KFC hid its secret recipe in its Twitter follow list and waited for someone to notice
KFC followed exactly 11 accounts — five Spice Girls and six guys named Herb — turning its follow list into a riddle worth 2.5 billion impressions.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDPilot made ink that erases by heat, turning 30 idle years of toy chemistry into 3B pens
Pilot's Frixion erases nothing: friction heat just flips its microcapsule ink to transparent, so one pen writes, erases and rewrites forever.
Read the caseAnime's production-committee shrank risk so Japan could make hundreds of shows
Instead of one sponsor owning a show, the committee spreads cost and rights across publishers, studios, toy and TV firms — taking off with Evangelion (1995)
Read the caseStallman used copyright law to make software stay free.
The GNU General Public License turns copyright against itself: licensees may copy and change code only if they pass the same freedom on.
Read the caseTNT made SIM registration funny and registered 29.8 million subscribers
Facing a deadline that would deactivate unregistered SIMs, budget telco TNT ran absurd comedy films that drove 29.8 million registrations.
Read the caseDelta scheduled pilot training with an optimizer and saved $7.5M a year
Delta turned a contract-heavy training calendar into CQOPT, cutting planning from days to hours and lowering annual costs.
Read the caseVitaphone's discs lost to sound-on-film: the track printed on the strip won
Vitaphone synced a turntable to every projector; optical sound printed the track on the filmstrip itself — and by 1931 even Warner had switched.
Read the caseMarko Saric's honest GDPR banner test: only 9% of 18,700 visitors consented to tracking
Plausible's founder gave visitors a legal no-dark-pattern banner and counted: 48% engaged, only 9% consented — undercutting the tracking model
Read the case1Bridge sold tractors by turning missed calls into village commerce
1Bridge replaced rural ecommerce browsing with a missed-call concierge, local advisors and village-level delivery.
Read the caseViagra sold blue goods to bypass ad ban
Viagra, banned from advertising efficacy, registered its trademark on blue goods where 'long-lasting' is legal, letting color carry the message.
Read the caseIBM's 1928 rectangular-hole card doubled data density and became computing's standard
Lake's rectangular holes packed 80 columns onto the old card; rivals stayed with round holes, and the IBM card became computing's universal medium.
Read the caseJeep turned its grille into Morse code and ran ads with no logo or call to action
Publicis Middle East minted a font from the Jeep grille's dots and lines, so only real Jeep fans could read the ads — and they answered in kind.
Read the caseHondaJet's engines went over the wings, and the 'laughable' jet beat its class
Fujino mounted two engines over the wing at the one spot where shock-wave drag cancels, freeing the rear fuselage and making the cabin 20% larger.
Read the caseIndia gave the unbanked a zero-balance account — 59 crore took it
PMJDY removed the minimum balance, the paperwork and the branch visit — and built the world's largest inclusion drive: 59 crore accounts, 56% held by women.
Read the caseICC's Incoterms gave trade shorthand the same meaning in every port
FOB and CIF meant different things in different countries, so ICC surveyed courts and published one definition in 1936; Incoterms are still used worldwide.
Read the caseRC Cola sold 'whatever' to Gen Z with a baffling ad; sales rose 67%
When a sugar tax erased RC Cola's price edge, GIGIL mirrored Gen Z's 'basta' attitude with an inexplicable ad — 51M views and a 67% sales jump.
Read the caseIsrael replaced its intern lottery with a match that trades placement chances
Israel's medical intern assignment now trades placement probabilities between students, giving almost everyone a better shot at their preferred hospital.
Read the caseflynas turned the window view into a bookable seat feature using machine learning
Saudi low-cost carrier flynas predicted what each side of the plane would see and let passengers book the view, not just the seat.
Read the caseSundback's zipper uses interlocking scoops that a slider locks together.
Gideon Sundback replaced hooks with interlocking scoops on a tape, so a slider could join and part them cleanly.
Read the casePepsiCo's PromoAI and PricingAI cut promo planning from weeks to minutes
PepsiCo replaced spreadsheet pricing and promotion planning with ML plus optimization; ~85% of PromoAI's calendars are executed as recommended.
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