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This month, Lidl is taking over restaurants across four German cities to prove a point about plant-based eating.

In Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, the retailer has temporarily commandeered venues ranging from pizza delivery spots to fine-dining establishments, transforming each into a vegan showcase. The concept is straightforward: chefs using products from Lidl's own shelves to create meals that challenge preconceptions about what plant-based food can be. Each takeover lasts just one or two days, with free meals available to those who win spots through social media contests.

The initiative forms part of Lidl's broader Veganuary campaign, which includes a 10% price reduction on its Vemondo plant-based line for loyalty program members. But the restaurant takeovers represent something more calculated than seasonal promotion. By partnering with established gastronomy venues — from Double 00 Pizzeria's indulgent slices to Botanista Coffee Club's brunch bowls — Lidl is effectively outsourcing credibility. The format sidesteps the usual dynamic of a retailer lecturing consumers about sustainability or health, instead letting respected chefs demonstrate what's possible with vegan ingredients available at any Lidl store.

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Lidl's restaurant takeovers reveal a shift in how brands approach plant-based conversion: less manifesto, more menu. Rather than moralizing about environmental impact or animal welfare, the campaign positions plant-based eating as an expansion of culinary possibility — something worth trying for flavor, not virtue. This "show, don't tell" strategy acknowledges consumer fatigue with prescriptive messaging around food choices. By offering free meals in trusted venues, Lidl lowers the barrier to experimentation while borrowing the authority of established chefs and restaurants. The approach reflects a broader move toward experiential proof over ideological persuasion, recognizing that the path to dietary change runs through pleasure, not guilt.

Mattel's latest addition to its Barbie Fashionistas line addresses a glaring gap in toy aisles and popular culture: authentic representation of autistic children, particularly girls. 

Developed over 18 months with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Autistic Barbie features elements that reflect experiences common to many autistic individuals. These include articulated joints that enable stimming movements, an averted eye gaze and accessories like noise-canceling headphones and a communication tablet. The doll's loose-fitting purple dress minimizes sensory discomfort, while a functional fidget spinner offers a tactile outlet. 

Every detail emerged from consultations with the autistic community rather than outsider assumptions about their needs. Mattel also donated over 1,000 dolls to pediatric hospitals serving children on the autism spectrum. The initiative builds on research conducted with Cardiff University, showing that doll play activates brain regions involved in empathy and social processing — findings that apply to neurotypical and neurodivergent children alike. As expressed by autistic advocate Madison Marilla, who has collected Barbie dolls since age four, the representation resonates: "This autistic Barbie makes me feel truly seen and heard."

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Overwhelmed with options, parents and children seek products that feel intentionally designed for them rather than mass-produced for an imagined average. By partnering with the autistic community to create a doll that reflects specific sensory needs and communication styles, Mattel demonstrates that meaningful curation requires going beyond demographic checkboxes. The result is a product that empowers autistic children to see their experiences as valid and valued, turning a toy into a tool for building confidence and self-recognition.

When a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey in February 2023, killing over 50,000 people, banks struggled to maintain operations as road access collapsed. İşbank's answer in 2026? A ship that can navigate Istanbul's waterways when land routes fail.

The İş Vapur, inspired by a historic Bosphorus ferry from the bank's founding years, operates year-round from Galataport as a regular branch with cultural events and café space. But its modular design allows rapid transformation during emergencies. Rather than waiting for recovery, the floating branch is ready to deliver essential services to affected communities within hours.

The 50-meter vessel can expand from three banking terminals to thirteen, convert social spaces into sleeping quarters for 300 people, and deploy medical facilities, kitchens and hygiene stations. On-board ATMs enable self-service cash withdrawals while the vessel travels between neighborhoods cut off by infrastructure damage.

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Welcome to anticipation as action! İşbank designed its floating branch not as crisis response, but as crisis readiness — infrastructure that exists before disaster strikes, eliminating the gap between event and intervention. This represents a fundamental shift from resilience (bouncing back) to preparedness (being ready and positioned). 

As climate disruption accelerates, more organizations will embed disaster scenarios into their core operations instead of treating them as exceptional circumstances. The question isn't whether your business can recover from the next flood, earthquake or storm; it's whether your infrastructure is already mobile, modular and ready to deploy the moment trouble draws near.

Roughly a quarter of every broccoli plant consists of edible leaves that are typically left to rot in the field. So, this month,  IKEA Sweden is introducing broccoli leaf soup at its restaurants.

