A Cinnabon worker in Wisconsin has been fired after a racist outburst directed at two customers went viral, the Georgia-based cinnamon roll chain said.
Cinnabon posted a statement on social media that the worker, who it did not identify, was immediately terminated by the franchise owner over a disturbing video of the incident.
Their actions and statements are completely unacceptable and in no way reflect the values of Cinnabon, our franchisees, or the welcoming environment we expect for every guest and team member, the company added in a follow-up statement to The Associated Press on Sunday.
The video was posted on TikTok and showed a white, female employee cursing at and taunting the customers from behind the counter as one of them recorded the encounter. At one point she is seen on video uttering a racial slur and saying, I am racist and Ill say it to the whole entire world. Dont be disrespectful.
The employee is also recorded giving an obscene hand gesture at customers and exchanging expletives with one of the persons at the store.
The TikTok user who posted video said the incident happened while she and her husband were taking a break from shopping Friday at a mall in Ashwaubenon, a suburb of Green Bay.
The customer said she ordered a caramel pecan cinnamon roll and had asked the worker to add more caramel as it didn’t appear to have enough.
She said she began recording after the worker snapped at her and derided her hijab.
An online fundraising campaign to support the customers described them as a black Somali Muslim couple that’s been traumatized by the incident.
A competing campaign to purportedly benefit the fired worker, meanwhile, has raised tens of thousands of dollars. That effort appears on the same Christian crowdfunding platform where hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised for a Minnesota woman who admitted to using a racist slur against a Black child at a playground earlier this year.
President Donald Trump on Sunday hosted the Kennedy Center Honors and praised Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford, and George Strait, the slate of honorees he helped choose, as being legendary in so many ways.
Billions and billions of people have watched them over the years, Trump, the first president to command the stage, said to open the show.
The Republican president said the artists, recognized with tribute performances during the show, are among the greatest artists and actors, performers, musicians, singers, songwriters ever to walk the face of the Earth.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is named after a Democratic predecessor, a touchstone in a broader attack against what he has lambasted as woke anti-American culture.
Trump said Saturday that he was hosting at the request of a certain television network. He predicted the broadcast scheduled for Dec. 23 on CBS and Paramount+, would have its best ratings ever.
Before Trump, presidents watched the show alongside the honorees. Trump skipped the honors altogether during his first term.
Asked how he got ready for the gig, Trump said as he moved along the red carpet with his wife, first lady Melania Trump, that he didnt really prepare very much.
I have a good memory, so I can remember things, which is very fortunate, the president said. But just, I wanted to just be myself. You have to be yourself.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, one of several Cabinet secretaries attending the ceremony, said his boss “is so relaxed in front of these cameras, as you know, and so funny, I cant wait for tonight. Lutnick arrived with his wife, a member of the Kennedy Center’s board.
Trump appeared on stage three times to open and close the show, and after intermission. He also talked up each artist in prerecorded videos that played before their tributes.
Trump was both gracious and critical in the comments he delivered from the stage, lavishing the honorees with effusive praise but at times showing a mean streak. After returning from intermission, he said hed toured some of the construction projects he has launched to renovate the performing arts center. And he said it was a fantastic night.
Well, were really having a good time tonight, Trump said. So many people I know in this audience. Some good. Some bad. Some I truly love and respect. Some I just hate.
Since 1978, the honors have recognized stars for their influence on American culture and the arts. Members of this year’s class are pop-culture standouts, including Stallone for his Rocky and Rambo movies, Gaynor for her I Will Survive feminist anthem and Kiss for its flashy, cartoonish makeup and onstage displays of smoke and pyrotechnics.
Strait is a leader in the world of country music and Crawford, a Tony Award-winning actor, is best known for starring in Phantom of the Opera, the longest-running show in Broadway history.
Trump said persistence is a trait shared by the honorees, several of whom had humble beginnings.
Some of them have had legendary setbacks, setbacks that you have to read in the papers because of their level of fame, he said from the stage. But in the words of Rocky Balboa, they showed us that you keep moving forward, just keep moving forward.
He said many of the politicians, celebrities, and others in the audience shared the trait, too.
I know so many of you are persistent, Trump said in his opening. Many of you are miserable, horrible people. You are persistent. You never give up. Sometimes I wish youd give up, but you dont.
