Creative Corner: Sweden's little housing crisis, Puresport's painters and Lufthansa's travel etiquette

This week's shortlist runs from 1.9 square metres to a single line of copy on a hoodie; you don't need much room to say something well, it seems. Here's what stood out to me this past week.

Riksbyggen and BBDO Nordics build Sweden's housing crisis to actual size

Sweden has a housing crisis. That's not news. What is, though, is a Stockholm apartment measuring 1.9 square metres, built at full scale, that you can actually walk into; this campaign lifts data to quite the spectacle.

Riksbyggen, one of Sweden’s largest housing developers, working with BBDO Nordics, took its new Square Metre Index - a calculation of exactly how much property the average 25-year-old Swede can afford across 209 Swedish municipalities - and, instead of publishing it as a chart, built it. Three of them, in fact: 1.9 square metres for Stockholm, 3.1 for Gothenburg, a comparatively spacious 4.5 for Umeå. Three tiny homes, complete with a resident scrunched up trying to fit comfortably inside (and failing).

Each micro home was built in a different Swedish architectural style, turn-of-the-century, functionalist, contemporary, so you're not just watching a number shrink, you're watching a whole century of Swedish housing get squeezed into a room where the bed touches the toilet and the table has nowhere for a chair.

Ten million plus TikTok views later, Sweden's Housing Minister even turned up to see it in person. Not bad for a stat nobody wanted to look at.

Puresport pushes slow creativity by collaborating with painters

While most of the industry is racing to see how fast a product shot can be generated, Puresport, a sports nutrition brand, has gone the other way. To launch its Pomegranate Ultra Electrolytes with Team GB sprinter Amy Hunt, the brand skipped the AI workflow and commissioned four artists to paint it by hand, in oil, inspired by classical fruit studies.

Same bottle, same sachet, same box, sent to four artists with almost total creative freedom. What came back from artists Trish Walsh-O’Neill, Tomás King, Tony Robinson and Patricia Robinson, is properly varied: one moody, museum-dark still life, one bright summer scene, one built around an oil can as a nod to the mechanics of running, one referencing a pomegranate tree from the artist's own travels.

Plenty of brands are reaching for anti-AI positioning as a talking point right now. What sets this apart is that the medium does the arguing for them, as you just can’t generate a canvas in ten seconds no matter how good your prompt. But Puresport itself has said that this is less anti-AI and more elevating Puresport's whole pitch that there's no shortcut to getting good at anything. The execution isn't illustrating the strategy. It basically is the strategy.

Lufthansa wears etiquette on its sleeve

And finally, Lufthansa airlines, with Serviceplan, has taken the small tensions of flying, including reclining seats, armrest disputes, the mad scramble to stand the second the seatbelt sign goes off, and put them on hoodies and T-shirts in its ‘Travel Etiquette Collection’.

Now, hold on- I know what you’re probably thinking. I've said before that novelty brand merch has had its moment, there's only so many pickle collections, supermarket apparel and football shirt collabs an industry needs. I think this gets a pass, though.

The design is doing almost nothing on purpose: plain bright white garments, simple typeface and capitalised slogans. Middle Seat Gets the Armrest. Recline Responsibly. Boarding by Group Hits Different. My favourite is the pair sitting side by side in the range, It's Okay to Clap When the Plane Lands and It's Okay Not to Clap When the Plane Lands, refusing to pick a side on air travel's well-trodden argument.

Every bit of talkability comes from the lines about the tiny negotiations of air travel themselves, and when those insights are sharp, that's a decent call. I mean, the minimalism also looks good to wear, too. It's not for sale either, only winnable through Lufthansa's social channels- good luck!

That's it for this week's Creative Corner!

If you’ve seen something that’s caught your eye, or if you’ve been working on something you’re particularly proud of, please do get in touch via emily.barnes@fanclubpr.com. I’d love to hear about it.