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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.TREND BITE 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.
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
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.
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
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.TREND BITEAs 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.
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
OpenAI just introduced ChatGPT Health, a dedicated space within its chatbot designed to help people make sense of fragmented health information.
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
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.TREND BITEASOS'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 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.
Category:
Marketing and Advertising