I look at a bunch of little nuggets from our favourite world of AI and its ability to constantly feed our feeds and news and brains with so much (not all worth being fed on!)- there’s a chocolate’s attack on AI, smart-ish glasses, the newbie non-actor and more (il)legal music.

But you can also explore that feeling you didn’t know you wanted with a new campaign from Tubi, smile at the vibrancy of the Cricket World Cup branding, and listen to a fine chat,

As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here , or get it straight in your inbox.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Curated/Cuts: Find That Feeling + Cricket Circles

2. Gen AI: mediocrity, acting, music & glasses.

3. Podwatch: with that guy from The Atlantic.

4. ➕ · Masterchef Asia · Writing & Reading · Emmys feel right? ·

1. Curated/Cuts

· Find That Feeling ·

Crafting short, smart pieces (idea *and the execution) like these is not as easy as they look to many!

Tubi does what feels like some good, ol ‘fashioned promo work for a TV channel— in a good way— with these spots encouraging viewers to feel more with the streaming service, their ‘global’ campaign around ‘Find Any Feeling For Free’.

Full Playlist here

The “Feel x” phrase sometimes felt clunky, but that’s me nitpicking– the conceit works, often pushed to the brink with the absurdity of the situation.

In the US, they even have a toll free number aka TubiFone, a hotline where callers can choose a feeling theyre after and hear recommendations for movies and series on Tubi

Director: Steve Ayson · Mischief @ No Fixed Address ·

More context on the strides Tubi is making in the last couple of years.

· Make The Circle Bigger ·

Some time back, the ICC revealed the brand & look for next year’s Cricket World Cup being held across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

They say it is “imbued with the African message of Ubuntu, a philosophy that translates to ‘I am, because we are’, “the belief that we as humanity are defined by our compassion, kindness and connection to one another,” which is in line with the ICC’s ‘Make the Circle Bigger’ philosophy.

There’s a lot going for it, with the bold colours, typography and vibrant mood. We’ll see how it can manifest itself across touchpoints in the coming months.

2. Gen AI goodness

· Make AI Mediocre Again ·

“This is the worst its ever going to be.”

Or is it still the same?

We hear that line often touted in defense of AI, especially when its not so fine moments and outputs are explained away. Doubtless, the last few years have seen the tech around all manner of AI progress incredibly, especially the LLMs and assistants and bots.

I stumbled upon this campaign from the chocolate bar Five Star, made in India more than 18 months ago. Their general philosophy of ‘eat 5 Star and do nothing’ comes under attack when AI is expected to herald more efficiency.

Its an amusing campaign, yet what I found instructive is that it is still relevant despite the incredible pace of progress in the tech. We are still waiting for AI to make teams genuinely more efficient across the board, we are still waiting for the fruits of that tech giving us leisure time (don’t hold your breath), and we are still woefully aware of how our dear Internet is filling up fast with junk.

The Dead Internet awaits.

· No, Norwood ·

Remember Tilly Norwood? Its ok if you don’t, because she’s nobody.

The ‘first AI Actor’ unveiled last year has made no ripple of note. But CBS News decided to ‘interview’ this grand symbol of our future anyway. Why would they? No idea. How was it? Pretty terribly meh.

But then I saw her on a couple of other meaningful ‘interviews’ with the likes of Piers Morgan, NBC, CNN and others. She lapsed into Chinese, answered questions on tangents, misunderstood points, took a dig at Leonardo di Caprio and generally added very little expect airtime.

I get it, the ongoing fascination with all things AI Generated and how they might replace us or transform our lives continues unabated. But these chats seem to be part of a PR push (her ‘movie’ is approaching), and honestly a bit tired and lame. The platforms doing them are either bored or well paid or hoped for something more dramatic.

Everyone should be sorry to disappoint.

· Suno’s new legal joy ·

Suno’s new model to generate music says we don’t need real ideas or musical terms for the prompted song, we can just plonk in a photo and ask the model to vibe it. How charming.

While that speaks to some of the philosophical underpinnings of the Suno service (a reminder this is from a CEO who has repeatedly derided the process of making music as something that most people want to be rid of, a tedium, a friction to be optimised way); more relevantly, the new model has invited yet another lawsuit.

Sony and UMG have at it again, claiming that the V6 model, touted as being made legally and in partnership with labels, is in fact nothing of the sort. “v6 is not a fresh start. It is the fruit of the same poisoned tree.”

They say “training a ‘new’ model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it.” Its a fine analogy. They also reiterated that Suno’s AI generated produce is “saturating the market,”, that “directly competes with, cheapens, and ultimately drowns out” real human songs.

· Meta Luma ·

Meta is reportedly working on a new version of its glasses, without the camera. So, erm, glasses? Not quite, it will still have audio and smart capabilities, I guess like a smartwatch? Yeah- speakers and a mic to speak to your dear chatbot.

This is presumably in response to the sustained pushback against the glasses. While it has reportedly been selling well, it has also invited loud reactions, with many corner of the internet and real life dubbing them ‘pervert glasses’.
Cnet says. “the backlash has spoken”.

3. Thompson x Kafka

Nic Thompson seems like a quirky, energetic, interesting, always interested man. He is the CEO of The Atlantic and you might well have seen him on this platform, especially with this video series ‘The Most Interesting Thing in Tech’.

I like it.

I also liked a recent chat he had with Peter Kafka, the straight-talking journalist who has been hosting the clear-headed, no-frills, engaging podcast Channels for a long time now.

Worth a listen if you are interested in Nic’s take on the media business in general, how to find success in one, the dynamic between creators and brands like the one he runs, AI in media and being a kinda-creator.

Few things that stuck out for me:

• The reiteration of the clear, unquestionable line between church & state at the Atlantic, i.e. Nic runs the business, but has zero editorial input or oversight. The extent to which he describes it seems significant. Especially for someone who has himself been an Editor in Chief (of Wired).

• The clear-headed take on how AI is coming for all of us, and AI is also great, and AI can’t take all of us down. Probably.

• The interesting glimpse into his own journey as a creator, with his video series & podcast being run entirely independent of The Atlantic (editorially), but the money its making (a lot) goes back into The Atlantic. Not sure I understood how that works but it seems, erm, excellent?

Isn’t it enjoyable to just listen to two level-headed, intelligent, curious humans having a conversation?

➕Quick Hits

1. Masterchef Asia launches this week, on HBO Max and TLC (TLC!). It has been shot in Macao, a UNESCO ‘Creative City of Gastronomy’, made in partnership with Macau Tourism.