The ceremony was expected to be emotional for the members of Kiss. The bands original lead guitarist, Ace Frehley, died in October after he was injured during a fall. During the tribute to Kiss, a lone red guitar that emitted smoke was placed on stage in remembrance of Frehley, who was known for having a smoke bomb in his instrument.
The program closed with a rousing performance by Cheap Trick of Kiss’ Rock and Roll All Nite” that brought the audience to its feet.
Stallone said receiving the honor was like being in the eye of a hurricane.
This is an amazing event, he said on the red carpet. But youre caught up in the middle of it. Its hard to take it in until the next day. ..: but Im incredibly humbled by it.
Crawford also said it was humbling, especially at the end of a career.
Gaynor said it feels like a dream to be honored. “To be recognized in this way is the pinnacle,” she said after arriving.
Mike Farris, an award-winning gospel singer who performed for Gaynor, called her a dear friend. She truly did survive, Farris said. “What an iconic song.
Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center
Trump upended decades of bipartisan support for the center by ousting its leadership and stacking the board of trustees with Republican supporters, who elected him chair. He has criticized the centers programming and the buildings appearance and has said, perhaps jokingly, that he would rename it as the Trump Kennedy Center. He secured more than $250 million from Congress for renovations of the building.
Asked Sunday night about a possible renaming, Trump said it would be up to the board. Still, he joked at one point about the Trump Kennedy Center.
Presidents of each political party have at times found themselves face to face with artists of opposing political views. Republican Ronald Reagan was there for honoree Arthur Miller, a playwright who championed liberal causes. Democrat Bill Clinton, who had signed an assault weapons ban into law, marked the honors for Charlton Heston, an actor and gun rights advocate.
During Trumps first term, multiple honorees were openly critical of the president. In 2017, Trumps first year in office, honors recipient and film producer Norman Lear threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Trump stayed away during that entire term.
Trump has said he was deeply involved in choosing the 2025 honorees and turned down some recommendations because they were too woke.” He said Sunday that about 50 names were whittled down to five. While Stallone is one of Trump’s Hollywood special ambassadors” and has likened Trump to George Washington, the political views of Sunday’s other guests are less clear.
Honorees’ views about Trump
Strait and Gaynor have said little about their politics, although Federal Election Commission records show that Gaynor has given money to Republican organizations in recent years.
Simmons spoke favorably of Trump when Trump ran for president in 2016. But in 2022, Simmons told Spin magazine that Trump was out for himself and criticized Trump for encouraging conspiracy theories and public expressions of racism.
Fellow Kiss member Paul Stanley denounced Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden, and said Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were terrorists. But after Trump won in 2024, Stanley urged unity.
If your candidate lost, its time to learn from it, accept it and try to understand why, Stanley wrote on X. “If your candidate won, its time to understand that those who dont share your views also believe they are right and love this country as much as you do.
Darlene Superville and Hillel Italie, Associated Press
President Donald Trump said Sunday that a deal struck by Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery could be a problem because of the size of the combined market share.
There’s no question about it, Trump said, answering questions about the deal and various other topics as he walked the red carpet at the Kennedy Center Honors.
The Republican president said he will be involved in the decision about whether the federal government should approve the $72 billion deal. If approved by regulators, the merger would put two of the worlds biggest streaming services under the same ownership and join Warners television and motion picture division, including DC Studios, with Netflixs vast library and its production arm.
The deal, which could reshape the entertainment industry, has to go through a process and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said.
Netflix is a great company. Theyve done a phenomenal job. Ted is a fantastic man, he said of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, noting that they met in the Oval Office last week before the deal was announced Dec. 5. “I have a lot of respect for him but its a lot of market share, so well have to see what happens.
Asked if Netflix should be allowed to buy the Hollywood giant behind Harry Potter and HBO Max, the president said, Well that’s the question.
They have a very big market share and when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot so, I dont know, he said. “I’ll be involved in that decision, too. But they have a very big market share
Sarandos made no guarantees at their meeting about the merger if it is approved, Trump said, adding that the CEO is a great person who has done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things.
He repeated that a merger would create a big market share for the company.
Theres no question about it. It could be a problem, Trump said.