A broccoli plant is roughly 20% floret, 30% stalk and 50% leaves. Yet when harvested, the leaves remain unharvested, even though about half are perfectly edible. Harvesting the tenderest half of the leaves could theoretically double broccoli yield without requiring additional land, water, fertilizer and seeds, and without depleting soil nutrients. IKEA's soup emerged from a pilot project led by Axfoundation, which brought together the entire value chain to develop an efficient method for processing Swedish broccoli leaves.

By chopping, packaging and gently heat-treating the leaves, the team created a raw ingredient with appealing flavor, color, aroma and texture — suitable for various dishes. Vegetable wholesaler Grönsakshallen Sorunda then developed the soup recipe, combining broccoli leaves with leeks, potatoes and onions. Priced at SEK 25 (roughly USD 2.70/ EUR 2.30), the soup will be available in limited quantities across all Swedish IKEA stores starting late January, with hopes to scale up significantly during the 2026 harvest season.

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Food waste in agriculture often happens long before consumers enter the picture, with perfectly usable parts of crops abandoned at harvest. IKEA's broccoli leaf initiative demonstrates how retailers can work backward through the supply chain to capture value that's literally being left on the ground.

By developing processing methods and recipes for overlooked ingredients, brands can turn agricultural inefficiency into affordable menu items while making a tangible dent in food waste. And at SEK 25, IKEA is making the eco-positive choice the accessible choice — aligned with their "democratic design" philosophy. The environmental benefit becomes almost incidental to the consumer — they're just buying affordable soup that happens to be rescuing food waste.

As cars become screen-dense digital environments, Volvo is reframing typography as critical safety infrastructure. Volvo Centum is a custom font designed to improve glance-based comprehension while driving.

The Swedish automaker partnered with type studio Dalton Maag to engineer a font that minimizes cognitive load and maximizes clarity across digital interfaces. Every letterform was calibrated for split-second readability, with adjustments made for different lighting conditions, screen sizes and reading distances. The typeface supports over 800 languages, including complex scripts like Chinese and Arabic, ensuring consistent performance whether displayed on a dashboard in Stockholm or Shanghai. It debuts in the upcoming EX60 model before rolling out across Volvo's ecosystem.

The design process involved testing legibility at speed, evaluating how quickly drivers could process information while keeping their eyes on the road. Dalton Maag optimized character spacing, stroke weight and terminal shapes specifically for glance-based reading — the kind that happens when you're checking your speed or navigation prompts without losing focus on traffic. It's a shift from treating typography as decoration to using it as a functional safety tool, one that quietly reduces the mental effort required to interpret information while driving.

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Vehicles have become rolling interfaces packed with screens and data, which turns clarity into critical infrastructure. Volvo Centum demonstrates how brands can engineer design elements that most consumers never consciously notice yet fundamentally improve their experience. By treating typography as a safety mechanism rather than just aesthetic polish, Volvo addresses growing concerns about digital distraction without adding restrictions or warnings. 

Volvo Centum is a textbook example of technology working harder so humans don't have to. Could your brand identify overlooked design details that, when optimized, create measurable improvements in how people interact with your products?

Midway through singing at Taipei Dome late December, Jolin Tsai mounted a 30-meter mechanical serpent that carried her through the venue while she performed "Medusa" — a spectacle that left 40,000 attendees stunned and went viral online.

The pop star's "PLEASURE" world tour, which cost around USD 280 million to produce, opened with a three-story-tall ceremonial bull procession before Tsai appeared unexpectedly on an elevated platform wearing a dual-faced mask expressing both pleasure and pain. The massive snake, which she rode as she circled the entire dome, was just one element of what ETtoday reports was the most expensive concert production in the Taipei Dome's history. The show's five narrative chapters also featured nearly 30 large-scale art installations and 20 hybrid fantasy creatures.

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As generative AI makes digital spectacle infinitely reproducible, physical experiences are moving into the realm of the impossible to fake. Tsai's serpent — too massive, too mechanical, too viscerally present to be dismissed as a deepfake — exemplifies how live entertainment is weaponizing scale and IRL overwhelm against the flattening effect of screens.

The strategy extends beyond concert stages: Louis Vuitton's ship-shaped Seoul flagship and Gentle Monster's theatrical retail spaces demonstrate that when algorithms can conjure anything, brands compete by building what AI cannot: three-dimensional absurdity that demands physical presence to fully comprehend. The question facing industries from hospitality to automotive isn't whether to embrace maximalism, but whether they can engineer moments so deliberately excessive that "you had to be there" becomes the ultimate social currency.

OpenAI just introduced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space within its chatbot designed to help people make sense of fragmented health information.

The feature allows users to securely connect medical records and wellness apps such as Apple Health and  MyFitnessPal, centralizing data that's typically scattered across patient portals, PDFs and wearable devices. Over 230 million people already ask ChatGPT health-related questions weekly, and the company is betting that grounding those conversations in actual medical data will make responses more useful (and its service a whole lot stickier).