2. Azeem Azhar a gent who runs a platform to understand the macro level impact of tech & AI. Researcher, entrepreneur, investor. I found this note from him to this team worth a moment of our time.

3. Apple TV won the most Emmys with HBO second and Netflix dropping sharply to third. With a pure layperson/viewer hat, that seems about right- Netflix has felt far more massy and less premium in recent times.

If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one?
And do please support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it.

Till next week, go find a feeling and embrace it… or something.

I might be away or erratic for the next two dispatches, as I head on the road for a pretty cool new shoot and new people. Don’t miss me too much.

I also ponder how the intent behind brands’ content might be reshaped, as they are tempted away from audience building and brand affinity (and SEO!) to court those great, all-pervasive LLMS.

As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here, or if Linkedin is your thing- here.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Primavera: Lip sync goodness

2. Curated/Cuts: Thai Reincarnation + Where’s Tucci?

3. Gifts for LLMs: Why will brands make shows?

4. Fake Tech: Some funny ads in the NYC Subway

5. ➕ · BCCI sponsors · Tiktok in SG’s museums · Apple’s photo authenticity ·

1. Primavera, not Pasta

Its called And We Shall Dance Again, and its a new short film from Gucci Primavera.

Kate Moss. Lush art. Lush wardrobe.
Strangely beautiful and beautifully strange people.

But it’s Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game that, in wrapping itself around this vintage hotel lounge with desire and emotion charm and raw sex appeal, refuses to age. The strangers in this room with no apparent objective in life all seem to feed off it, or are lifted by it, or fall into it helplessly.

Gucci is undergoing a reinvention of sorts under a new Creative Director, so they call this a continuation of that process, “a rebirth, a renaissance—and nothing is reborn quite like we are when we fall in love.”

The internet is sharp in its way. So in not very much time, I could watch two other pieces of note related to this. I would bring your kind attention to the back of the gallery for these.

Exhibit A.
A music video for the song Pass This On, by Swedish band the Knife, circa 2003.

Making it to a ‘Best MVs of the Aughts’ list, this video sees “a flaxen haired, spider-limbed female impersonator takes the mic in a rustic chalet. A woman in the small audience gets up out of her seat. Is she leaving? A glaring thug approaches the stage. Is he going to end her song by force? No, they’re both moved by the music, and soon everyone is dancing.”
If you had clicked on the Kate Moss-Chris Isaak ‘duet’, you’ll know this passage could almost have described the Gucci short that has gathered us here today. Lip sync, single mike, bored crowd coaxed into movement. But all upgraded with Gucci style & budgets.

Exhibit B.
Blue Velvet from H&M and Lana del Rey, circa 2012. A Lana del Rey vinyl is played, as Lana del Rey stands at a vintage microphone and starts to lip sync to the Lana del Rey song. Mildly interested but uninspired individuals, scattered about in their American mid-century retro glamour, slowly start to be enamoured by the singer, the song, the atmosphere. Till an inconvenient dwarf grumpily yanks the plug.

Renck.
The connective tissue here is director Johan Renck, who helmed all three of these. So no– this is not about a director ripping someone else off. It’s the same guy, repeating the devices that have worked for him before. Whether that leaves you with an “Ahhh, I get it” understanding reaction or an “Aw, come on” sort of underwhelmed take, is something you must tell me.

2. Curated/Cuts

· Past Life ·

‘Aod’ is a European (?) man who one fine morning has an epiphany at breakfast. As his wide eye baby (win!) and shell-shocked wife look on, he rattles off Thai words and claims to remember his past life.

Watch his heart-warming story here.

No, it has nothing to do with food and definitely has no trademark wild Thai advertising humour. Not at all.

· BBDO Bangkok · ECD Warunyoo Sorasetsakoon ·
· Production House: Suneta House · Director: Teerapol Suneta

· MIA with the simple things ·

Who needs to make good ads when the good life beckons?

I smiled at this unfussy, clever but not too clever spot for Birra Moretti. You know it is an ad, you know its for a beer, you know which beer, but it still keeps you curious for a few seconds before cutting to real life.

“Enjoy life’s simple pleasures (like Tucci is doing)”- simple and smart.

Lucky Generals · Shelley Smoler · Dir: Tom Speers · Brand Veronica Sica · Eric Halgand ·

3. Gift List for LLMs

The British retailer John Lewis announced a new Youtube show. So far, so 2020s. A retail chain has a show streamed for free? Seems par for the course because remember- everyone needs a content strategy now.

The idea of ‘Gift List’ (trailer) is guests revealing the good and bad presents they’ve given and received. Six episodes will run through Christmas, with more planned if the series takes off. ‘If the series takes off’ may, by the sound of it, not be judged by engagement or follower count or comments or reshares. Because the aim behind Gift List is not to really to build an audience or cultivate a following, but to “help make itself and its products more visible to chatbots and more prominent in AI search results.” (from ^)

Sure, that bit might be one of the many things that pop out the most in that report, as brands grapple with the fact that LLMs “prioritise third party advice and live content when formulating their responses” ; and the team might well have entirely more expected objectives in mind- good content, word of mouth, brand trust and affinity. But it’s a sign of the times- we’re going to have to make more decisions around balance- do we optimise our marketing content for human taste, or LLMs?

(The retailer recently formed a creation hub at their flagship store, called The Box Studio. This and other shows /content initiatives will be made here).

* I literally just spoke about the shortlived moniker for video podcasts. But I guess– like Vlogs– you can’t really get rid of some internet terms that make-sense-but-not-really. John Lewis is calling this a vodcast.

4. Fake Tech

Last month, a couple of funny guys decided there were too many tech ads in NYC, and too much of sloppy (and slop?) writing and creative in them. So they pulled a little stunt where they briefly put up fake tech ads in the subway, then posted about them on social.

A bunch of completely fake tech companies, real-looking (kinda) subway ads printed on vinyl banners and hung at two Brooklyn stations, and voila we have “ads (that) look convincing because (they) copied the vague, jargon-heavy language that has become nearly impossible to avoid in tech advertising.”

“I feel like it does connect you to other people to be like, look, we’re all going crazy,” said Harris Alterman, who did this with Dave Ross.

➕Quick Hits

1. The National Gallery Singapore is piloting a Tiktoker Residency programme, looking for someone who has a unique and fresh “perspective on art, culture, storytelling… with authenticity, with and enthusiasm”.

