BRANDED

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 des

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 re

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 me

Beer, Rings, and Body Doubles: The Internet’s Attention Economy Gen 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 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 r