

Converse Spark Progress, film by Wieden + Kennedy, London

UK – Spark Progress, a new initiative from shoe brand Converse, aims to both spotlight and advance the careers of emerging female creatives in London.

Taking a Female Futures stance, the initiative aims to give a new generation of inventive women the opportunity to break through. Spark Progress will support the projects and progression of London-based women including Iranian menswear designer Paria Farzaneh, singer, skater and artist Lava La Rue, and Feng Chen Wang, a Chinese-born menswear designer.

To mark its launch, the five women co-created a film with Converse showcasing their individual personalities, talents and future outlooks. Working to the mantra ‘while others are busy deciding our future, we’re busy making our own’, the ongoing program will be supported by a mini-site and Instagram profile that shares their efforts.

Young creatives are increasingly using visual-first culture to demonstrate their ambition, activism and altruism, something you can explore further in our Gen Viz macro trend.

A connected teapot that brews personalised tea

Teplo 2.0 by Load&Road

Boston – Teplo 2.0 brews customised cups of tea based on the customer’s mental and physical state, as well as the variety of tea leaf.

To produce a personalised tea-drinking experience, the IoT kettle adjusts brewing conditions based on tea type, and combines this with user and environmental data such as the drinker’s heart rate, body temperature and room temperature. Teplo collects this data via various sensors, including touch sensors, and then brews accordingly.

While smart tea brewers are not a new category, the brand claims that most focus on the individual needs of various teas, rather than the drinker. For example, if a user is stressed, Teplo brews tea at a slightly lower temperature to make a more calming, sweeter tea

‘Traditional tea masters change tea brewing conditions by seeing or feeling the drinker's mental and physical state,’ says co-founder and CEO Kazunori Kawanobe. ‘Our goal with Teplo is to capture some of that ritual in a convenient, beautiful design that puts brewing control back into the drinker's hands.’

For more on the next generation of countertop beverage dispensers, read our Countertop Connoisseurs microtrend.

Cherry picks benefits that workers really want

US – Workplace benefits start-up Cherry is on a mission to provide modern workforces with benefits they both want and will use.

Previously deemed progressive, perks like in-house yoga and ping pong tables, are being swapped for access to services such as Netflix, ClassPass and Spotify. Cherry claims that these benefits are not only more attractive and useful to workers, but also mean companies aren’t wasting money on unused or otherwise humdrum priveleges.

Delivered via a dedicated Slack channel, companies set a budget and provide teams with a ‘market’ of available perks against a range of options such as wellness, education, family or home. Workers are then invited to choose the perks they want by simply clicking on them.

As the workforce continues to diversify, so too must company benefits to ensure they aren’t weighted towards people with families and children. We explore the rise of single-person workplace benefits in our new macro trend Uncoupled Living.

Cherry, US

La Caja’s new campaign quite literally promotes road safety

Outdoor advertisement created by TBWA, Argentina for La Caja

Buenos Aires – For its latest initiative, the Argentine auto insurer uses lights from traditional advertising billboards to illuminate unsafe roads.

Working with advertising agency TBWA\Buenos Aires, La Caja set up advertising billboards on some of the most dangerous roads in Argentina. ‘We had to identify the most dangerous curves around Argentina, and then find out if it was even possible to place the billboards there. We then had to find out how big the billboard needed to be to light the roads properly at night,’ says Juan Cruz Bazterrica, ECD at TBWA\Buenos Aires.

The company also worked with Argentina’s National Road Safety Organization to ensure the boards were correctly angled. By using billboard lighting to help and protect night drivers, La Caja is taking a Civic Brands approach to advertising, seeking to benefit drivers by preventing accidents, rather than covering costs after the fact.

Stat: Consumers are increasingly tolerant of advertising

A new study published in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) claims that consumers’ threshold for advertising repetition is far higher than previously suggested.

According to the results of the study, people can be exposed 10 or more times to an advert before ‘wearout’ sets in – a far greater number than previously accepted by advertisers.

While the study’s researchers concede that our modern, digitally-driven lives mean we are surrounded by more messages than ever before, they claim there exists an opportunity for brands and marketers to ‘strive for an average frequency of beyond 10 exposures,’ with a focus on humour and engaging stories.

In our macro trend The Focus Filter, we explore the new approaches brands are taking to capture consumer attention, from silent advertising to focus-led wellness activities.

Thought-starter: Is it time for banks to prioritise financial inclusion?

With two billion unbanked people worldwide, there is an opportunity and a need for brands to use advances in technology to create more inclusive financial products and services.

There has never been a better time for banks to consider financial inclusion. In particular, new data indicates that two thirds of the world’s unbanked population own a mobile device that could help them access financial products and services.

Historically, people in emerging markets have not met the minimum profitable threshold for traditional financial institutions, therefore making it not economically viable to provide them with financial services. But now, high levels of mobile adoption, the rise of e-payments, biometric identification, currency digitisation and new infrastructures for credit history are helping these individuals overcome the obstacles that have prevented them from becoming banked citizens.

‘Technology offers us a chance to connect with those who have previously been excluded, to support them in getting access to the financial world and opening doors that were previously closed,’ Tristan Thomas, head of marketing and community at Monzo, says of the challenger bank’s financial inclusion project.

Read the full Banking the Unbanked Market here.