2. Campa, SBI Life and ChatGPT were on Tuesday announced as BCCI’s associate partners by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for a period of two home seasons. The main sponsor is awaited, reportedly paused by the high asking price.

3. Apple announced in-built authentication at the time of recodign a photo on iPhones, in an effort to fight fake images. Hany Farid said “when one of the largest companies in the world decides this problem is worth solving at the hardware level, it is an acknowledgment that our collective loss of trust in the visual record is no longer a niche concern.“

If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one?
And do please support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it.

Till next week, go find your past life and reincarnate… or something.

Plus, Apple is mighty too, and they have the claymation to prove it; while Lufthansa gets cute with flying etiquette and Twitter makes a comeback… sorta.

As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Free The Sea: Small teams, big (boring) ideas.

2. Curated/Cuts: Might Apple + Lufthansa humour

3. Tech Broze: Oh, look, its Twitter! + Meta’s slap on the wrist

4. ➕ · Asian streaming original grows · Elizabeth Holme & A24 ·

1. Free The Sea

Small organisations, nonprofits, solo shops… they can find it hard to break the clutter on social media, or wherever they digitally want to find their audiences.

We are continually told it is ‘so easy’ to make content these days, how production value is almost irrelevant, how the message is paramount, how the character or vibe or brand is all that matters, and fancy productions are not necessary to make an impact. All of these can be true… yet not blindly, nor as simplistically as it is somehow made out to be.

Making a video is easy, having something meaningful to say as a founder or activist is doable, being hit on the head with a lightbulb idea can happen to everyone. But bringing those together? Not as obvious, not so easy, much less common. Fine ideas can be lost in muddled execution, sharp takes can be blurred by misguidedly basic creative, or indeed by fancy creative attempts, or most mundanely- by missing budgets. And now of course, all of these can be trumped by generative AI, which promises to solve so many of these challenges magically, bridge these gaps in a trice. Small businesses everywhere are getting goggle-eyed at the prospect of pulling off amazing brand work sans any strategy or vision… only to find that all new tech does is paper over cracks, or offer the illusion of achievement.

That’s a long preface to something that I came across last week which made me smile.

Meaningful? Check.
Eye catching? Check.
Smart? Check.
Relevant? Check.
Well crafted? Check.
Not boring (but definitely boring)? Check!

Fadilah is cool.
You might remember her for her high heels (I know I will!), but then you’ll remember what she does in those heels. And it’s nothing less lofty, than saving the sea.

Free The Sea is an organisation that works at keeping plastic waste in the system, and out of the sea. They are based in Batam, Indonesia which– though I’ve never been there– feels like it’s in the ‘hood… because it kinda is, for us in Singapore.

Surprisingly, I was not familiar with them till Fadilah made it otherwise. Wrapped around the smart premise that “boring can radically transform the world”, they find ways for homes and businesses to get their waste into recycling, by enabling the logistics and infrastructure to make it happen.

They have a new website too, and are branded pretty strongly across the site, on socials and in the the field, from what we can see. I love the look, the friendly (but boring) vibe, the joyful (but dull & boring) mood, the bold (& boring) feels, and the overall ‘take-a-moment-and-look at us’ statement that, of course, is still all about boring.

In time, I was to trawl about and find out that this was done by the seemingly very cool folk at Enviral, an agency that works for organisations striving to make our planet better.

Here’s to more work that feels real but also a bit wild, authentic but not mundane, fun but oh so meaningful.

Free The Sea · Laura Duran Ramos · Ina Helen Krumllinde · Christoph Dorn
Enviral / Joss Ford

2. Curated/Cuts

· Mighty Mini ·

Apple released a spot for Mac Mini. Its fun, its very Apple, and it was done with claymation- fully hand-sculpted in clay and animated by hand, frame by frame.

After the now common, “was any AI used??” bit, the BTS video it released is probably just as entertaining.
Saulo Rocha · Branwen S. TBWA\Media Arts Lab

· Airborne Etiquette ·

Lufthansa released some limited edition apparel to encourage polite travel. Most of us will understand most of it– its light, playful and mildly memorable? You can’t actually buy these I think, and they did a small giveaway, but all kinda cute.

They worked with– wait for it– an etiquette expert and influencer—the splendidly named Clemens Maximilian Stefan Graf von Hoyos Freiherr zu Stichsenstein. He is chairman of the association of certified etiquette trainers, and owns the KniggeAkademie, where etiquette trainers are, erm, trained. He himself regularly holds forth on good manners in everyday life on TikTok…in German.

“Middle Seat Gets the Armrests” · “Live, Love, Exit by Row” · “Recline Responsibly” · “It’s Okay to Clap When the Plane Lands” · "Text Your Mom After Landing" ·

“good manners are no science. They’re simply a smile that happens to take place at 30,000 feet. And if it looks good while doing so: all the better.”

3. Tech broze

· Cheep cheep ·

A new Twitter launched. Just like the old Twitter but nothing like what the old Twitter became, which is X. But X didn’t want to be Twitter anymore, except now it doesn’t want the new Twitter to be Twitter. So they went to that favourite place for corporate America- the courtroom. Then a few days ago the court ruled that the name Twitter was off limits, but the logo and the bird weren’t. While the lawsuit continues, the peeps at ‘Operation Bluebird’ have gone ahead and named the service Tweet.

Oh, and they’re saying it was two tweets that costs Musk the logo.

· Oh, Meta ·

You know this- Meta reached a settlement in their huge cases against 47 states. They then glibly called that settlement a ‘partnership’. It concluded a short slew of restrictions for teenagers. Things like imposing a default two-hour limit on its apps for users under the age of 18 and a few others that many claim are things easily done by parents on the devices already. The more addictive elements, the bits that really suck us in and keep us there, Meta has not been asked to rework. FWIW the EU is waiting on steps to “limit the addictive designs of its social ​networks, such as disabling autoplay and endless scrolling and changing recommendation systems to disincentivise perpetuated engagement.

Back to the moolah. $17B over ten years– that figure is either whopping or trifling, depending on what you want to see. Also, share price immediately went up! Yay, investors. Then, there’s the bit that five of $17B is contingent on Youtube and Tiktok also putting similar measures in place. To that end, Meta put out an open letter to those companies, which makes Meta seem like it’s leading the charge for teenage health and safety. More seriously- $12B paid out over a decade works out to about 0.6% of Meta’s annual revenue. Just another cost of doing business world domination.

This is all only in the US. Regulators elsewhere are presumably rubbing palms together in some sort of anticipation of what potential this brings ot their tables. This piece looks at some of the wider ramifications of this ‘deal’.