Darlene Superville, Associated Press
Associated Press writer John Carucci contributed to this report.
The robots wont be replacing us, but we will increasingly be working side-by-side with artificial intelligence tools that can then learn from our human expertise.
Thats one conclusion of researchers and engineers who are applying AI to the physical world in transformative ways, from autonomous vehicles to microscopes for detecting malaria to the design of wholly new materials.
And theres a balance to be struck between automation and human expertise, according to K.T. Ramesh, the Alonzo G. Decker Jr. professor of science of and engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a senior advisor to the universitys president for AI.
We can develop autonomous researchwhich is the way we are going, our research labs are becoming autonomousbut what questions do you ask? Ramesh said during a panel discussion at last months World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. Thats where the human comes in.
A WORLD OF COEXISTING
Humans are likewise crucial for Cephla, which is deploying AI-powered microscopes in life science research, drug discovery, and diagnostics, said Hongquan Li, cofounder and CEO of the biotech company.
Starting with malaria detection, humans are collecting data for training, annotating images, and providing input on relevant clinical metrics, he said.
When those machines are deployed, humans operate those microscopes and interact with patients and make the critical clinical decisions, Li said.
And humans play a critical role at Waymo, which is arguably the most mature manifestation of AI in the physical world today, said Smitha Shyam, the self-driving car company’s senior director of engineering.
AI systems for the physical world must be built to act safely, given the likelihood of chaos or uncertainty, which is why Waymo relies on human safety operators before expanding its fleet of fully autonomous vehicles to new markets, she added.
AI is informing the choice, but the humans are making the assessment if the driver is ready for the public roads, Shyam said. So I think it’s a world of coexisting and leveraging the best of each other.
Mixed nuts are a common staple in many houses around the Christmas holidays. Their saltiness is a nice contrast to all the sweet festive treats that our kitchens fill up with at this time of year.
But now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that two mixed nut products have the potential to make you very sick. Heres what you need to know.
FDA announced mixed nuts recall
On December 5, the Food and Drug Administration posted a notice announcing the recall of two mixed nuts products. The nuts were sold under the Wegmans brand. Wegmans is a popular chain of grocery stores in the eastern United States.
The nuts were manufactured by Mellace Family Brands California, Inc. of Warren, Ohio, which initiated the voluntary recall.
According to the notice, testing found that some raw pistachios used in the mixed nuts products had the possibility of being contaminated with Salmonella, a potentially deadly bacterium. Wegmans has also posted a recall notice for the products on its website.
What mixed nuts products are being recalled?
Two mixed nuts products are currently listed as being part of the recall, according to the notice posted on the FDAs website. Those nut products are:
Wegmans Deluxe Mixed Nuts Unsalted 34 oz (964 grams)
packaged in a plastic tub
UPC 077890421314
Lot code: 58041 BEST BY: JUL 28, 2026
Wegmans Deluxe Mixed Nuts Unsalted 11.5 oz (326 grams)
packaged in a plastic bag
UPC 077890421352
Lot code: 58171 BEST BY: AUG 10, 2026
Photographs of the recalled nuts packaging can be found here.
When were the recalled nuts sold?
The recalled nuts were sold between November 3 and December 1, 2025.
Where were the recalled nuts sold?
The recalled nuts were sold at Wegmans stores in the following locations:
Connecticut
Delaware
Maryland
Massachusetts
North Carolina
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington, D.C.
What is Salmonella?
Salmonella is a bacterium that can cause severe and possibly life-threatening illness in people who consume contaminated products.
In an otherwise healthy individual, Salmonella often causes abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, nausea, and vomiting. However, individuals who are elderly, very young, frail, or have weakened immune systems can sometimes develop infections that are deadly.
In rare cases, a Salmonella infection can cause arterial infections, arthritis, and endocarditis.
Has anyone been harmed by the recalled nuts?
As of the time of the FDA notices posting, no individuals are known to have been made sick in association with the recalled nuts.
What should I do if I have the recalled nuts?
Check your house to see if you have the recalled nuts. The nuts have long expiration dates, with one of the recalled products good until July 2026 and the other until August 2026.
If you have the recalled products, you should return them to the service desk for a full refund.
Complete information about the recall can be found in the notice posted on the FDAs website here.
