Started hairdressing at 12 because you've got a family? Yes.

So my mum owned... a salon in the midlands so I grew up in her salon and by 12 I was just kind of thought it was really cool I wanted to be around her and she was always at work because she owned a salon so I was like well I'm just going to start coming in um like it or lump it and I was already cutting and badly doing my friend's hair at school at that age so I started there and I was quite forceful with my uh wanting to be you know on the floor doing hair so I had a column I think I already had a Saturday column at 14 um and I was doing color she wouldn't teach me how to cut hair because she broke her finger when she was training and she cuts with her middle finger so So she always said to me, if you actually want to do hairdressing, you need to go and do a proper apprenticeship with somebody that cuts.

Yeah.

So I always had that.

She always had London in her head.

If you really want to be a good hairdresser, you've got to go to London.

So I did it and was lucky enough that I walked into Hershson's with a bit of a printed out CV from a Internet cafe and I tried lots of places.

You actually had a bleach salon in

What's changed since March when WARC first covered this for Global Ad Trends?

A lot, but then also we're sort of still in the same holding pattern to a degree that we were, um, a few months ago.

I mean, I think obviously the, the, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has put a lot of pressure on, um, you know, the commodity markets, you know, oil prices rising, the situation with fertilizer accessibility.

Um, none of this is, is a sort of quick through line to immediate changes in, um, what consumers are doing, what brands are doing necessarily, but what we wanted to do with, with the, the latest report was to sort of map out how things may evolve over the next 6 to 18 months.

Um, it is an evolving situation.

You know, I think it's one of those where, um, some of recent developments may suggest that we end up in a more moderate position if, you know, if we get to the fourth quarter and, and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz is, is largely resolved and, and open for business again, or, or a more severe picture if things don't improve.

And, um, uh, the second half of the year is, is gonna be fairly critical to, to what we see in the market more generally.

Can you explain that for us?

Well, let's reference that the sectors I imagine that would be under threat would be travel, as you've referenced already, maybe automotive and even food.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the travel industry from an advertising spend perspective, we forecast will be declining this year in all scenarios, no matter how significant the disruption from the Gulf region.

Jet fuel prices are up more than 60 percent year on year.

So there is a sort of cost to that.

Obviously, certain journeys and destinations are not going to be as popular this year as they have been in 2020.

In previous years.

let's talk about media buying strategy is there a sense that advertisers are moving money away from what would be turned pure brand building into more aggressive performance channels and if that's the case is it a little too short term do you think

How is that expected to impact this?

Yeah, the, we're definitely seeing a little bit of, um, a sort of swing against this assumption that investment in AI is gonna deliver long-term returns.

Unlike Microsoft, unlike Alphabet, unlike Amazon, Meta seems to be uniquely being punished by the investor community for its, um, for its investment.

So actually, I should probably just set the scene.

CapEx spending by Meta, um, is forecast to reach up to 145 billion this year.

Now, that's way more than half of forecast ad revenue, um, 56.5%.

And, and just to contextualize where they've come from, that's up from 35% last year and only 20% of revenue being pushed back into CapEx in 2022.

So what are we predicting for Meta in the year to come? It's in the headlines a lot right now, but these ad revenue figures speak for themselves.