Need to Know
04 : 10 : 23

UK – London’s Design Museum has unveiled its immersive exhibition, Email is Dead, in collaboration with email and marketing automation platform Intuit Mailchimp,, which is open until 22 October 2023. The temporary space aims to provide a multi-sensory experience that re-imagines the future of email communications.

Visitors enter through a bright yellow wall designed like an envelope and engage in interactive activities, such as creating an email time capsule and taking an email personality test. The exhibition also features a customised soundtrack and even an aroma, Eau de Email, designed to evoke the sense of connection and lucidity associated with email. The exhibit celebrates email’s longevity over the past 50 years and challenges visitors to rethink their perceptions of this ubiquitous form of communication.

‘With the rapid expansion of AI that’s happening, we found the chatter about the death of email to be, quite frankly, hilarious,’ Christian Widlic, group creative director at Intuit Mailchimp, told Wallpaper.

By celebrating its core mission of sending emails, Intuit Mailchimp proves how essentialism should be embraced by brands as a tool to grow not only brand awareness – visitors will recognise Mailchimp’s yellow branding throughout the exhibit – but also a reminder of their USP and roots.

US – Lunchables, the nostalgic staple food from the 1990s and early noughties, has had a makeover. Children’s food brand Little Spoon has redesigned the snackable meal, supplementing it with a nutrient boost and a refreshed look.

Classic Lunchables appeal to kids – and often their parents – for their fun, snackable format and comforting flavours. Think crackers and cheese, chicken nuggets or pizza assembly kits. Little Spoon took the same crowd-pleasing concept, adjusting it to fit the brand’s philosophy to make kids’ diets healthier. Rebranded as Lunchers, the processed snacks and dodgy additives were swapped for whole foods. This makes for a balanced meal, sneaking veggies into kids’ diets while branding them as fun foods. Even the dips are cosplaying as junk food, swapping ketchup full of stabilisers for a hidden veggie marinara sauce, or a ranch dressing for a probiotic-rich yoghurt.

Legacy food products remain appealing to consumers, but they are ripe for re-invention when it comes to branding and ingredient lists. Keep an eye out for our upcoming look at snacking futures and the evolution of food and drink in the kids’ aisle.

Global – According to a report published in September 2023 by media agency Wavemaker, influencer marketing campaigns largely ignore Gen X, despite 92% of 45–60-year-olds using social media every day.

The report, Finding the Gen X Factor, collated data showing that despite accounting for 31% of the global population, 28% of TikTok users and 27% of global spending, only 5% of brands are targeting Gen X using influencer marketing.

Wavemaker, a subsidiary of global media firm GroupM, also found that Gen X are more brand-loyal than their younger counterparts, but have unique needs, such as using platforms to continue parenting after their offspring have left home. Owing to a lack of research into the demographic, campaigns often fail to acknowledge this.

As Youth Culture Enters its Flat Age Era, and older women are finally getting the respect they deserve across the entertainment industry, brands need to shake off the archaic notion that only young people are engaged with social media. Not doing so risks missing out on a brand-loyal and relatively untapped market ripe for the picking.