From 056a984d8cfc0e5610587e2b49ae9746e38894d0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Navan Chauhan Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2024 12:40:32 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Added daily report --- archive-covid-19/23 February, 2024.html | 170 +++++ archive-daily-dose/23 February, 2024.html | 715 ++++++++++++++++++++++ index.html | 4 +- 3 files changed, 887 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) create mode 100644 archive-covid-19/23 February, 2024.html create mode 100644 archive-daily-dose/23 February, 2024.html diff --git a/archive-covid-19/23 February, 2024.html b/archive-covid-19/23 February, 2024.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..50bbacc --- /dev/null +++ b/archive-covid-19/23 February, 2024.html @@ -0,0 +1,170 @@ + + + + + + 23 February, 2024 + +Covid-19 Sentry + +

Covid-19 Sentry

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Contents

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From Preprints

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From Clinical Trials

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From PubMed

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From Patent Search

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Daily-Dose

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Contents

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From New Yorker

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From Vox

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+Itā€™s safe to say that thereā€™s no real challenger to the 131-year-old institution that is Vogue. Utilizing elite photographers and A-list designers ā€” not to mention editor-in-chief Anna Wintourā€™s unwavering dominance in the fashion industry ā€” the magazine has remained one of the ultimate curators of celebrity image. But itā€™s hard not to notice that Skimsā€™ star-studded ads generate the kind of positive buzz that Vogue and other legacy magazine covers have frequently failed to achieve ā€” and that are often met with controversy regarding poor photography, underwhelming styling, and a lack of diversity. +

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+Meanwhile, Skims shoots have seen a more consistently positive reception. Before Usherā€™s campaign, the e-commerce brand set social media ablaze with their annual Valentineā€™s Day campaign starring singer Lana Del Rey. And the holiday shoot the year before featured Beatrice GrannĆ² and Simona Tabasco, two Italian actresses from the hit HBO series The White Lotus. +

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+Theyā€™ve also arrived at a time when celebrity endorsements and influencer sponcon have become an integral part of the online experience. Itā€™s maybe not so surprising that the mastermind behind all of this is Kim Kardashian, a modern pinup with a penchant for opening our wallets and making things go viral. +

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+Skims put a ā€œcoolā€ stamp on shapewear. +

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+Since launching Skims in 2019, Kardashianā€™s juggernaut of a business, currently valued at $4 billion, has managed to give consumers a new outlook on body-sculpting innerwear. +

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+Leading up to its debut, Kardashian and her influencer sisters were controversially shilling waist trainers on social media. Presumably, the media mogulsā€™ seal of approval helped shred some of the not-so-marketable associations with foundation garments. For most of the 2000s and 2010s, shapewear was largely a punchline, even with its not-so-secret widespread use throughout Hollywood and the fashion industry. Spanx were for imperfect women trying to conceal their love handles on a date. The word ā€œgirdleā€ still brings to mind an older demographic of women. Maybe the most telling sign that Spanx and other body-cincher products were aimed at an older generation of women was an early cosign by Oprah Winfrey. +

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+As the body-positivity movement has made strides over the past two decades ā€” infiltrating marketing for just about everything, from dating apps to soap ā€” the standard of physical perfection that made the use of body-cinching products embarrassing has started to dwindle. By the time Skims released its first set of inventory, it seemed like shapewear was something young women were not only comfortable admitting they owned but sporting as outerwear as well. It certainly helped that trendy labels like Mugler, Charlotte Knowles, and Rui Zhou (and their fast-fashion dupes) have repopularized slimming, paneled bodysuits and underwear-inspired clothes. The shapewear craze is apparently so huge that forecasters predict a market share of $3.8 billion in the next seven years. +

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+The impetus for Skims Solutionwear ā€” initially controversially called ā€œKimonoā€ ā€” isnā€™t that different from shapewear founder Sara Blakelyā€™s story. Blakely cut the legs of her control-top pantyhose to maintain a cinched look under her pants, creating what would essentially be the groundbreaking product Spanx. Kardashian similarly claims she was forced to cut her shapewear to complement her cutout and high-slit dresses. A more important selling point for the company, Kardashian also said she couldnā€™t find shapewear to match her olive-y tan skin tone, going so far as to dye her shapewear with tea and coffee. +

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+ā€œFor me, I was just looking for a solution to the fact that I love to wear shapewear,ā€ Kardashian said at the Time 100 summit last year. ā€œThere wasnā€™t a color tone that fit my skin tone, let alone most of my friends.ā€ +