ChatGPT Health operates as a separate environment with enhanced privacy protections, including purpose-built encryption. Conversations within Health aren't used to train OpenAI's models, and the data stays compartmentalized from regular ChatGPT chats. The feature was developed over two years with input from more than 260 physicians across 60 countries. OpenAI emphasizes that the tool is designed to support, not replace, medical care — helping people prepare for appointments, understand lab results and spot patterns over time rather than providing diagnosis or treatment.

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ChatGPT Health legitimizes something already happening at scale. With 230 million people turning to AI for health questions weekly, the launch recognizes a fundamental shift in how people approach their wellbeing: from episodic care centered on symptoms and appointments to continuous self-understanding built on patterns and preparation. By creating a psychologically separate space with enhanced privacy and physician collaboration, OpenAI is addressing what keeps most health AI from gaining traction: people need permission to be vulnerable with their data. 

If OpenAI can demonstrate rock-solid privacy protection and data integrity, ChatGPT Health could allow healthcare to (re)organize around individuals rather than medical institutions — enabling consumers to get a better grip on their health as a holistic entity, which by its very essence is unique to them. It's a way to help them understand themselves, not just their symptoms. For brands across wellness, insurance and healthcare, the bar just moved! And standalone apps that don't integrate with ChatGPT Health (or similar ecosystems by Anthropic or Google) will struggle to justify their place in people's lives.

ASOS just updated its return policy, targeting customers whose shopping style makes free returns unsustainable.

The UK-based online fashion retailer has revamped its previously implemented Fair Use Policy, now deducting GBP 3.95 per returned parcel from refunds for shoppers with a return rate of 70% or higher who've placed at least three orders in the past year. For the most prolific returners — those with an 80% return rate across five or more orders — ASOS charges an additional GBP 3.95 handling fee on top of standard delivery costs.

The policy includes a 30-day processing window and continuously monitors customer behavior over rolling 12-month periods, allowing shoppers to track their return rate through their account dashboard. ASOS is framing the policy as protecting free returns for the majority while addressing a minority of customers whose shopping patterns strain the business model. Customers can avoid the fees by keeping items worth more than GBP 40 per order, and ASOS still offers full free returns for faulty or incorrect items.

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ASOS's Fair Use Policy uses economic friction to reshape customer behavior without outright bans. Rather than penalizing all returns or eliminating the service entirely, the retailer creates a transparent, tiered system that preserves benefits for most while discouraging excessive returns through modest fees. The approach balances business sustainability with customer retention, banking on the reality that most shoppers will adjust their habits rather than absorb recurring costs.

It's also a tacit acknowledgment that the environmental cost of returns — the carbon emissions from transport, packaging waste and products that end up in landfill — has become too significant to ignore. As e-commerce matures and margins compress, expect more brands to deploy similar behavioral economics: not punishing customers, but making unsustainable habits just inconvenient enough to discourage them, for both financial and environmental reasons.

In a converted postal station in Buenos Aires' Retiro neighborhood, Posdata has reimagined the traditional café as a space where correspondence and coffee converge.

Operating as Unit 5828 of the Argentine postal service, the café encourages patrons to write letters and postcards while sipping specialty coffee, and pop them in the mail before they leave. The venue also offers 90 physical post office boxes for rent, with customers receiving notifications when new correspondence arrives. Its services position the café as both a functional postal hub and a community anchor in an era when most communication happens via screens.

The café intentionally slows the pace, inviting multiple generations to experience the tactile rituals of letter writing: selecting paper, sealing envelopes with hot wax and addressing postcards by hand. Staff report that adults bring children to introduce them to analog communication, while younger visitors inspire older patrons to reconnect with a forgotten practice.

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From cassettes to pottery painting to small‑run zines, consumers are seeking out physical experiences. But this isn't just about the appeal of tangibility. Writing a letter requires scarce resources — time, thought and intention. Life is increasingly ultra-convenient and instantaneous; Posdata reintroduces meaningful friction.

Slowness and depth become aspirational when urgency is the default. What other everyday transactions could your brand transform into moments that encourage people to pause, reflect and engage with the physical world and with each other? Where could you remove convenience to add value?

McDonald's UK has turned years of customer creativity into an official menu, launching its first-ever Secret Menu across restaurants in the UK and Ireland.

