Hope & Glory round up their ‘curated weirdness’

From ‘grandma rental’ to the continued adventures of Cast Away’s famous volleyball, Hope & Glory roundup the campaigns setting the standard in 2025.

The team of naturally curious minds are constantly seeking inspiration beyond their four walls, from cutting-edge creators to outsider artists and good old-fashioned creative campaigns.

Below are just a few of the unashamedly selective list of smart ideas that have sparked their conversations and fuelled their collective passion for the world's curated weirdness.

Rent a grandma

One of the stranger service models emerging in an increasingly divided society is OK Obaachan, a Japanese service where you can rent a grandma. 

Helping financially struggling seniors and offering young people everything from babysitting to emotional advice, including how to deal with a break-up or even coming out to parents. Sounds odd but genuinely filling a deep societal need. 

Who knows, it may even hit UK shores soon. God knows we need it.

AI poetry camera

This AI-powered camera can write poetry based on the pictures you click. A picture is worth a thousand words, so it makes sense that a thousand words could also be worth a picture. 

The Poetry Camera offers a refreshing, tangible alternative in a world saturated with doomscrolling and digital fatigue. Handcrafted in New York, this pocket-sized device resembles a camera but does not take photographs. Instead, it uses AI to interpret the scene it's pointed at, converting it into a one-off poem that it then prints.

McDonald's 'Side Missions'

McDonald's "Side Missions" campaign gamifies food deals by tapping into the idea that side quests are often more fun than the main one. 

Turning a quick trip to McDonald's into a video game with challenges, like "Hard Mode," where you eat your meal in extreme conditions. Or "Fries Speedrun," which rewards you for sorting your fries by size super quickly and encourages app downloads by transforming every meal into a quest.

Tommee Tippee

The viral moment for exhausted parents everywhere was squarely focused on the ingenious Tommee Tippee Stayput Pocket, which took Hailey Bieber’s silicone phone case and applied it to the problems faced by new parents.

An integrated dummy holder and a fully compatible 0-6m Ultra-light StayPut Soother, with a plastic microwave case specifically for sterilising the pocket and soother together. Smart, fun, and intentionally disruptive.

Wilson's Odyssey

Wilson, Tom Hanks’ famous co-star from Spielberg's survival epic Cast Away, holds the coveted title of ‘the most famous volleyball in living memory’. 

This is why UNESCO launched “The Odyssey of Wilson” campaign to highlight the terrible effects of plastic pollution by imagining Wilson’s 450-year journey as he slowly turns into microplastics and just how devastating plastic pollution can be.