IKEA, Whole Foods & VW: How Brands Rewired Human Habits

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.