Five years ago, an algorithm decided whether your résumé ever reached a recruiter. Now, it might be the one asking you the questions.
It can feel unsettling to imagine a machine assessing not just what you say, but how you say it: tone, cadence, word choice, even microexpressions. These patterns feed models that generate a “fit” score, determining whether you ever reach a human being.
Agentic AI allows what appears to be a genuine two-way conversation, simulating a first-round interview more realistically than the one-way video prompts of the past. Companies are drawn to it for clear reasons: speed, consistency, and scale.
But that efficiency comes with tradeoffs. Human interviewers rely on intuition, while AI systems are built on structure. They detect clarity, confidence, and organization, which are valuable traits, but they sometimes miss creativity, empathy, or cultural fit. The challenge for candidates is to make those traits visible within a digital format.
How to adapt
The good news is that with a little preparation, AI interviews can feel no more anxiety-inducing than the average first round interview. Heres how to adapt:
Get comfortable talking to machines. The best preparation is practice with AI itself. Many candidates stumble because the experience feels unnatural. Practice with AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude so you can get used to speaking without visual feedback. The goal is not to trick the system but to sound confident and conversational when responding to something that doesn’t nod, smile, or say “good question.”
Match the language of the role. AI interviewers often compare your responses to the job description. Study it carefully and mirror the companys phrasing and values, much like tailoring your resume to the applicant tracking system (ATS). Use measurable results to back up your claims. Structured storytelling, such as the STAR format (situation, task, action, result), performs especially well with AI models.
Refine your delivery. AI evaluates cadence, pauses, and confidence, so training your delivery can improve your score as much as refining content. Slow down, maintain steady energy, and vary your tone. It’s tempting to read off a screen, but even algorithms can detect when speech sounds too rehearsed. Small variations in tone and inflection help you come across as natural.
Control your environment. Lighting, background, and camera angle can affect facial recognition metrics. Choose a well-lit, neutral setting and look directly into the camera. Slightly modulate your energy and smile when appropriate. These small cues help the system read you as attentive and engaged.
Use AI as your coach. The same technology interviewing you can help you prepare. Upload a job description into an AI assistant, simulate an interview, and request feedback on your clarity and delivery. Candidates who practice with AI tend to improve their confidence and pacing significantly.
The future of hiring
AI-led interviews are not replacing humans, but they are changing the hiring process. For companies, they create structure and scalability. For candidates, they can level the playing field if used thoughtfully. Don’t discount a company just because they use AI in the process.
The best organizations combine human judgment with AIs analytical precision. The future of hiring will rely on both.
If your next interviewer happens to be an AI, treat it as a new kind of audience. Preparation, clarity, and authenticity are what stand out. The candidates who succeed will be those who can bridge both worlds, showing not only what they know, but who they are.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Baiju Shah is constantly bridging different worlds. His formative years were shaped by observing his mother, who trained as a commercial artist, and his father, who was an engineer. As global CEO of agency AKQA, he leads an organization that deploys creativity and technology on behalf of clients such as Nestlé, Nike, and Montblanc. And he teaches graduate students pursuing dual degrees in engineering and business administration at Northwestern University.
Rather than seeing art and science as distinct specialties, Shah argues that companies and brands must take an interdisciplinary approach, especially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Technology without craft is a path to efficient mediocrity, he tells Modern CEO in his first extended interview since joining AKQA in July.
Exploring the new frontier
Shah believes marrying imagination and technology will not only yield better results but that the union is key to AKQAs success. Hes positioning the business as a frontier agency, which helps clients develop new products and experiences through imagination and advanced AI applications.
AKQA is hardly the only company promising to blend creativity and tech. Shah joined the agency from Accenture Song, which calls itself a tech-powered creative business. Nearly all large consultancies and advertising companies also boast agencies that sit at the intersection of digital and design.
Shahs effort to promote AKQA as a frontier agency comes amid consolidation and turmoil in the advertising world. Earlier this month, Omnicom said it would lay off 4,000 employees and shutter some agencies following its acquisition of rival Interpublic. This year, AKQA parent WPP shuttled creative agency Grey from AKQA to sister agency Ogilvy. As a result of the move, AKQA shrank from 5,500 employees in 2024 to about 2,400 today. AKQA doesnt disclose its revenue; WPP last year reported revenue of 14.7 billion (about $18.6 billion)roughly flat from a year earlier.
