Most brand storytelling still works the same way it did twenty years ago.
Big ideas. Big budgets. Long production cycles. But generative tools are quietly changing something more fundamental than production speed.
They are changing the role of experimentation in storytelling.
Instead of asking whether an idea is worth producing, we can now explore ideas quickly — visually, cinematically, and iteratively. Sometimes those experiments begin with something very small.
In this case, it began with a pile of IKEA bags falling out of a storage closet.
The Bucket Hat Experiment
When "The Bag" Stops Being a Bag
One Friday night, I opened a storage closet in our apartment, and a small avalanche of blue IKEA bags tumbled onto the floor. You know the ones. Durable, oversized, almost indestructible. The bags everyone seems to accumulate over time.
Standing there looking at the pile, I started thinking less about what they carried and more about what they were made of. The material is an interesting contradiction — waterproof and tough, yet flexible enough to collapse flat. And that’s when the thought appeared.
This would make a great hat…
* IKEA is not a (yet) client of RockPaperScissors. This was a speculative experiment built purely out of curiosity and a pile of blue bags in a storage closet. No IKEA bags were harmed in the making of this film. One simply found a new career as a bucket hat.
Brands Should Pay Attention to Experiments Like This
At first glance, a film about turning an IKEA bag into a bucket hat might feel like a small curiosity. A creative exercise. A weekend experiment.
But projects like this are quietly becoming an important part of how brand storytelling is evolving.
For decades, brand films were expensive to produce and slow to iterate. You wrote a script, assembled a production team, rented equipment, booked locations, and shot everything within a tightly scheduled window. The cost structure meant that most ideas were explored only once — and often only partially.
What generative tools are beginning to change is not just the speed of production. They are changing the relationship between experimentation and storytelling.
You can now test ideas the way designers prototype objects. Instead of asking “Is this idea worth producing?” you can ask “What happens if we explore this idea?”
The bucket hat film sits exactly in that space.
It begins with a familiar object that already lives inside millions of homes. The IKEA bag is not just a bag — it’s a cultural artifact. Instantly recognizable. Universally understood. A piece of design that has quietly embedded itself into everyday life.
By transforming that object into something else — a hat — the film taps into a different kind of storytelling. Not advertising in the traditional sense, but reinterpretation.
A reminder that the most powerful brand stories often begin with the objects people already know.
The Real Opportunity for Brands
The most interesting part of this moment is not that AI can produce images or videos. It allows brand storytellers to think with motion. To prototype ideas visually. To test narrative structures quickly. To explore metaphors that would previously have been too expensive or impractical to produce.
For brands, this opens an entirely new creative territory. Not just campaigns. Not just commercials. But a continuous stream of story experiments that deepen people's experience of the brand.
Sometimes those experiments might start with something as simple as a bag falling out of a closet.
And occasionally, if you follow the idea far enough, you end up with a bucket hat.
