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