Need to Know

New Zealand – Fitness brand Les Mills has launched a limited-edition line of wholewheat pasta, with the tagline ‘get sweaty, then eat spaghetti’.

To celebrate the brand’s new Les Mills Functional Strength workout and the Spaghetti Legs pasta, Ben Main, the workout’s co-creator, hosted a live lower-body workout on the Les Mills Instagram channel on 31 January 2024, in which participants had the chance to win the special-edition spaghetti while exercising.

Spaghetti Legs pasta is the latest activation in Les Mills’ Choose Happy campaign, created in collaboration with creative agency nice&frank, to make working out more joyful. Not only are Les Mills’ workouts created to boost mental and physical health, but they often focus on bringing people together socially, through Mass Movement, whether in-person or via Instagram live-stream.

‘We’re all about making fitness more joyful and this is a fun way to bring people together, build community and celebrate a food that’s been scientifically proven to boost happiness,’ said Main.

January is a month typically filled with campaigns and activations from the health and fitness industry. By subverting expectations and launching a pasta product as a fitness brand, Les Mills creatively cuts through the noise, demonstrating the benefits, and necessity, of being an Elastic Brand.

US – Walmart and Unity, the leading platform for real-time 3D content, have unveiled plans to empower Unity developers by integrating Walmart’s commerce application programming interfaces (APIs) directly into games and apps. This collaboration allows creators to seamlessly sell physical items within real-time 3D experiences across more than 20 gaming platforms, unlocking novel connections between virtual and physical lifestyles.

Tom Kang, vice-president and general manager of Metaverse Commerce at Store No 8, the incubation arm of Walmart, said in a press release that they want to ‘connect the physical and digital realms in a way that only Walmart can’. The integration aims to enhance user engagement by enabling in-game transactions for physical products, eliminating the need for players to leave the virtual environment to order the item on the online store or buy in real life.

Unity president for Create solutions Marc Whitten emphasised the innovative potential: ‘This announcement paves the way for new innovation in commerce for games and other virtual experiences.’

Walmart has successfully tested immersive commerce in online worlds, with experiences like House Flip and Avakin Life integrating Walmart commerce APIs, allowing players to purchase real-life counterparts of in-game items. In Gastro Gaming Market, we analysed similar activations where gamers could order real food by visiting virtual restaurants within a game directly.