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Each week our team comes together to debrief, and share key stories and insights from the news cycle. Take a gander below and find out what’s caught our attention this week.

What’s being said at Cannes Lions festival?

Cannes Lions fest is a huge international festival of creativity, and considered the largest event for everything creative, communications and advertising.

Some key themes coming out of the event from the advertising world highlight the fact that many brands are now creating ads in-house as opposed to outsourcing to expensive creative & ad-agencies. “Not every bit of advertising needs to be epic,” noted Unilever’s chief marketing officer Keith Weed

Digitally native brands can create content in an authentic and compelling way without having to produce cinematic pieces of video.

Find out more via Variety.

Sainsbury’s to encourage shoppers to refill water bottles in its cafés

Sainsbury’s are now installing fresh water stands in over 300 of their cafes to encourage customers to refill their reusable water bottles rather than grab a plastic one. Throwing a reusable cup/bottle into your backpack is quickly becoming as popular as carrying around reusable bags for your shopping.

With a bunch of cafes now offering a money-off incentive for using your own coffee travel mug, it’s no surprise that these are becoming a packing essential – not only are we helping the environment but we’re saving ourselves some cash in the meantime! A lot of the time it’s not changing the product, it’s changing the way people think and it’s good to see that Sainsbury’s are putting something in place to help with this!

Read on full article on The Grocer. 

Fake lips, fake tan… fake followers? Surely not!

Whatever you think about the Love Island lot, one thing you’d bank on being genuine would be their following on social media. What with the BAFTA award-winning reality TV show being the talk of the summer whenever it graces our screens, you’d think that the contestants’ new found celebrity would incur a boost in their Instagram followers.

Well, after some digging from Instagram influencer marketers Takumi, they found that much of these numbers had been in fact – fudged. Some contestants reportedly having as high as 65% of their following come from fake Instagram accounts and ‘bot farms’.

Why should we care? Influencer marketing is big business when you get into the following number that these guys are sporting. And with new updates to Instagram that bring brands and influencers even closer it’s only going to get more lucrative. Brands are going to need to keep on their toes when choosing who to work with to ensure they get what they’re actually paying for.

Find out more at Campaign Live.

Beet this: Sainsbury’s opens UK’s first meat-free butcher

Another one from Sainsbury’s in the news this week! The supermarket has launched a three-day, pop-up shop in East London selling plant-based alternatives to the steaks, burgers and sausages you’d find in your garden variety butchers. And it’s causing quite a stir! With some perplexed, others intrigued and many delighted with the new concept.

Data from a recent YouGov white paper suggests that plant-based diets are growing in popularity. However, a lack of experience in vegan cooking could be holding some people back.

James Hamilton, a Sainsbury’s buyer, commented:

“Whilst we’re seeing a huge climb in sales of our plant-based foods, we know from conversations with customers that there is a sense of trepidation about cooking with them,” he said. “It’s about familiarity. People see tofu and are not sure what to with it but if you see veggie mince it is simple to communicate what to do with it.”

It will be interesting to see a) the response following the meat-free butcher activation, and b) where Sainsbury’s (and other big supermarkets) will take this next.

Read up via The Guardian.