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+A few years prior, Rihannaā€™s makeup brand Fenty Beauty proved that inclusivity ā€” especially when paired with A-list celebrity branding ā€” sells. Likewise, Skims relied heavily on the same message of diversity, with the slogan ā€œsolutions for every body.ā€ Its 36-piece debut collection offered bras, underwear, shorts, and various bodysuits in nine shades from sand to onyx. Significantly, the brand offered an extensive size range, XXS to 5X, and used models representing that spectrum. In its first few minutes of launching, the brand made $2 million. +

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+Of course, branding shapewear designed to make the body look slimmer as ā€œinclusiveā€ is a bit ironic if not totally regressive. Still, itā€™s clear that millennial and Gen-Z women felt more embraced by Skims and other direct-to-consumer companies, like ThirdLove and Savage X Fenty, than legacy brand Victoriaā€™s Secret by the late 2010s. Since about 2015, the lingerie retailer has seen a cultural and financial decline due to public controversies, decreasing sales, internal issues, and a general inability to keep up with the times. +

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+Things ultimately took a turn for the worse in 2018 when former Chief Marketing Officer of L Brands (which owns Victoriaā€™s Secret) Edward Razek defended excluding plus-size and transgender models from the annually televised Victoriaā€™s Secret Fashion Show. Since then, the company has attempted more inclusive messaging, expanded its size range, and retained high-profile spokesmodels. However, sales, particularly its in-store performance, have continued to plunge. +

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+Celebrity Skims ads have filled a void in pop culture. +

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+Aside from the ā€œinclusivityā€ angle, Skims has remained a dominant force in the fashion world thanks to its internet-breaking collaborations. In a short amount of time, the brand has linked up with high-fashion label Fendi for a capsule collection and sports organizations like the US Olympic team, the NBA, and the WNBA. +

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+Their campaigns featuring some of the internetā€™s most beloved celebrities have made Skims a premiere platform for viral photo shoots. You could liken the online response to a high-profile actor, athlete, or musician appearing in a Skims ad to older generations seeing their pop-culture idols in a government-sponsored ā€œGot Milk?ā€ ad or even a beloved athlete on a Wheaties cereal box. Commercials for Calvin Klein in the ā€™80s and ā€™90s, starring then-up-and-comers such as Mark Wahlberg and Brooke Shields, generated similar excitement if not controversy. In the social media era, when everyone is constantly self-promoting, celebrity photo shoots have lost a bit of their novelty. Still, Skims has managed to harness social media and the zeitgeist to deliver capital-M moments. +

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+Adrianne Pasquarelli, special projects editor and senior reporter for Ad Age, notes that timeliness is one aspect that works in Skimsā€™ favor. She emphasizes that being a DTC brand helps Skims roll out these celebrity ads in a quicker fashion. +

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+ā€œAs a direct-to-consumer brand, theyā€™re able to be very nimble with their marketing,ā€ she said. ā€œ[Kim] handles a lot of the creative and can turn out that stuff on a dime, especially for a digital campaign. Itā€™s harder to be as flexible and as fast with marketing for heritage companies with a bunch of brick-and-mortar stores and just decades of retailing.ā€ +

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+It seems like Skims is doing something that legacy brands have struggled to deliver in the age of the internet: spotlight diverse talent in the right way at the right time and create the sort of impactful images that fans want. While Vogue has attempted to feature more people of color in and on the cover of their magazines ā€” albeit at a slow pace ā€” and Victoriaā€™s Secret now caters to a larger range of bodies, these brands havenā€™t been able to totally shed the below-par reputation theyā€™ve developed in the past or produce branding work that resonates with consumers. +

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+Some of Skimsā€™ illustrious spokesmodels include SZA, Cardi B, the Mahomes family, Ice Spice, PinkPantheress, Kate Moss, Lana Del Rey, Snoop Dogg, Brooke Shields, and RosalĆ­a. One of their most eye-catching photo shoots was appropriately named ā€œIconsā€ and featured fashion and lingerie models such as Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, Candice Swanepoel, and Alessandra Ambrosio, all of them previous Victoriaā€™s Secret angels. Interestingly enough, Skims buyers called out Victoriaā€™s Secret for allegedly copying the campaign with their ā€œIcons Collection,ā€ which similarly cast ā€™90s supermodels. +

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+So far, unlike Calvin Kleinā€™s ads of yore, thereā€™s hardly any controversy involved. For the most part, Skimsā€™ photo shoots have yet to stir an overwhelmingly negative response. The company was briefly in hot water for featuring San Francisco 49ers player Nick Bosa in a Skims Men ad last year after some problematic tweets resurfaced. However, a short-lived, largely forgettable scandal is ironically a feat for Kardashian, whose name is practically synonymous with backlash. +