Preparing for a new playing field
The moves come as the industry grapples with how AI is changing the way advertising is made and distributed.
Shah believes AKQA is well placed to leverage AIto serve its clients and help WPP build new business modelsrather than be disrupted by it. The agency recently launched Nestlé Goodness, an AI-powered service that acts like a personal chef and dietitian for families, helping them plan meals while balancing time, cost, and nutrition. AKQA has developed generative stores on Googles AI platform that clients can use to create real-time personalized storefronts based on individual intent and preferences. And AKQA harnessed AI to builda cultural intelligence engine that uses dozens of AI agents and computer visioning to analyze millions of pieces of content globally, uncovering cultural signals in real time. AKQA is making the engine available for all the agencies in the WPP network to use.
Early in his career, Shah personally witnessed the importance of wedding creativity with technology. While working as a manager at Accenture Labs in the early 2000s, he and a team of developers used advanced analytics to design a system that predicted oil rig failures with extraordinary precision. The technology was superior to existing solutions, but the clients engineers rejected it.
Technology by itself, while its the most powerful force out there, is incomplete to actually drive innovation and drive change, Shah says. Accenture Labs supplemented the technical work with a strategist and designers who could build empathy with the users. He says: That was the only way we could drive the innovation forward. For me that was an unlock.
The experience prompted him to get an MBA from Northwestern, where hes now an adjunct professor in a program that awards students with a masters in design innovation and an MBA. And while his students are opting into the kind of multidisciplinary degree that feels future-proofed, Shah believes that theyll need to be open to a variety of professional experiences.
The future is not going to be defined by rigid job titles, he says. He encourages students to think of careers as a series of steps, each lasting three yearstime enough to really dig in, learn something deeply, and make a meaningful contribution. He also urges adaptability, noting that the teams of the future will likely feature a mix of creatives, technologists, and systems thinkers, and some of them may be AI agents instead of humans.
But Shah maintains that human creativity is what will help AI bloom into something more potent than a tool for efficiency. With every wave of technology, the instinct is always to automate what exists, he says. I believe that the brands that grow are not the ones that are just automating yesterdays thinking. Theyre the ones that imagine and are creating what matters next.
World changing ideas
Is your company or team developing creative or innovative solutions to pressing challenges? Consider applying for Fast Companys annual World Changing Ideas Awards, which recognizes groundbreaking concepts and projects across industries and company sizes. The final deadline is December 12.
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If you’ve ever dreamed of sitting behind the wheel of a giant hot dog, then you’re in luck. Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile is in need of Gen Z drivers known as “Hotdoggers,” as the company opens its applications. The iconic vehicle is about to roll into its 90th year.
The job is truly unique and, if you’re a hot dog enthusiast with a keen sense of adventure, could be an absolute thrill, especially if you’re looking to avoid a nine-to-five desk job and love to travel. The Hotdogger Program has been around since 1988 and according to Oscar Mayer is likely to be a fit for recent college graduates who are hoping to make a “positive impact” on the communities the Wienerdog cruises through.
[Photo: Courtesy of Oscar Mayer]
Molle Twing, a former Hotdogger who now runs the program, tells Fast Company that what sets the job apart from mainstream gigs is “just how unexpected it is.” Twing says, “Instead of easing into the workforce behind a desk, an exclusive group of passionate people get to kick off their career, sparking smiles across the country while driving a 27-foot-long hot dog on wheels.” Basically, it’s the perfect antidote to the modern hustle and bustle. It’s freedom in hot dog form.
That might be especially true because, according to Twing, the role also ensures that all-important work-life balance that Gen Z values more than just about anything. “While Hotdoggers are on the move throughout their one-year assignment, the role offers structure and time to recharge with friends and family,” Twing explains. Not only do employees receive regular days off each week, as well as a “competitive vacation package,” Twing says that there are all kinds of incentives Hotdoggers take part in, like a “spontaneous hot air balloon ride to discovering historical monuments” and so much more.
Twing adds, “each market offers something new and exciting for the Hotdoggers and the opportunity to recharge before the next event.”