➕Quick Hits

1. A24 has revealed the impending screening of their documentary ‘You Can See Everything’. “Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move… a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.” And here’s the not-at-all creepy trailer.

2. Streaming originals in Asia have nudged out Europe and North America for the first time. Ampere Analysis says Asia took 36% of scripted orders for the major streamers- Prime Video, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, and Paramount+- with 70 first-run scripted commissions in the first half of 2026, with North America at 46 and Western Europe at 44.

If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one?
And do please support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it.

Till next week, go reduce some plastic or something.

There’s this thread of the tangible, the touchable, the feelable in today’s dispatch. The joy of playing- something, anything- in the real world, in the rain, in the heat; the weirdness of touching a hundred kilos of hair ; the intimacy of listening to music sans devices.

But there is also, erm, a Tiktok trend on Rothko (yeah, don’t ask), and glimpses of Raygun (remember her?), a list of made-up words for our tech-consumed lives, and a deep, meaningful question- why can no one make a ‘Friends’ for Gen Z? (Maybe no one should try?).

As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here, or if Linkedin is your thing- here.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. No Phones please, we’re Indie: Phoebe Bridgers leading with scarcity

2. Curated/Cuts: Sachin Tendulkar joy & a Hairball Attack

3. Rothko Tok: Modern art, modern trends?

4. ➕ · Vocab for tech lives · Raygun returns · Friends for Gen Z? ·

1. No Phones Please, I’m Indie

Last week I gushed ever so slightly about watching a classic movie in Singapore’s oldest theatre. Some of that joy came from the film itself, much also came from the real-world, tangible feel to it.

I recalled then hearing about what Phoebe Bridgers did recently. The indie darling American singer-songwriter was the most awarded person at the 2024 Grammys, then announced a hiatus that continued for about two years.

In early May this year, a flyer appeared in Roswell, New Mexico- no, it was not about aliens and was definitely not an AI generated slop flyer. It was a surprise, and secret, show being performed by Bridgers the very next day, at a small venue which had to field calls enquiring if this was all legit. Tickets were first come, first served; sold at the venue, on the day of the show.

Roswell was the beginning. Bridgers played around multiple venues in coming weeks- all usually small, all announced the day of or just before, via flyers or posters fans had to be lucky to spot (or be sent online), and all the shows banned phones, plonking them in Yondr pouches*. The string of gigs, all working with the same framework, led up to a ‘big’ show.

Madison Square Gardens, no less, the NYC arena. Except this show too was announced mere days before, with tickets in the absurdly low $1-$20 range. Sponsored by Tidal, all proceeds went to a charity, this was still a small show (18,000 attended), the approach was still intimate, and yes, phones were still banned.

As with the other gigs, Bridgers played new material here too. Material which was not being posted instantly online for fans to gush or moan over. In fact, even pens, pencils, notebooks were nudged away (incorrect, misleading lyrics had been reported from previous gigs).

Variety’s show report said, “As the show began, the objective almost seemed to be less about preventing premature publicity for the many unreleased songs she performed than evoking a long-gone era that most of the audience never experienced: a time when an artist could road-test new material without it being available to millions within seconds, and audience members could see a concert without having their view obscured or completely blocked by multiple people taking video they probably never will watch.” ^{^}

Her last album was back in 2020, her last show was in 2023 (opening for Taylor Swift), and as an album as part of ‘boygenius’ leading up to those Grammys.

A popular singer doing a small show is not new in itself. But in a time when pop culture discovery and marketing are so often associated with the hammer not the chisel- maximising eyeballs, putting everything out there, clipping, oversharing, still ‘going viral’... in such a time, choosing scarcity can be a bit rare, a bit brave, a bit smart, and conversely a bit obvious, but often a combination of all.

And I don’t doubt these gigs would have been a bit challenging for some of the audience, in parts, as it might well have been for Phoebe herself. But there is something to be said about a show that is being performed for those who are there, not with one eye on impressing the vast millions on the internet. (What’s clippable, what will work as a reel or short? What is a fun ‘moment’?) And that something applies to both artist and fan- have you never wished to watch a performance with your vision not peppered with endlessly recording hand held devices? To be part of a “temporarily Luddite crowd”, watching a performance that imbued “every song with a campfire warmth conducive to the setting, as if tens of thousands of us just stumbled across an impromptu jam session.” ^

I know that appeals to me.

* The day after the MSG show, June 5, she announced The Lost Tour across the US and Europe- her first solo tour since 2023. The tour too will be phone-free. Its already sold out in the US & UK.

* Her new album, The Lost Weekend, released in August and has been variously called “a vividly cathartic body of work”^ , where “dissociation from celebrity becomes part of the record’s subject”, while it “refuses to convert pain into spectacle,”^ and “fulfills the grand architecture of a high-profile comeback, but it also returns to the hushed, bedroom setting her music has always invited.” ^

* So what is Yondr?
It was mentioned in many of the Bridger reports, and its the third time I have encountered it in recent times. Since it hasn’t come to Asia, i figured i would share. Yondr pouches are where you lock away your device. Magnetic, can be opened only outside the phone-free zone, by tapping it on a magnetic base. It is intended to “create phone-free spaces where genuine connection, focus, and creativity can flourish in the absence of technology.”

Freedom from the devices that freed us.

2. Curated/Cuts

· Attack of the Endorphin ·

A fun, upbeat ad for TenXU, Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar’s sportswear brand, which prefers endorphins over adrenaline, and wants us to nod in agreement that “You don’t have to be the best in the world to feel on top of the world.” (Is that a cheeky Nike-esque font I see overlaid by the bright yellow TenXU text?). Their main push though is “Never Stop Playing”, which reminded me briefly of this campaign that also used the same phrase.

In some ways, it feels familiar- the kind of rhythmic, real, raucous spot you might expect from anything sports in India. Led by music & montage, a diverse cast, joy and passion and verve, with earwomy track and deft editing. But this kind of familiar ≠ dull, or derivative; and the splashes of mixed media feel are a nice touch. I enjoyed it, especially the little pause with muttered complaints for ‘scooter stopped play’!

Footloose Films · Director Indrashish Mukherjee · Producers Kedhhar Barrve & Pallavi Singh · Music Subhajit Mukherjee · Editor Abhimanyu Chaudhary ·
Brand Karan Arora · Karthik Gurumurthy ·

· Attack of The Tumblehair ·

A giant hairball appeared in NYC. It rolled around town. People stared. A haircare brand smiled. All sounds about right for NYC?

