Your inspiration feed — curated by our analysts

In April, May and June 2024, IKEA is turning many of its store parking lots into consumer-to-consumer marketplaces with a series of flea markets and car boot sales. The retailer is inviting IKEA Family members to clean out their homes and garages and sell any furniture, toys or knick-knacks they no longer need. IKEA will also sell its own 'last chance' and secondhand items.

Following successful pilots in 2023, IKEA is hosting flea markets in various European countries, from Switzerland to the UK. Pricing varies per location. In Cardiff, for example, sellers are requested to make a GBP 5 donation to support a local charity. In France, all events are organized as 'solidarity garage sales,' with EUR 10 fees benefiting various non-profits. In Belgium, IKEA is organizing 'the country's largest flea market,' with eight stores participating on 8 June 2024. Admission to all markets is free. 

Unexpected recurring payment from an unknown brand name showing up on a bank statement? That happens regularly, with 36% of Brits spotting a scamscription or payment trap in 2023. Considering that inflation ranks as the number one concern for the 25th consecutive month, this is becoming more of a concern.

From LatAm to Asia, the subscription economy is booming, with consumers appreciating the convenience, cost-effectiveness and personalization these services provide. Yet many people don't realize they're signing up for a recurring payment: per Citizens Advice, 13 million Brits (26%) accidentally signed up for a subscription in 2023. Auto-renews, free trials and unclear terms are the most common reasons.

Earlier this month, Nokia launched an all-new 3210 4G feature phone, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the original model. Within two days, it was completely sold out in China. The reboot incorporates modern features, including a 4G connection, a larger screen, built-in music apps and support for Alipay. The phone also has a two-megapixel camera that produces results similar to old-school point-and-shoots, now regaining popularity on Xiaohongshu.

Most notably, the model released in China does not support WeChat, which strengthens the product’s value proposition as a stripped-down yet stylish option for consumers actively choosing to eschew smartphones.

We know England can be prone to the odd spot of rain ☔😉, but wet days are becoming more than a mild inconvenience. Three in five English adults say extreme weather affects their ability to be active. According to the UK's Football Association, 30% of community pitches are flooded for two months of the year, resulting in an estimated 120,000 lost soccer matches annually.

Recognizing the impact of flooding and unusually heavy downpours, UK sporting body Sport England has announced Every Move, a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the effects of climate change. Planned initiatives include restoring flooded pitches and making swimming pools more environmentally and financially sustainable. Sport England has also warned of funding cuts to organizations without robust sustainability measures in place by 2027, stating: "It's time we moved from informing and encouraging to enabling and requiring."

Findings from Sport England's recent survey of sports clubs and other stakeholders underscore the need for change: 4 in 10 organizations are already affected by disruptions to play caused by weather events, and 59% state that funding for environmental initiatives is the type of support they want most. As Sport England says, "While it might not be convenient or easy, we have to act now."

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P.S. The accompanying image isn't a random cute pic. Since harvest mice are suffering from a loss of habitat, Wimbledon tennis balls are donated to conservation programs around Britain to serve as spherical mouse homes.

In a bid to redefine the home climate industry, California-based startup Quilt just unveiled a heat pump that packs energy efficiency into a smaller, sleeker design. Its compact indoor units come with front panels in either white oak veneer or plain white; the latter can be painted or wall-papered to match any interior. The units also feature built-in lighting that can be dimmed and color-adjusted.

Price before rebates is USD 6,499 per room, including the outdoor unit, permitting support and installation. Quilt will start installing units in the Bay Area this summer, with Los Angeles to follow.

A Kraft Mayonnaise campaign in Venezuela is encouraging buyers to repurpose its glass jars. Underneath regular labels, Kraft has printed names of items that can be stored in the containers once they've been emptied of mayo. Ten versions are available: for flour, grains, coffee, salt, sugar, pasta, rice, office supplies and an all-purpose 'something delicious.' One even functions as a measuring cup.

While glass can be infinitely recycled without losing quality, global recycling rates are about 20%. The rest ends up in landfills, where it can take a million years to degrade. Kraft's limited edition jars, available across Venezuela until September 2024, could help divert glass from landfills by prompting consumers to find new uses. Response on social media has been notably positive, with many people planning to collect all ten.