[Photo: Courtesy of Oscar Mayer]
Being a Hotdogger might sound like a quirky gig, but frankly, it’s actually a relished profession for recent college graduates with lots of personality who don’t mind having their 15-minutes of fame. The Wienermobile is an iconic vehicle and its Hotdoggers are sought after, too. As the face of the brand, they make TV appearances, are popular online, and are cheered for wherever they go. They’ve even officiated weddings because, well, nothing says “forever” like a good old glizzy.
Interested applicants should check out the posting on the Kraft Heinz Career Page to apply, and hurry, as thousands of applications are expected and only 12 talented Hotdoggers will be chosen for 2026.
At first glance, Clove’s collaboration strategy may seem a little wacky. Why, you might ask, is a startup that makes sneakers for healthcare workers partnering with Land O’Lakes butter, Levain cookies, and Olipop prebiotic sodas?
It’s a good question, but there’s method to the madness. Clove’s team members spend their days studying the lives of doctors and nurses, and they’ve discovered that food is a rare source of pleasure and joy in a very stressful workplace. “I watch nurses get ready with me videos as a form of ethnographic research,” says Jordyn Amoroso, Clove’s co-founder and chief brand officer. “You see nurses pack their lunches with a baked good, or a healthy soda, because it might be the only happy moment in a difficult shift.”
Clove’s partnerships offer a fascinating glimpse into the wild world of food collabs that have exploded over the last three years. They’ve ranged from blockbusters like Rhode makeup’s partnership with Krispy Kreme to the absurd, like Arby’s collaboration with Old Spice. Still, brands say that smart food collaborations are now an important tool to standing out in the increasingly competitive grocery aisle and becoming lifestyle brands.
Tapping into collaborations is a radical move for a company in healthcarean industry that isn’t known for being fashion-forward or trendyhelping it stand out from more established players like Nurse Mates and Alegria. Earlier this year, Clove dropped a butter-yellow sneaker in partnership with Land O’Lakes in a collaboration that went viral in the healthcare community, with more than 100 million impressions and thousands of butter-colored sneaker sold. And today, Clove is dropping a new collab with Olipop for socks that are emblazoned with the soda’s iconic fruit symbols.
[Photo: Courtesy of Clove]
A Fashionable Healthcare Brand
Joe Ammon founded Clove as a love letter to his wife, a nurse who spent 12-hour shifts in the ugly, uncomfortable shoes.
Healthcare workers are required to wear special shoes that are slip-resistant and waterproof because they’re exposed to bodily fluids; many hospitals also have a dress code requiring them to be black or white. Ammon felt that nursing shoe companies weren’t putting much care into how shoes looked or felt. In 2019, he launched Clove with a line of shoes that met all the functional requirements, but also had a much cushier insole and also looked more like a cool sneaker. The concept was a hit: The brand has now sold more than a million pairs.
[Photo: Courtesy of Clove]
Amoroso believes that Clove’s success comes, in part, by tuning into the worlds of doctors and nurses. For instance, the brand’s name does not refer to the spice, but is rather a play on medical lingo: Doctors use a line over the letter “c” as a shorthand for the word “with” so the brand’s name means “with love.” Each pair of shoes comes with a pen that says “for borrowing only,” since people notoriously steal nurse’s pens.
As Amoroso has spent time with healthcare workers, she’s seen that they care just as much about fashion and trends as other people, but the industry doesn’t treat them like other consumers. On social media, she’s seen nurses and doctors get excited about say, Rhode’s partnership with Krispy Kreme donuts or Studs’ partnership with Van Leeuwan ice cream. “Food collabs are everywhere now, and some are really cool,” she says. “Why shouldn’t healthcare workers get things that are fun and trendy? The industry seems to assume they are content with boring products.”
Clove’s first big food collab launched in September, when it partnered with Land O’ Lakes butter to launch a butter themed sneaker. Earlier in the year, another butter brand, Kerrygold, had gone viral on TikTok after it had taken influencers to Ireland, where they created swoony-worthy content of landscapes and food.