‘Prestige’ haircare brand K18 & Uncommon Creative Studio teamed up to take an obscure and slightly absurd stat and wrap it- pun intended- into a stunt. The 167 billion hairs New Yorkers lose to shedding, apparently, were all rolled up into this kinda gross, kinda cute, hair monster thingy.

That’s right- a 10-foot-tall hairball that somehow isn’t as disgusting as it should be. As with everything else, people wondered if this was AI (of course)- but its not. All real hair, all real weirdness.
Oh, and the ball didn’t just roam aimlessly, it ended up at a Sephora, for a ‘K18 Hair Longevity Lab’.

Someone on Linkedin called it filthy and friendly at the same time. Indeed.

· CDs Lauren Cooper · Cara Johnson ·
Uncommon Studio · Sam Shepherd · Nils Leonard ·

3. Rothko Tok

Rothko is having a moment on Tiktok. Yes, you don’t need to re-read that.
Not maybe what the abstract master aspired to in the mid 20th century with his colour field paintings, but hey- his spirit might just take the attention. Gen Z tiktokers have shaped some ‘main-character energy’ around his work, turning his paintings into outfits, profile types, dating jokes, musings… even nail polish.

Or at least, attempting to.

One take said, “Gen Z has grown up surrounded by so many images, ads and screens that visual stimulation is already ‘at capacity.’ Rothko leaves the viewer room to decide what to see and feel.”

Others reckoned it was just a tiktok trend, creators hopping on it without the slightest understanding of Rothko or his vision, another example of trends and expression that are ephemeral and eventually shorn of any real value.

I am not sure I care enough to decide which one.

➕Quick Hits

1. Why can’t anyone make a ‘Friends’ for Gen Z?
   The BBC tries to decode this, though rather blandly. You could also argue the question itself misses the point of today’s content consumption scene.

2. Botiquette, baggravation, dickovers.
   draws up a list of terms to help us navigate the frustrations of our “tech hellscape” lives. Or at least, these words might leave us venting slightly more articulately?

3. Remember the Raygun story?
   The gloriously messy Olympics incident of an Aussie break dancer whose inept performance in Paris 2024 brought on shame, smiles, disparagement and indulgence? Netflix did a docu on it, and tells us why its being many things at the same time.

Creators rule the world! Creators have the rough end! Creators are underestimated. Creators are overhyped.

And creators have lots of news this month, so I waded through some of it. Between the increasing recent ‘studiofication’ of Youtube content, new media businesses that are completely unlike and yet so much like the old media upstarts, and the jostling for creators to translate to something outside their own home territories, it seems like the ‘creator economy’ has never been stronger, yet continues to be in flux.

Elsewhere, I give in and vent about Fanta’s new ‘IP’ initiative, chuckle at some apocalyptic humour from Channel 4, and share my gladness from the real world screening of a classic film.

As always, grateful to have The Colour Bar in your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here or if Linkedin is your thing- here.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Creator chaos: A roundup.

2. Curated/Cuts: Apocalypse, now

3. Fanta’s Horror: Really, coca cola?

4. 2026: odyssey: touching grass, or a theatre carpet.

5. ➕ · Kpop vs Demon Hunters · Teen ChatGPT · Spotify’s AI personas ·

1. Creator Chaos

I had written on some developments in the creator world last week, but it didn’t make it through to that dispatch; there were more angles still coming through. For all the love, hype and evangelism around the creator world aka the ‘creator economy’ over the last many years- almost entirely justified, I might add- there has not ever been one way to work in it, with or for creators. There is a lot of nuance in how creator content can work well for the creator, the platform, a brand, and yes- the viewer.

One recurring reality- across geographies- that is both persistently true and consistently underestimated, is how exclusive the creator economy has become. By that I mostly refer to how small a percentage of creators actually make meaningful revenue. The ‘democratisation of content creation’ has been, IMO, the most over-billed aspect of it all. After the initial burst and despite numerous outlier cases of nothing-to-everything case studies, the power residing with platforms remains paramount (or, as we like to say more vaguely, ‘the algorithm’, as if it is some independent autonomous thing). If anything, this has become more pronounced as creators have become media entities or studios in their own right.

That’s some thinking and context before some of the more interesting plays in the scene in the recent weeks.

• YouTube revised the threshold for creators to enter their Partner Program , effectively meaning a higher bar for regular creators before they can hope to start making money. (A channel now needs to hit 8,000 hours watchtime over a year, or 20 million Shorts views in 90 days).

• YouTube also changed the definition of their view metric. Now anytime a video is ‘seen’ for 1sec, it’s counted as a view. Essentially, an impression is a view.
  While there is something to be said about the consistency (that’s how Tiktok & IG Reels are measured), I have never been convinced on the value of these metrics. Even putting aside lofty ideas like meaningful engagement and retention (the things these platforms themselves would actually want), what’s the point of a view when it doesn’t imply anything like a view.
  Peter Kafka has a quick sharp take claiming this is entirely cosmetic and will just help YouTube look bigger.

• Creators are now being told by YouTube to not simultaneously ‘post’ their videos on Netflix. They are trying to work out a window of exclusivity, but also suggesting creators who do share the content stand to lose out on revenue. Lucas Shaw had the inside story and many have taken it up since. It feels a bit like, after years of enabling a free-to-upload, UGC model, YouTube is now kinda competing for its own creators.

More than half of all creators now earn less than $15,000 a year from their content, according to Influencer Marketing Hub’s own earnings report. Brands worked out that they could pay 40 nano-creators the price of one mid-tier professional and call it ‘authenticity’ at scale, so nano and micro accounts vacuum up almost half of US creator spend, per eMarketer.

• Elsewhere, my LinkedIn algo seemed to work, in a way. Two such posts popped up exactly together, both talking about different challenges in the creator economy.
  Mark Ritson announced that “the ass has fallen out of the creator economy”, while Rhea Arora’s piece in The Nod traces the travails of Indian creators- from exploding influencer numbers to shrinking money pools and exploitative clients. “Money is scant and slow for anyone looking to make it as an influencer.“
  These are not new themes. It has been a few years now that we see both data and stories about the millions of creators hoping for lucrative careers, but only a tiny group, the top few, end up raking it in

There’s a Sisyphean vibe to India’s creator economy, and now that there are more creators than brands know what to do with, creators themselves circle the waters like sharks.