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+The shoots are all tastefully sexy and, in some cases ā€” like with the Mahomeses ā€” family-friendly. Rather than leaning into a hypersexualized, male gaze like Victoriaā€™s Secret shoots, they rely on beauty, brand synergy, and the cultural climate rather than any attempts to truly shock or titillate ā€” well, except maybe in the case of some of their menā€™s ads. +

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+Many of Skimsā€™ splashier celebrity ads have also featured and targeted older adults. Sorilbran Stone, head of content marketing at influencer marketing company The Shelf, notes that older millennial and Gen X consumers have a more traditional, ā€œold-schoolā€ idea of celebrity that Skimsā€™ ads often hit upon. +

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+ā€œI think Skims focuses on content for young consumers and campaigns for older consumers, which makes it accessible for everyone,ā€ she said. +

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+For example, in one brilliant 2020 campaign, Kardashian unveiled Skimsā€™ velour loungewear collection with the help of her best friend Paris Hilton. The girly, tabloid-style photo shoot shows the pair exiting a grocery store and walking through a parking lot, harkening back to their early socialite days being followed by paparazzi. The casual shoot wasnā€™t just leaning into Y2K aesthetic trends. It was also capitalizing on Hiltonā€™s reemergence as a foregone cultural figure that millennials were beginning to appreciate again and Gen Z-ers were presumably becoming familiar with. +

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+Stone says Skims has managed to reflect the interests of a wide range of consumers with its diverse casting. +

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+ā€œIf you donā€™t listen to hip hop, then youā€™ve got Kim Cattrall,ā€ Stone said. ā€œIf you donā€™t know who SZA is or whatever ā€” thereā€™s someone standing in the gap who can loop you into that world.ā€ +

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+Weā€™re living in peak celebrity endorsement culture +

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+It canā€™t be overstated that Skims is a billion-dollar business because of the extremely famous founder Kim Kardashian, whoā€™s constantly posting Skims products on Instagram to her 364 million followers. The company has also been a word-of-mouth success with many reluctantly praising the quality of its products. Of course, there have also been detractors, regarding its alleged unsustainability. +

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+ā€œIt does have to do with the extensive reach of Kim Kardashian,ā€ Pasquarelli said. ā€œShe just commands a celebrity that a lot of others donā€™t.ā€ +

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+Itā€™s fair to suggest that Skimsā€™ ads also thrive because of the landscape of celebrity branding and sponcon that she helped foster. Of course, the Skims founder isnā€™t totally responsible for influencer marketing as a concept. Celebrity advertisements in the 1980s and ā€™90s really set the stage for much of what the scene looks like today, with Michael Jordanā€™s myriad brand deals and Pepsi and Coca-Cola commercials starring huge pop stars. +

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+Still, in 2024, thereā€™s a noticeable level of excitement on social media when a celebrity collabs with a popular brand, and the partnership feels just right. Ben Affleck and his long-running, heavily memed relationship with Dunkinā€™ is a prime example. Ironically, his trilogy of Dunkinā€™ ads, the third one airing at this yearā€™s Super Bowl, feels like the biggest cinematic event heā€™s partaken in recently. +

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+ā€œI think the appeal of Ben Affleck for Dunkinā€™ is because of how much it plays into meme culture,ā€ said Vulture writer Rebecca Alter, who writes about celebrity endorsements. ā€œWeā€™ve all seen images of Affleck looking exhausted fetching his Dunkies, and I think people find it really endearing and amusing when a celebrity plays into the meme image of themselves, because itā€™s an image that fans helped create.ā€ +

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+Usherā€™s Skims campaign leaned into the sexy image heā€™s always projected himself but certainly amped up in recent years as the singer went viral for serenading his largely women guests at his Las Vegas residency. The same can be said about Lana Del Rey, who was somewhat of a surprising spokesmodel. Del Rey is more of a private figure and not particularly known for shilling anything aside from her albums and poetry books. But it seemed like her fans appreciated the direction of the shoot, a callback to the 1960s pinup look sheā€™s embraced throughout her career. The photo shoot even earned Skims a whopping $13.7 million in media exposure. +

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+Ultimately, Skimsā€™ success formula for advertising is admittedly simple; itā€™ll always have the ability to impress as long as other legacy brands are getting it wrong. Time will tell whether Skims can adapt to ever-changing trends in fashion and body image. But for now, itā€™s proven to be more agile and forward-thinking than your older sisterā€™s lingerie shop or the glossy editorials resting in a pile on your motherā€™s nightstand. +

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From The Hindu: Sports

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From The Hindu: National News

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From BBC: Europe

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From Ars Technica

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From Jokes Subreddit

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