[Photo: Courtesy of Clove]
Land O’ Lakes and Clove attempted to create an equally fun moment by delivering influencers enormous yellow boxes that looked like sticks of butter, filled with everything from butter hair clips and tote bags, to butter yellow sneakers and socks, and cooler bags filled with butter. In some cases, they sent a butter butler to nurse’s homes to deliver sneakers on a silver tray. The collab was a success, generating upwards of 100 million impressions, and selling thousands of butter yellow sneakers.
Another collab with Levain came out of an insight that cookies were often a go-to treat after a long shift. “In a 12-hour shift, a nurse has seen people be born and die,” says Paula Belatti, Clove’s co-founder and COO. “Sharing a cookie with a co-worker is a brief moment of self-care.” Clove partnered with Levain bakeries near hospitals in Boston and Philadelphia to give healthcare workers coffee, cookies, and compression socks when they left their shift.
And today, just in time for the holiday season, Clove is launching its next big food partnership with Olipop, a brand that is well known for its viral marketing, from creating immersive hotel rooms inspired by its flavors to collaborating with a swimwear brand Kulani Kinis on soda-inspired bikinis. Clove customers will be able to buy a set of three socks for $40 that feature fruit icons. “They’re very nostalgic,” says Amoroso. “They’re inspired by ‘day-of-the-week’ underwear and socks millennials had when we were growing up in the 90s.”
Why Are Food Brands Obsessed with Collabs
Over the past three years, food brands have gone all in on collabs. Some have made sense, like when olive oil brand Graza partnered with Areaware to launch a ‘drizzle and drip’ serving set, or when the buzzy food brands Fishwife and Fly By Jing created cans of spicy smoked salmon. Others created buzz and cute products, like when Studs created ice-cream inspired earring charms with Van Leeuwen.
Steven Vigilante, Olipop’s director of strategic partnerships, says that collaborations have been a feature of the fashion industry for more than 15 years, when brands realized they had a powerful opportunity to tap into each others’ audiences, especially as the cost of marketing on social media has gone up.
But over the past five years, as the food industry has been flooded with new players, brands have needed to get more creative. “It’s not enough to focus on the food itself,” Vigilante says. “We want to become a lifestyle brand. Collaborations allow us to partner with likeminded brands to create an emotional connection with customers, so they choose us over the competition.”
But as food collabs became commonplace, some brands have needed get more bizarre and extreme in order to get any media attention. There was the time when luxury brands like Balenciaga partnered with Lay’s on a clutch that looked like a bag of chips or Kate Spade partnered with Heinz on ketchup themed accessories. Crocs created a clog that looked like a KFC bucket that came with an accessory that smelled like fried chicken. Arby’s created an deodorant with Old Spice supposedly designed tackle the sweats diners get after a meat-heavy meal. E.l.f. cosmetics dropped an eyeshadow palette inspired by Chipotle ingredients.
“In some cases, the partnerships don’t seem to make any sense,” Vigilante says. “They’re just kind of a cash grab, and it might put off the customer.”
Brands appear to be pulling back from the more absurd collabs, and focusing instead on partnerships that are authentic and logical. Olipop for instance, positions itself as a better-for-you soda, with low sugar and prebiotics, and it has been working to make inroads with hospitals. “Hospital kitchens and cafeteria offer regular soda, which doctors actively dissuade patients from drinking,” says Vigilante. “We’re offering a healthier alternative.”
Land O’Lakes, for its part, tends to attract older customers who have been using the product for years, but the brand has been trying to win over younger consumers. The Clove partnership made sense because the brand skews younger, and butter-colored products were having a viral moment on social media. “This collab was an opportunity to put ourselves in front of a new generation, and tell a story about how we’re not just their grandmother’s butter,” says Catherine Fox, Land O’Lakes’ VP of central marketing.
Clove and Olipop both have a pipeline of other collabs in the works for 2026, and they believe partnerships are a valuable tool in the arsenal for building a modern brand. “Collaborations don’t need to be surprising or outlandish to work,” says Vigilante. “It’s about giving your customers something fun to look forward to and telling a story about what your brand stands for.”
In Apples new holiday ad, A Critter Carol, a group of woodland puppets frolic in a wintery forest to a wildlife-themed parody of the Flight of the Conchordss song Friends. Every element, from the puppets to the set and even the ads typography, was rendered using practical effects.