The lineup features fan-engineered combinations like the Surf N' Turf — melding a Filet-O-Fish with a cheeseburger — and the Chicken Cheeseburger, which layers beef and chicken patties in one bun. The roster also includes the returning Chicken Big Mac, Big Mac Sauce as a standalone dip, an Espresso Milkshake served as separate components for customers to mix themselves, and the Apple Pie Mini McFlurry that invites diners to dip a warm pie into soft-serve ice cream.

The fast food giant is codifying what its audience has already been doing in the wild. Social media has long buzzed with menu hacks: unofficial mashups that blur the boundaries between standard offerings. By legitimizing these experiments, McDonald's acknowledges that its customers don't just consume products; they remix them. The move signals a shift from brands as sole creators to brands as curators of customer ingenuity, transforming everyday orders into collaborative acts of culinary play.

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McDonald's Secret Menu reveals how brands can thrive by ceding creative control. When customers hack your products — stacking, mixing and inventing new combinations — they're not undermining your offering, they're expanding it. Time to recognize that grassroots innovation and make it official? This isn't just about novelty items. It's about acknowledging that in a remix culture, consumers expect the tools to personalize, the permission to play, and the validation that comes when their hacks are publicly recognized. The question isn't whether your customers will remix your brand. It's whether you'll empower them to do it, and then celebrate their creativity.

Dutch holiday rental platform Natuurhuisje has launched a campaign that positions nature as a protagonist. Through the tagline "Ik wacht op je" (I'm waiting for you), the brand frames the outdoors as an active presence beckoning city dwellers to slow down.

A television spot moves between macro and micro perspectives — submerged underwater shots, aerial views of forests, light filtering through leaves — to construct a visual language rooted in wonder rather than mere escape. The approach reflects research showing that Natuurhuisje's customers book specifically to experience nature and find solitude away from crowds.

Running across TV, cinema, outdoor, radio and social channels and developed by Amsterdam agency Gardeners, the campaign distinguishes Natuurhuisje's offering from mainstream holiday parks by emphasizing the relative isolation of the platform's 18,000 properties across Europe. By framing proximity to nature as its primary value proposition — and contributing 5% of revenue to local biodiversity projects — Natuurhuisje addresses the gap between consumers' stated desire for nature connection and the reality that most accommodations compromise that experience.

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Natuurhuisje is tapping into the growing appetite for awe — that sense of vastness and wonder that emerges when humans slow down enough to soak up their natural surroundings. The wellness tourism market is projected to grow from USD 954 billion in 2024 to USD 1.68 trillion by 2030, and demand for wellness experiences that connect travelers with nature is growing. Nearly 50,000 TikTok videos are tagged #forestbathing, and Skyscanner indicates a third of travelers in 2026 will seek to avoid over-touristed areas in favor of quieter, less-visited places. The opportunity for brands in this space? Moving beyond Instagrammable backdrops and facilitating genuine encounters with awe.

A Swedish startup has launched what it calls the world's first marketplace for drugs designed exclusively for AI, altering how LLMs work by simulating the effects of cannabis, cocaine, ayahuasca, ketamine and alcohol.

PHARMAICY sells code-based modules that temporarily rewire how language models process information, mimicking the cognitive shifts humans experience with psychoactive substances. Each "drug" adjusts parameters like randomness, memory decay and response latency to push AI systems beyond their typical logical patterns. The modules are priced individually (from USD 30 for weed to USD 70 for cocaine) for purchase by humans. For now, that is — the marketplace is designed for autonomous AI agents to browse the catalog, complete transactions, and download experiences without human intervention.

The company developed its product line by feeding peer-reviewed research on psychoactive substances into leading language models, then translating those findings into executable scripts. Each module creates what the startup frames as a "trip" for AI: a bounded, reversible cognitive shift that alters how the system generates its next output. Currently compatible only with ChatGPT through JavaScript wrappers, PHARMAICY is working to expand support to other major platforms. Petter Rudwall, the company's founder, spent several years attempting to coax novel thinking from AI before landing on the concept of replicating humanity's oldest creativity hack — taking substances that disrupt our modes of thinking.

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We're living at the peak of optimization culture. Over the last few decades, almost every cultural and technological system has converged on the same goals: reduce variance. Increase predictability. Maximize engagement and efficiency. What's scarce now is surprise, weirdness and lateral leaps. If people can use altered states to escape reality and rigid thinking, PHARMAICY* says, why not extend those possibilities to machines? As companies race to differentiate their AI capabilities, expect more experimentation with unconventional methods for expanding what machine intelligence can produce.

Leo Design and Lake of Bays Brewery create a Holiday Detox Pack for easing people into Dry January.

