Bunkitsu (2018): Tokyo bookstore charges admission, sells hours not books
Bunkitsu charged admission instead of selling books: ¥1,500 for a day of coffee and 30,000 titles, and the model spread.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDBurger King proposes a peace burger to McDonald's — 5B impressions, 2017 Grand Effie
Losing the burger war, Burger King publicly asks rival McDonald's to make a mash-up 'McWhopper' for UN Peace Day — and turns the rejection into a global story.
Read the caseAurzen ZIP: a tri-fold projector that folds into a pocket and unfolds into its own stand
The first projector built from three hinged segments: closed it is a pocket cube, opened it angles itself at any surface — no tripod or stand.
Read the case3M's 15 percent rule gives staff free time — Post-it Notes are born
Since the 1940s 3M has let researchers spend up to 15% of work time on their own projects; the unwritten rule produced Post-it Notes.
Read the caseBarbie's hidden-camera film 'Imagine the Possibilities' reframes a criticized doll
A hidden-camera film shows real girls running grown-up jobs, reframing a criticized doll as the engine of their imagination.
Read the caseHertog Jan outgrew Heineken with scarce specialty beers, not mass ads
From regional #4 to the Netherlands' best-selling beer with almost no conventional advertising — scarce craft releases lent the flagship pilsner credibility.
Read the caseITV and Veg Power's 'Eat Them to Defeat Them' turned veg-hating kids into an army
Vegetables become cartoon villains and children join an army whose weapon is eating them — 981 million extra portions later, the silly idea stuck.
Read the caseHyundai's Tree Correspondents lets trees file climate dispatches via AI — 2 Cannes Golds
Sensors plus a custom LLM turn Hyundai's IONIQ Forest trees into first-person 'correspondents' — 86M views and Cannes Digital Craft Golds.
Read the caseTameko's packaging creases, folds and wraps like the cloth it protects
A new Danish textile house wrapped its boxes in paper that creases and folds like cloth, and won D&AD 2025's Yellow Pencil for the idea.
Read the casePUBG drops 100 players on one island and invents battle royale — 50M copies by 2018
Bluehole bets Brendan Greene's last-man-standing mod can carry a full game: 100 players parachute onto one island — 2M sales in weeks, 75M copies by 2021.
Read the caseDeath Wish Coffee wins a free $5M Super Bowl ad via a small-business contest
An 11-employee New York roaster bets on 'world's strongest coffee' and wins Intuit's contest — Amazon sales jump 550% in 24 hours.
Read the caseBlizzard turns a dead Seoul subway platform into Diablo's Hell Station
A disused subway platform becomes Diablo IV's 'Hell Station' — visitors investigate the game's world in person before launch; ADFEST 2024 Silver.
Read the caseRed Hat turns free Linux into a subscription business — paid updates, support, an $84M IPO
With Linux free for anyone to copy, Red Hat charged enterprises a subscription for updates and support — and turned open source into a business.
Read the caseBVG answers a Twitter shitstorm with humor — #weilwirdichlieben wins Germany's PR awards
When Berliners turned BVG's 'we love you' hashtag into a complaint storm, the city's transit operator replied with self-irony — and won every PR award.
Read the caseCadbury's Made to Share: the Dairy Milk wrapper becomes a 'fair' sharing contract
Dairy Milk packs pre-divide the bar by relationship role — who drove vs who slept — selling 16.5M bars and winning Eurobest 2025 Industry Craft GP.
Read the caseBridgewater's idea meritocracy: radical transparency and believability-weighted decisions
Ray Dalio built the world's largest hedge fund on an idea meritocracy — recorded meetings, dot ratings, believability-weighted votes — so the best idea wins.
Read the caseBodyform's 'Womb Stories' gives the uterus its own animated worlds — Cannes Grands Prix
A three-minute film by AMV BBDO brings every unspoken womb experience — IVF, miscarriage, endometriosis, menopause — to life as its own animated 'wombworld'.
Read the caseSuntory Iyemon: a whisky firm and a 1790 Kyoto teahouse bottle green tea as a drama
Suntory built Iyemon with Kyoto's Fukujuen — 1790 bamboo-flask bottle, a 20-year period-drama CM serial; No. 2 in TV CM division at ACC 2005.
Read the caseDentsu Creative China turns Alzheimer's clock-drawing tests into 'Lost in Time' clocks
Clock drawings by elderly Alzheimer's patients became 'designer' clocks in a Shanghai metro show and charity auction — 129M impressions, 106% more donations.
Read the caseIron Chef turns cooking into prime-time combat inside Chairman Kaga's Kitchen Stadium
Fuji TV's 1993 Ryōri no Tetsujin staged one-hour duels around a theme ingredient — play-by-play commentary, dry ice and all — and became a worldwide cult.
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