The ad was directed by TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL)a bespoke global agency that partners only with Appleand shot on an iPhone 17 Pro. It appears to be building on a larger marketing theme for Apple. Just this November, MAL worked with the company to create a new visual identity for Apple TV using real glass props and colorful lighting.
This kind of work stands out in a marketing landscape thats become saturated with CGI and AI-generated content. Coca-Cola, for example, has now released not one but two AI-generated holiday ads, both of which have been met with considerable backlash. As consumers are inundated with AI slop across their social media feeds, its becoming less and less common to encounter an ad that makes anyone stop and think, HuhI wonder how they made that?
Apples A Critter Carol signals that a new marker of quality in marketing will be the ability to show real evidence of the creative work that made it possiblenot just the final product.
A Tactile Process
For MAL, creating A Critter Carol was a tactile process from beginning to end. It started with conceptualizing the cast of raccoons, foxes, birds, bears, moles, rats, and others who populate the ads fantastical forest.
[Image: Apple + TBWA/Media Arts Lab]
Every animal on camera was designed and built by a dedicated team of artists. Each puppet needed to be both expressive enough for emotional close-ups and durable enough for manipulation by multiple puppeteers behind the scenes. That meant an intense focus on every possible detail.
[Image: Apple + TBWA/Media Arts Lab]
The puppets were constructed using a combination of internal armatures, foam bodies, synthetic furs, hand-painted surfaces, and carefully crafted glass or resin eyes. Internal mechanisms were added to give each character its unique personality. Before the shoot, a puppet stylist was on hand to tweak body shapes, fur, coloring, and allover shading to give the animals a lived-in look. The final result is a ragtag crew of friendly faces who look like theyve lived in the forest all their lives.
On top of handcrafting the puppets, MAL also made the forest setting using practical effects almost exclusively. The team created a tactile, miniature woodland world 3 feet off the ground that the puppeteers could physically inhabit beneath the set. Handmade trees, snow, and ground textures were built at a scale, allowing the puppets to interact naturally with their environment, while the set was configured in layers to help puppeteers navigate through it while remaining hidden.
In the end, digital effects were used only to remove the puppeteers when the shot couldnt conceal them, and to extend some backgrounds.
[Image: Apple + TBWA/Media Arts Lab]
As a final detail, even the typography that appears on-screen at the end of the ad was created by hand specifically for this project. Its called SFWood, and its a mishmash of various sizes and weights of Apples official font, SF Pro. The name SF Wood comes from the fact that this font was hand-printed using custom woodcuts, then scanned and touched up in post. Irregularities in the ink density and wood texture are preserved in the finished version.
[Image: Apple + TBWA/Media Arts Lab]
The entire ad is an ode to whats possible when artists commit their time and energy to a single project. It hits all the right emotional notes of the seasonnot because its purposefully tugging on viewers heartstrings, but because it feels so deeply human.
Why practical effects might get an AI-induced comeback
For ad agencies and film studios, theres no doubt that generative AI tools are poised to become integral elements of the creative process. But its possible that these shifts may also make practical effects more sought-after among viewers experiencing digital effect fatigue.
[Image: Apple + TBWA/Media Arts Lab]
Aside from Apples recent ads, other projects have also brought practical effects back into popular consciousness. In James Gunns Superman film released over the summer, the ice fortress was painstakingly built using real props rather than CGI. And the highly acclaimed 2024 film The Substance relied almost entirely on practical effects despite its surrealist concept.
As AI begins to make polished final products more easily attainable, it stands to reason that the gritty, hands-on, behind-the-scenes details of creation will become more valuable to viewers. Apple seems, at least on some level, to understand that growing interest in process. Alongside A Critter Carol, it also published a behind-the-scenes video that allows viewers to watch the puppeteers gearing up, production designers arranging the set, and actors cracking up onstage.
Puppeteers dressed like blueberries. Individually placed whiskers. An entire forest built 3 feet off the ground. And so much more, the videos caption reads. Take a look behind the scenes of our new holiday film to see how we handcrafted a cast of woodland puppets and brought them to life on iPhone 17 Pro.
There are plenty of downsides to AIs encroachment on the creative sphere, but one positive might just be that the value of the human touch becomes more clearand for advertisers, the behind-the-scenes process becomes part of the spectacle.