Just under 16 minutes. That's how long it takes to get a mental boost from exercise. The ASICS 2024 State of Mind Study reinforces the positive impact of exercise on psychological wellbeing and identifies a direct link between exercise in teenage years and mental health in adulthood. The study, which surveyed over 26,000 people across 22 countries, also reveals that 57% of the Silent Generation were active daily in their childhood, compared to just 19% of Gen Z.

It could get even worse for the next generation – whose members handle iPads before their third birthday and spend 2.48 hours a week shopping online (US kids 8 or younger). So it's time to nudge kids and teenagers, from Gen Alpha to Gen Z, to swap their digital playgrounds for IRL exercise. It's likely to help them feel more energized (30%), confident (21%), focused (19%) and relaxed (23%), equipping them with life-long mental resilience.

Unsurprisingly, sportswear brands are taking the lead:
🏊 adidas enters the move-to-earn scene with 1,000 NFTs
🏃 Saucony challenges phone users to run further than they scroll
🧘‍♀️ Nike and Dove's Body Confident Sport builds body confidence in girls
🤸 In a generational flip, ASICS' Little Reminders sees 7-to-8-year-olds remind adults to exercise

Aiming to spark a conversation about the lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms, e.l.f. Beauty has developed a provocative advertising campaign called "So Many Dicks." Featuring bold digital displays around New York City's Financial District, it highlights stark statistics on the underrepresentation of women and minorities on the boards of major publicly traded companies.

The campaign draws on original research analyzing the racial and gender composition of nearly 37,000 board members across 4,429 US public companies. The data reveals a concerning homogeneity at the highest levels of corporate leadership. Which is where the Dicks come in — while 566 men named Richard, Rick or Dick serve on the boards, Black women going by any name number just 806. And numbers drop from there, with even fewer Asian (774), Hispanic (283), Middle Eastern (29) and Native American women (3).

OpenAI just announced a major upgrade to its flagship product. Judging from demo videos, GPT-4o ('o' for omni) will bring unprecedented levels of natural conversation to ChatGPT. While previous versions of the app's voice mode featured a noticeable lag, the new model takes an average of 320 milliseconds to respond to audio inputs, approaching the speed of real-time human conversation. It's also able to react to video input, express emotion, crack jokes and interpret tone and sentiment in a speaker's voice.

As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman notes in a blog post following the announcement, "... the new voice (and video) mode is the best computer interface I've ever used. It feels like AI from the movies; and it's still a bit surprising to me that it's real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change. The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different."

Hardly a coincidence, then, that the female voice in OpenAI's demos bears a striking resemblance to Scarlett Johansson...

Even if your products don't include 🥤👗🧴 and your brand isn't one of the top polluters like The Coca-Cola Company (11%), PepsiCo (5%) and Nestlé (3%), keep reading anyway... 🤓

Historically, the burden of dealing with plastic waste and pollution has been unfairly placed on consumers. But, as young and old alike grow increasingly skeptical of climate actions, their call for robust regulations is intensifying. Enter the UN global plastic treaty, slated to be nailed down by late 2024. This pact will mandate action across the entire lifecycle of plastics, from extraction of fossil fuels to end-of-use disposal.

Instead of waiting for nations to agree on how to tackle plastic pollution, start scrutinizing your products and packaging today. How could your brand ditch single-use and reimagine long-lived plastics?

Hail storms are unpredictable, often striking hyperlocally with unexpected force. When they descend on a field of leafy greens, the perforations caused by hailstones can render a harvest unsellable.

When a large-scale spinach producer in the Netherlands recently saw a potential harvest damaged by a spring storm, the country's main supermarket chain came to the rescue. Instead of rejecting the spinach because of its visual imperfections — standard practice in the grocery industry — Albert Heijn purchased and packaged the crop. The retailer added a label for shoppers, explaining that some of the spinach leaves had suffered hail damage, making them slightly less attractive but equally delicious.

Writing off crops for not meeting rigid aesthetic standards is a major cause of food waste. Supermarkets have conditioned consumers to expect perfection in fruits and vegetables. By implementing a simple act like Albert Heijn's stickers, they can now help reshape those norms, saving massive amounts of (im)perfectly good produce.