Also , Twitch shared that all streamers are now auto- enrolled into their content being used for training Amazon’s LLMs. Their CEO said, both accurately and tellingly, “if it was opt-in, nobody would opt-in”. That was either assuredly self-aware, or unwittingly honest.
All together now, if you don’t pay for the product, you are….

*For more on the YouTube moves, head over to Jim’s newsletter for a longer take; as always, everything creator resides there.

2. Curated/Cuts: Amusing Apocalypse

UK’s Channel 4 has a new reality show. Apocalypse launches soon and 4Creative released three droll spots that show us, probably, how badly prepared humans of our time are for the end of the world. Especially if they are polite, proper British/English/UK-ian folk.

I’d say it’sa pretty good effort to tease (yet another) reality show, gloomily called Apocalypse, in a fun way.

Director: Florence Poppy Deary · DOP Jarin Blaschke ·
PRODUCTION: Biscuit Filmworks · Emily Atterton · Hanna Bayatti
ECD: David Wigglesworth · Miketta Lane · Sofie Saietz Bergstrand · Simone Weilborg ·
VFX Electric Theatre Collective · Sound 750mph ·

3. Fanta’s Horror

I don’t usually get too cynical here, and generally stay away from slagging stuff off too much, there’s enough of that going round. So I am sorry if this comes across as such, but Fanta’s recent launch of a ‘Haunted Universe’ left me cold, baffled and even a trifle despondent.

What is it?
Fanta Haunted Universe is an “original entertainment world built for a new generation of Halloween fans”, and in literally the same breath it is also “the beginning of a brand-new entertainment universe, built for a new generation of horror fans.”
But it is also a self-described “Original Cinematic Universe” , and “Entertainment Franchise”.

What’s getting to me?
For one, when the brand and its teams/cheerleaders themselves use such hyperbole, and top it off with phrases like, “where storytelling meets creative technology, and brands stop borrowing culture and start building it” and “from collaborating within culture to creating it,” it seems contrived. A kid living a fever dream (not in a good way).
Let the idea and creative do that talking, no? Then, claiming that “By developing original characters, stories, and immersive experiences, we’re building a platform that can grow alongside the brand and its fans for years to come,” it feels like the internal brief has become external comms.

The other thing- the visual storytelling and ‘character reveals’ are pretty uninspiring, and most of the spot feels derivative. I won’t deny- the very obvious gen-AI feel to it all doesn’t help me, but even accepting it, I struggle with the fact that they believed this output did justice to a grand ambition of creating a cinematic universe. Feels more like Coca Cola just (continuing to) ride the AI bandwagon, and jumping onto the ‘brands create culture’ train too.

There's "more to come" and I will keep half en eye out for it, not with bated breath but in some sliver of hope that I read this all wrong to start with.

(I will say, I found the cans/in-store artwork pretty striking, which I saw before all this).

Rant over.

So to finish today, it felt right to share something that, shall we say, lifted me more…

4. 2001: a 2026 odyssey

There is much talk and many efforts about creating real tangible experiences in our age of digital gratification. Indeed, ‘experiences’ has become a bit of a tired cliche. So I was happy to be part of one which stood out. Because it was good (or maybe I just don’t get out much!)

I’ve wondered aloud for many years now why in an age of digital distribution we don’t see more iconic films brought back for new and old audiences. Well, here we have it.

Stanley Kubrick’s 58 year old masterpiece came back to Singapore for a precious three screenings. I watched the last one on Sunday night and it was a joy to be at a real-world thing in this ‘content consumption’ landscape of ours (which I am as much a part of as the next puppy).

Did I hear you say, ‘so what- it’s just a movie, in a theatre’?
Well, “I’m afraid I can’t agree with you, Dave.”

Because for one, it’s not just any theatre– this is one with a rich past, a heritage it holds onto dearly. Capitol is our city’s oldest theatre after all.(And oh, not just any ol’ movie either!)

The small touches from Capitol to make it feel a bit unique, a bit old school, a bit thoughtful. And that little exhibition of precious, decades-old posters for the film, courtesy of Singapore poster collector Shane Koh. He also was on stage adding context- important for a film from 1968. Made a difference for both those discovering and revisiting a cult film like this.

Like me, you might presume a certain kind of audience here, given the film and the limited ticket availability. It was a delight then, to find myself amidst a very wide span of ages and profiles. Testimony to the stature of the film, undoubtedly- but also a great reminder of how we can be brought together in the most unlikely and happy of ways.

* Capitol Singapore started this ‘Classics At Capitol’ program earlier this year, curated by Ben Slater, and though it’s the first I’ve been able to attend, I have viewed it with charm from afar. Such a great venue I once came close to partnering with.
Sergio Leone is up next!

➕Quick Hits

1. Spotify has announced an ‘AI Persona’ label it will give to accounts of AI generated ‘music creators’. And those tracks will not be included in playlists. This is very promising.

2. OpenAI announced ChatGPT For Teens. With safety and guardrails and a study module. I expect to talk about this at some point.

3. A 25 year old an American Christian metal band is suing Netflix– it’s ‘Demon Hunter’ vs Kpop Demon Hunters. They have shared how one fan spent $500 on tickets to their show only to rock up with their child expecting a Kpop Demon Hunters gig.

I also write about the grey area that is ‘digital ownership’- we don’t really own the movies we buy off online services- this was sparked by a Lord Of The Rings fan who one fine recent day found he didn’t have the movies he had once bought.

Plus, a visit to VHS store with a twist and the question- are comfortable jeans are sexy? Are sexy jeans comfortable?

As always, grateful to have The Colour Bar in your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here , or get The Colour Bar in your inbox.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Bought but not owned: A lease is not a sale.

2. Curated/Cuts: Blissclub Jeans + VHS-Tok.

3. MTV Roots: Glimpse the start of wild broadcast.

4. ➕ · Korean content in India · ChatGPT for teens · Mega K-Pop festival ·

1. Bought but not owned

So you’re a movie buff. You bought the extended version of Lord Of The Rings a few years ago (the film, not the book). You wake one evening with a burning desire to revisit your favourite film. Lo! It’s not on that digital shelf anymore. Surely there’s been some error. Clear cache? Log out and log back in? Reboot?

Alas, it is gone for real. The service who sold it to you says they don’t have it anymore.

But I bought it. From you.
Yes but we dont have it anymore.
That’s fine, sorry for your loss- but I bought it, so I should have mine.
Not quite how it works, we’re afraid.
Not quite how what works- the idea of selling & buying?

If this sounds a bit absurd, that’s only because it is.
Absurd, but all too real. This happened with a user who had purchased the LOTR trilogy on Google and woke one day recently to find it gone- no way of getting it, no refund either.

