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Podcast: BRANDED
Episode: IKEA, Whole Foods & VW: How Brands Rewired Human Habits
Description: IKEA made a bed for your phone. Whole Foods turned a grocery list into a cultural forecast. Volkswagen’s top-selling product isn’t a car—it’s sausage.This week on BRANDED Weekly, Ben Kaplan (Founder + CEO, Top Agency) breaks down how brands stopped reacting to culture and started writing it. From IKEA’s behavioral design experiments to Whole Foods’ 2026 trend report and Volkswagen’s nostalgia-driven empire, today’s most powerful brands aren’t selling products—they’re engineering habits, identity, and emotion.We unpack: IKEA’s Phone Bed — gamifying guilt and designing digital discipline.<...