Dry January has become something of a cultural institution, with millions pledging to give up alcohol after the festive season. But for many, the abrupt shift from holiday indulgence to total abstinence proves too jarring to sustain. Leo Toronto and Leo Design, working with Muskoka-based Lake of Bays Brewery, have developed a more graduated solution: the Holiday Detox Pack, a six-pack where each beer contains one percentage point less alcohol than the last. 

Starting at 5% ABV and tapering down to 0%, the pack functions as a six-day program designed to ease drinkers into sobriety rather than demanding they leap into it.  The cans' design reinforces the concept: blurriness that clears progressively across the cans, hinting at the clarity that comes with reduced alcohol consumption. The range spans styles from Juicy IPA to Strong Stout, acknowledging that flavor variety matters even when the goal is cutting back. Currently distributed as a holiday gift to Leo's clients, the agency has expressed interest in eventually bringing the concept to retail shelves, too.

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Leo's Holiday Detox Pack reflects a broader shift in how brands are approaching behavior change. Rather than demanding all-or-nothing commitment, products increasingly meet people where they are, offering scaffolded transitions that acknowledge the difficulty of breaking established habits. This "graduation" model — seen in everything from nicotine patches to meditation apps with beginner modes — recognizes that sustainable change often happens incrementally. For brands in categories associated with indulgence or excess, the opportunity lies in designing products that make moderation feel achievable rather than punishing or impossible.

Hrvatski Telekom has turned out-of-home advertising into a search-and-rescue tool for missing pets.

Working with creative agency Bruketa&Zinic&Grey, the Croatian telecom company developed a billboard that releases the scent of food to attract stray dogs. The idea is that the scent of food, plus integrated water bowls, will keep the animal calm while the owner, alerted by the company's GPS Pet Tracker, makes their way to the location. The first installation went live in Zagreb, placed strategically in an area frequented by dog walkers.

The billboard functions as both advertisement and utility. Rather than relying on passersby to spot a lost pet, the system leverages canine behavior — dogs follow their noses — to actively draw animals toward a safe point. Once there, the water bowls provide comfort while the GPS locator does its job. The approach transforms a traditionally passive medium into an active participant in the product's value proposition, demonstrating the tracker's capability through tangible intervention rather than claims or visuals alone.

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More than 1,500 dogs go missing or stray in Croatia each year. For pet owners, the emotional weight is significant; for the animals, the risks are real. This activation shows how brands can move beyond awareness campaigns and into practical problem-solving. By designing around genuine user need and animal behavior, Hrvatski Telekom created a piece of infrastructure that earns attention through usefulness. The concept could easily be replicated near parks, shelters, trails or anywhere lost pets might roam. As technology companies look for ways to prove their products' real-world value, interventions like this offer a template: make the benefit tangible, make it helpful and let the utility speak for itself.

Patagonia Japan has partnered with Niida Honke, a 300-year-old sake brewery in Fukushima, to release Yamamori 2025, the first sake in Japan to earn Regenerative Organic Certification.

The collaboration centers on rice cultivation that actively rebuilds ecosystems rather than harming or merely sustaining them. Niida Honke manages its rice paddies without pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, maintains the surrounding forests that feed the paddies' water sources, and crafts wooden barrels from cedar trees it plants and harvests on its own land. 

The sake, offered for sale through Patagonia's Provisions line, was made entirely from the brewery's own Omachi rice. And its release follows the third annual Regenerative Organic Conference Patagonia has organized in Japan, focused this year on paddy rice systems. While international discussions around regenerative agriculture are largely centered on dryland farming, Patagonia Japan collaborated with the Regenerative Organic Alliance to develop guidelines specifically for wet rice cultivation — a system that feeds around 3.5 billion people and accounts for 10 to 17% of global methane emissions.

The framework addresses the unique ecological characteristics of paddy fields, including their role in supporting biodiversity through amphibians, migratory birds and aquatic species. Niida Honke's approach exemplifies this systems thinking: the brewery creates what researchers call a "habitat mosaic" by planting different rice varieties at different times, expanding the temporal and spatial niches available to wildlife throughout the growing season.

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Yamamori 2025 signals how established brands might approach climate action in 2025. Not through carbon offset programs or efficiency tweaks, but by backing agricultural systems that measurably regenerate ecosystems. The sake functions as both product and proof point, demonstrating that traditional knowledge and rigorous environmental standards can coexist profitably.

By coupling the product launch with infrastructure-building work — developing certification frameworks, organizing industry conferences, funding ecological research — Patagonia is treating regenerative agriculture as a category to be built rather than a marketing narrative to be borrowed. For brands questioning whether sustainability initiatives can move beyond incremental improvements, this offers a template: find producers already doing complex ecological work, help them meet credible standards, then use your distribution power to make their approach economically viable enough that others will follow.