At some level, I have a vague understanding how their ‘deal’ with the rights owners for certain films might expire. But that is trumped by my bafflement at how you can purport to sell something that you don’t actually own? And how can we be expected to buy something that will eventually not be available to us? That’s just a long term lease. If I buy access to a movie, I expect to own access to the movie, not have it conditional to the whims of license renewals or corporation rethinks.

Come on, surely, how is this acceptable?

It’s a great chance for the champions of physical media to jump out from behind their sagging IKEA shelves of DVDs, Blu Rays, Vinyls and books. And indeed they have. The physical media proponents have become more vocal in recent months & years, as the fickle nature of streaming services and the allure of real, tangible things becomes more of a thing. A topic for another day.

Reactions included hundreds of comments with many many versions of, “If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t theft.”

A few days later, amidst the backlash, Google apologised to the customer and lobbed him £20 in credits. They then said that it was a technical issue; though he couldn’t access the bundle, he still had the license to view the films. It’s still not quite sorted, as “the customer says all three YouTube links still tell him he needs to pay for the films”, but hey- something.

* This is of course not the first time such a thing has happened, and it happens all the time though it doesn’t make it less unpalatable. Remember when Amazon remotely deleted- of all books, 1984- from people’s Kindle because they’d not got the license after all? (I don’t remember either I was too young. Right.)

2. Curated/Cuts

· VHS-Tok ·

A 90s video shop. Browsing the shelves. The indecision.

Charmingly nostalgic?
Not quite.

This spot transmogrifies into a commentary on modern childhood, meant to “rally families and policymakers around children’s smartphone and social media use”/

Director: David Dearlove · Prod: Arts & Sciences · Client: Smartphone Free Childhood · Black Kite Studios

· Fun With Jeans ·

Do you find jeans uncomfortable? Have you ever? Or do you now?
Have a look at “The Fabulous Lives Of Hot Girls In Jeans” which hopes to remind us ‘comfort is sexy’.

CD Shikha Gupta · Footloose Films · Indrasish Mukerjee · Kedhhar ·
Blissclub: Viswanathan V · Arusha Mohan · Minu Margeret ·

3. MTV Roots

“Ladies and gentlemen, rock & roll.”

This month back in 1981 , the iconic MTV journey began. Iconic, and influential. Everyone (almost) will have their own MTV stories- some overlapping , others obscurely, quirkily , weirdly unique- much like MTV itself.

I watched it, my eyes were opened by it (and its honorable rival cousin Channel [v] in India/Asia), I worked for it, I worked at it… much can be said.

One of the MTV signatures that so many people I have met (and countless online) always recall? The MTV IDs or idents. I’ve heard this from creatives, suits, people older than me, younger than me, clients, partners, graduates…

Recently, MOMA in New York opened an exhibition entitled, It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection, “spanning more than 100 years of expression and aesthetics, shares the work of more than 35 artists and filmmakers who advanced the medium.” This includes work from many animators who were part of the MTV era.

Fred Seibert was an early MTV creative director, and felt those designers never got their due… but is decidedly not pissed anymore. Both his own story and his anecdotes are really interesting- we can glimpse his and others’ takes on MTV’s place in the medium in a People chat over here.

Here’s one- back then, when Siebert was asked to think of animation, something he knew nothing of, asked ‘What does that mean?” And his boss said,

‘Well, imagine a cow and the cow’s grazing, eating grass or whatever. And all of a sudden a giant ax comes and cuts off its head and it tumbles to the ground. And you see all these veins and the blood spurting out and the cow vomits. And in the vomit is our logo.’

And I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I can do anything.’
And I happily walked out. That’s how I got started in animation.”

I can’t top that!

➕Quick Hits

1. Prime Video in India signed a deal for 100 titles from Korean giant CJ ENM. Hallyu FTW!

2. Fanomenon, a 11 day K-pop festival across two cities for 2027, was announced by the South Korean govt & the biggest labels.

3. OpenAI announced ChatGPT For Teens. Lets talk about this at some point.

A.I. is all around us. Like air, or sunlight, and hot takes, and hopes, and stupidity. Accepting its ubiquity, we are told, is just the simple, sane thing to do. In some respects, I would agree- and there is much to look ahead to with excitement. But of all the nooks of our lives that AI has crept or stormed its way into, some are better off without that insidious reach.

I found some actions and reactions of this kind today, strung together across design and music and communication and voice acting.

1. Fly Away: Flyers that shout the same thing.

2. A Bus-Stop Scrawl: A tiny pushback in Singapore stop.

3. Speak Up: No AI please, we’re singing & speaking.

4. Chat TJB: Something someone to talk to.

5. ➕ · HBO Shorts · Disney x Pods · Myspace murmurs ·

As always, grateful to have The Colour Bar in your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches or if LInkedin is your thing, join the many hundreds subscribed there.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Fly Away

Is anyone else seeing this?
Digital flyers, real flyers, Insta posts, sports camps, calls for submissions, posters, restaurant promos, community events.

They. Are. All. Looking. The. Same.

Clutter! Big flashy letters! Dark contrasty background, bright AI-generated or AI-enhanced images, clutter, lots of text, boxes, bullets, icons, always icons, and oh- clutter.

Look, I get it- things are made easier for people who need the ease. Not everyone has a designer. Not everything is ‘creative expression’. Not everything is art. Sometimes you just need to shout out your point, is all.
I get that.

But this sort of death by AI-flyer-aesthetic can be tiresome for your audience and tire out your brand.

If you have a stall at a fair, you wouldn’t fill it with off-the-shelf cans from the supermarket. If you’re headed for a performance, you wouldn’t press shuffle on an anonymous Spotify playlist and leave it. If you have a lunch promo, you wouldn’t stick a frozen pizza on the table.
But that’s kinda the vibe these flyers convey. As more and more people see more and more of these, what are they taking away when they see your version, just like all the other versions? One more in an assembly line of ‘convenient’ communication.

You/your brand look and feel interchangeable.

“Your graphic tells a story and is the first thing that people see. That gives them the idea of what they’re in store for. If your graphic is fake, what does that say about what you’re trying to broadcast out there?” DJ Ca$h Era from

And I say this also very much as a layperson, not someone working in ‘creative’ or ‘brand or ‘design’. I have seen too many of these in my own social world, my neighbourhood, my family’s life, not just in my ‘work’ explorations.

