Need to Know
06 : 08 : 19

UK – The Script is a 61-page fictional forecast of the upcoming Premier League football season created by artificial intelligence (AI).

Sports broadcaster BT Sport worked with data scientists and real-time sports analysts and used historical data to predict the placements of the league’s 20 clubs and the top goal scorers. To get fans involved with the campaign, the brand has released a free copy of The Script online, as well as publishing a shortened version in Metro.

BT Sport is asking fans to watch the Premier League season live in order to see how the predictions play out. The campaign, created in partnership with Wunderman Thompson, demonstrates how AI can be used playfully to create fictional forms of entertainment.

The football industry is becoming increasingly innovative, as brands race to embed technology into the sport and fan experience.

Denmark – Co-founders Gina Périer and Alexander Egebjerg have launched the world’s first industrially produced female urinal.

Lapee comprises three sections built in the shape of a spiral that allows people to use it in privacy while still staying connected to friends and maintaining awareness of their surroundings. The designers explained that they aim to offer women ‘safety, dignity and hygiene’ during their festival experiences. The urinal is moulded as a single unit from recyclable polyethylene with a built-in storage tank, making it the first scalable design suitable for festivals and large outdoor events. Lapee was trialled at the 2019 Roskilde Festival, in Denmark, which was attended by 130,000 festival-goers.

‘We wanted to create the female version of a product that exists all over the world,’explains Périer. ‘I don’t think it’s that complicated to make a urinal for women. I just think it was something which was designed by men and they only thought about themselves.’

Over the past few years, brands have been rethinking the festival experience, from the services provided to the programming. Read our Festival Market to find out more.

Global – The photo-sharing app’s first global campaign stars real friends around the world who use Snapchat to stay in touch.

The campaign features 37 Snapchat users from countries including Australia, Brazil and India who each use the app to foster their close friendships or keep in touch with family members. ‘This campaign is really about us celebrating friendships and the importance of friendships and the role that friendship plays candidly in our platform,’ says chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell.

The work was created in response to the brand’s recent Friendship Report, which found that a person’s average social circle consists of just 4.3 best friends and 7.2 good friends. This contrasts with the high numbers of followers young people have on platforms such as Instagram, positioning Snapchat as a platform for true friendships.

While social media platforms have a reputation for being narcissistic, they can also help foster cross-continent relationships with friends and family. For more, read our macrotrend Neo-kinship.

Nigeria is set to experience a 50% urban growth in the next six years – the fastest urban growth globally – according to Nielsen. The insights were unveiled at a recent Nielsen event in Lagos, which explored whether retailers are equipped to enter Nigeria’s huge consumer retail market.

Nielsen also found that many Nigerian consumers are upbeat and confident, with 81% feeling good about the state of their financials and 41% feeling positive about their quality of life. However, there is clear polarisation within the market, with 60% saying they can only afford basic items.

Nigeria is a deeply complex market, with many individuals facing poverty and fractured political and education systems. To see how the country’s youth are rising up against these societal challenges, read our Emerging Youth: Nigeria report.