1/2/26: Disney Bets $1B on AI Mickey, Lululemon's Founder Goes to War, and McDonald's Ruins Christmas

From McDonald's AI Christmas disaster to Disney's billion-dollar gamble on letting you remix Mickey Mouse, TOPAgency.com CEO Ben Kaplan breaks down the wildest marketing moves of the week—and reveals why more brand control might mean letting go.Featuring:McDonald's fully AI-generated Christmas ad (and why it flopped)Disney's $1B OpenAI deal: Remixing Mickey without losing controlLululemon founder Chip Wilson publicly trashing his own companyTrump Accounts: Policy or presidential branding campaign?Netflix vs. Ellison family's $108B bid for Warner BrothersAustralia bans social media for everyone under 16Mondelez's creepy AI that predicts your Oreo craving before you doWatch on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@branded-podcastFollow on TikTok at: https://open.spotify.com/show/1c2q2UAA2xDRI2mqCLFeTMGet merch at: https://store.nationaltoday.com/

From Pepsi undoing a decade of design history to Olipop parking a SpongeBob Airstream where digital ads can't reach, we're learning from the week's wildest marketing news.Did you know that BMW paid for an entire highway lane to give their drivers a free ride—and then forced Mercedes and Audi owners to advertise for them to get the same perk?Ben Kaplan (CEO, TopAgency.com) breaks down why the era of "perfect" campaigns is over—and why the next big marketing wins won’t come from data-driven insights alone.Featuring:Apple’s $230 "sock" & the luxury of zero utilityBMW’s petty (and brilliant) Russian toll lane warPepsi’s "Ugly Sweater" logo pivotAdidas vs. Nike: Why gut instinct can sometimes beat big dataThe Campbell’s Soup hot mic disasterOlipop’s SpongeBob Airstream & physical retargetingWhy "No AI" is the new premium flex

Minimalism had a long run. But consumers got bored and brands felt it.BMW pulled off a toll-lane stunt that turned Audi and Mercedes drivers into unwilling brand ambassadors. Apple dropped a knitted “iPhone Pocket” that has more in common with Hermès than hardware. And Pepsi just ended a decade of flat, sanitized branding with a bold return to maximalism.The new wave isn’t clean, quiet, or neutral. It’s loud, emotional, and intentionally polarizing.Because in a crowded market, clarity doesn’t win contrast does.Which brand nailed the moment?

LeBron had millions bracing for goodbye—until the twist revealed it wasn’t retirement at all. And that’s just one part of this week’s story about belief: who has it, who earns it, and how brands weaponize it.From China blocking influencers without real credentials…to Cheetos turning a baseball superstition into an official MLB deal to Prime, Feastables, and Stanley proving that today’s strongest brands start as people, not companies.Ben Kaplan (Founder + CEO, Top Agency) breaks down why trust, identity, and community have become the new moat in marketing—and why the next decade of brand power won’t come from logos, ads, or campaigns, but from belief systems.Featuring:• LeBron x Hennessy emotional clickbait• China’s degree-verified influencer crackdown• Cheetos & the Seattle superstition• Prime Hydration + Feastables as belief-driven brands• The Stanley Cup identity movement• Why attention isn’t enough anymore—belief is the strategy

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. Whole Foods’ Trend Report — transforming food into status and self-expression. Volkswagen’s Currywurst — turning nostalgia into profit. The Death of Millennial Brands — why aesthetic polish stopped working.Because branding in 2025 isn’t about storytelling anymore—it’s about habit formation, desire curation, and emotional anchoring.

Cheetos sold the mess. Domino’s engineered a sound. The Ordinary called beauty a scam while selling it. This week on BRANDED, Ben Kaplan (Founder + CEO, Top Agency) breaks down how brands turned irony into influence and self-awareness into strategy. He breaks down how emotion, irony, and algorithmic storytelling are reshaping the attention economy. From absurd stunts to sensory branding, these campaigns prove that authenticity now means admitting the performance.We unpack: Cheetos & Vogel’s — turning snacks and bread into fashion statements. Ramp — B2B marketing that made pain a spectacle (literally). Domino’s — rebranding taste through sound design. The Ordinary — exposing beauty’s biggest lie while cashing in on it. OpenAI — redefining category ownership as ChatGPT becomes shorthand for AI.Plus, a deep dive into how nostalgia, dopamine, and self-awareness became the ultimate growth hacks in 2025’s marketing landscape.

In 2025, emotion is the business model.From Ferrari’s Apple-designed EV to Doritos’ cheese-pull spectacle — Ben Kaplan breaks down how outrage, nostalgia, and virality became strategy.

MTV didn’t die — we killed it by scrolling. In this week’s episode of BRANDED Weekly, Ben Kaplan breaks down how nostalgia, dopamine, and brand emotion are reshaping business. From MTV’s collapse to Build-A-Bear’s 2,000% stock surge, Chili’s viral mozzarella moment, and Michael Jordan’s $70M jet, we explore the one metric that now decides who wins: attention. The real question? In 2025, how much is your brand’s emotion worth?

Beer, Rings, and Body Doubles: The Internet’s Attention EconomyGen Z is putting ice in their beer. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement feels more like a dynasty merger than a romance, with brands racing to crash the party. And online, people are debating whether Trump really met Putin in Alaska or a body double.In this week’s Branded, Ben Kaplan unpacks how these viral stories spiral, why brands jump on them, and what they reveal about culture, politics, and the attention economy in 2025.From Trump firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook for mortgage fraud the same offense he was convicted of to Swift’s engagement fueling memes and marketing campaigns, we explore why irony, controversy, and cultural collisions keep driving attention.Plus, a few hot takes from TikTok: is ice in beer actually a hack… or still a crime against hops?

In this episode of Branded Leaders, host Ben Kaplan sits down with Brian Irving, Chief Marketing Officer at Lyft, to discuss how Lyft differentiates itself in a rideshare industry that often looks like a race to the bottom.Brian shares how Lyft avoids competing solely on price by leaning into its DNA as a purposeful rebel brand — building services around freedom, connection, and customer obsession. He reveals how Lyft is adapting its identity from quirky early days (pink mustaches and friendly drivers) to serving business travelers, healthcare rides, and diverse audiences with evolving needs.The conversation explores Lyft’s approach to autonomous vehicles, why it’s doubling down on human-first innovation, and how FlexDrive and new partnerships expand the platform’s future. Brian also reflects on his career journey from Flint, Michigan, to Silicon Valley, with pivotal chapters at Apple, Google, Airbnb, and Eventbrite. Along the way, he shares the best advice he’s ever received, how curiosity shapes his leadership, and why learning to say “I get to” instead of “I have to” changed his perspective on work and life.Packed with candid stories, career lessons, and insights into the future of mobility and marketing, this episode offers a rare look at how Lyft’s CMO is steering the brand beyond rides to something much bigger: freedom.