A particularly controversial use of generative AI has emerged among Asian consumers — ‘bringing back’ the dead for purposes that range from personal to political. During election season in India, former movie star-turned-political hopeful Vijay Vasanth released an AI-manipulated video of his late father, H. Vasanth Kumar, endorsing his candidacy. H. Vasanth Kumar, who died in 2020 from COVID-19, was a well-known local businessman and former parliamentary representative, making his posthumous appearance particularly impactful.

In China and Taiwan, start-ups are developing consumer-facing apps that use large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to recreate the personas of deceased individuals and pets. These AI chatbots allow users to engage with their lost loved ones for comfort and closure. It particularly resonates with consumers in markets where governments keep tight controls over religion and spirituality, therefore limiting traditional avenues for people to deal with bereavement and ‘the afterlife.’

The application of AI to ‘recreate’ deceased individuals highlights some of the most fundamental questions surrounding the use of AI. From an ethical perspective, how will the blurred lines between real and artificial impact human psyches and interactions? At the regulatory level, how can governments prevent misuse without stifling innovation?

Extreme heat has been affecting large regions of Asia in recent weeks. Countries are recording all-time high temperatures, and the heatwave has taken a hefty toll on human and animal lives. In response, governments and brands are launching immediate crisis management measures.

In the Philippines, Valenzuela's municipal government introduced free mobile showers to combat excessive heat and water shortages. The mobile showers make stops at different neighborhoods, allowing citizens experiencing water shortages to cool off and freshen up free of charge.

McDonald's Philippines is also bringing back its Night Classroom initiative. Nationwide, 107 McDonald’s outlets will serve as study hubs until 4 a.m. daily until the end of the month. Dedicated areas within each restaurant are outfitted with wide tables, appropriate lighting, charging stations and free unlimited Wi-Fi — offering students an air-conditioned environment for post-school study sessions.

The World Meteorological Organization reported that Asia is the world’s most disaster-prone region amidst accelerating global warming. Besides short-term mitigation, long-term systemic solutions are urgently needed. For example, Singapore's government plans to coat buildings with reflective paint, after a study from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU) found that it cools urban areas by 1.5 to 2 degrees Celcius.

From repurposing branded spaces to rethinking infrastructure planning, what role might you play in helping consumers and communities cope with a hotter planet?

Yesterday, we spotlighted a campaign by Heinz focused on helping immigrants to Brazil. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have been displaced internally by devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul. It's the worst natural disaster the state has ever seen. A cruel irony of flooding is that it's often paired with a critical shortage of drinking water, which is now the case in Brazil.

Coming to the aid of large swathes of the population struggling to access potable water, brewing behemoth Ambev stopped production of beer at its Viamão plant and switched to bottling water. It purchased new equipment to ramp up production and is partnering with Ball Corporation, which donated cans. Distribution just got started. As of yesterday, the company had already donated 560,000 liters; going forward, it will produce over 850,000 cans of 473 ml of water daily. 

Brands are uniquely positioned to act as first responders in times of crisis, leveraging their resources, infrastructure and reach to provide critical aid. Their swift action can make a significant impact, offering not just relief but also hope to affected communities. With extreme weather events on the rise across the globe, the need for similar interventions will only become more frequent. Has your company dedicated time and energy to imagining how it might respond?

While AI image generation tools offer vast and exciting possibilities, the shadows of deepfakes, opacity and bias also loom large. As the line between real and artificial blurs, consumers demand authenticity and transparency. Nearly nine in ten agree with the statement "It's important that an image is authentic," and 78% affirm that "It's getting to the point where I can't tell if an image is real."

Those numbers are from a new report by Getty Images, Building Trust in the Age of AI. Getty summarizes its findings as follows:

• People don't want to feel that they have been fooled or lied to — 98% of consumers agree that 'authentic' images and videos are pivotal in establishing trust
• Industries with high levels of consumer trust such as healthcare/pharmaceuticals, financial services, and travel are increasingly expected to be transparent
• People feel less favorably towards brands that are using AI generated visuals to create people or products

Considering initiatives like Snapchat's AI labels and OpenAI working on detection tools for images created with DALL-E, what's your 360° strategy for AI transparency?