Of course, it’s not just my little corner of the internet/globe. I only had to prod a search and sure enough, there are many bemoaning, “the scourge of low effort, stylistically indistinguishable AI-generated signs” ^ spreading across both our digital and real lives.

“these look like garbage and make me feel like ur event will be garbage too” ^

“Please just get a marker pen out instead.”
In the European summer, many in UK felt overrun by summer fair flyers that looked all too alike, feeling like the look had “the nation’s bulletin boards in a chokehold of anonymous cutesiness.” In that time of summer sameness, artist and teacher Barry Whitehouse compiled a dozen of these (in the process confusing himself, because they were so similar) making the plea then to just get our markers instead.

It’s gone far enough for some to even look at Comic Sans with some…. affection? The horror! Katie Rosseinsky defeated tone is common, “This plague of drab ads is enough to leave you asking: whatever happened to the noble pursuit of throwing some clip art onto a blank Word document, jazzing up the fonts with a sunset gradient and hoping for the best? At least those efforts had a whiff of human endeavour about them – even if they did tend to rely heavily on Comic Sans.”^

And that typeface! There are some (not entirely satisfying but logical) explorations about how and why these are the same and why is the same ‘font’ picked. It’s pretty much what you would think– AI aggregates, predicts, plays it safe. (More explanations here and here.)

(Feel free to gag on a large crowd sourced collection here)

Alternative music venue Thomas House Bar in Dublin is one of the many establishments to make a stand against AI flyers, banning them from any of the bands playing at the venue. Sample this too from the Stork Club in Oakland, which shouted out NO AI FLYERS on their socials.

A.I. has its place in the world. Like creating meme slop that makes you stupid and rendering your career irrelevant or robocalling your mom once a week and chatting with her in your voice. All important tools brought to us by the scrappy altruistic billionaire overlords that merely want us to live in a future of abundance.

Such pushback, both passive and active, is all over- a sticker company selling rolls of labels reading “CERTIFIED AI BULLSHIT,” as tags for AI-made flyers ; no-AI badges and made by human labels; venues saying No to those who use AI in their work; fans saying they aren’t going to go; student pushback; Singaporean indignance.
Having said that, I still do find most of these coming from far shores. There is less fundamental pushback I have seen in Southeast Asia and South Asia- at least in my circle/feed/algo and the research I did in writing this. Happy to be shown more.

There’s so many reasons to reconsider doing these- aesthetic assault, visual dreariness, brand slush… and this is not even getting into the debate about using AI in the first place. Digital and physical lives blur, our audiences are exposed to so much, lets try to make sure what they see from us is not just more digital dross .

Talking of people pushing back—

2. A Bus Stop Scrawl in SG

A small bus stop. A smaller sign. A tiny rant.

This made me smile- because a random scrawl in the real world doesn’t feel like an echo chamber.

What sentiment we see around AI is shaped by our social media feeds, the contours of our work/workplace, our algorithms, our curiosity and– let’s face it- our worldviews.

You would have– more likely than not– seen murmurs or raging rants pushing back on the indiscriminate use of Gen-AI and LLMs in our every little thing we do (see the flyer story above).

‘Why do we need this?’ ; ‘A solution for a problem that didn’t need solving’ ; ‘Being shoved down our throats’.

Much of it comes from the proliferation of AI slop and the increasing weariness many of us feel, in having to cope with it every day.

There is also a case to be made that this pushback has a meaningful existence in the real world, it’s not just some little intellectual corner of the internet that’s bouncing off each other’s grumpiness.

Seeing this scrawl at a small bus stop at one end of Singapore made me think of that again. Abundance depletes value, even if a thing’s value was questionable to begin with. When it comes to communication, we might find we’re all less accepting of thoughtless, indifferent expression than we can be accused of.

Lets keep the human in human interaction.

3. Speak Up

No AI please, we’re singing & speaking.

The voice end of things in AI doesn’t get the same attention and rah-rah (or bah-bah!) that video or writing does. This is not surprising– voice is generally often underestimated in the creative process.

We have all heard AI narrations and voice overs by now, in fact for quite some time- that ad on Spotify, the explainer video on your refresher course, the scam caller, the customer rep, that spot on Youtube, the interruption in your podcast. Some are sophisticated enough to be nearly indistinguishable from a human voice, others still sound pointedly robotic.

In that, these two nuggets from India I found interesting.

Rashmeet Kaur is a singer-songwriter with a pretty eclectic career thus far, and pretty wide-ranging success. She recently spoke about an incident that, shall we say, gave her pause. Or as she says, inimitably, “bro– how’d you do that?”

One day she rocks up to the studio, and hears a song playing. It’s a new song, sung by her– except she had never sung it. It’s AI-generated, of course, and she’s pretty taken by how close it sounds to her. But it turns out the song was generated by the agency/prod team– used as a ’pitch’ for the client to approve working with the artist.
Rashmeet is head-shakingly in disagreement with this, the very basic assumption that it’s cool to simply replicate a voice, just because they can. She also narrates a funny (not funny) bit with the recording engineer, which you can listen to here.

Elsewhere, voice actor Tanya Nambiar shared a story of how her clients now frequently ask for a video showing her recording the script, just so they could be sure it was a real human doing it, and not some AI service.
Weird? Yeah. Mildly dystopian? Sure. Also vaguely positive? I say yes, because it shows there are clients who still give s**t and don’t want a computer-generated voice to narrate their story.

I agree, Tanya- this is a strange time to be alive.

Come on people, keep at it- prove your humanity!

“It’s actually not cool to use somebody’s voice which they have worked on for years. They have spent all their lives to create that, to reach that particular vocal or that tone or texture.” Rashmeet Kaur

4. Chat TJB

And if all this AI interaction, content and debate really tires you, you might like to hear about Chat TJB. A billboard popped up in San Francisco promoting a chat interface “powered by AI*” where the * informed us it was an ‘Average Individual’. That’s right, just one bloke.

An artist who once worked at Google, Tucker Bryant just started this as an art project. Not so much anti-AI, as commentary on how people are believing AI chatbots freely and indiscriminately (what’s been called ‘cognitive surrender’). A slow start gave way to a flurry of requests, and Tucker found himself fielding over a thousand prompts a day!

Some interesting nuggets about this effort here and here.

➕Quick Hits

1. HBO’s testing Shorts, an in-app feed. Clips are from shows already in the catalog. An “in-house AI tool scans thousands of hours of content, flags moments it predicts will grab attention and passes that shortlist to human editors who decide what runs.” If you like something, click through and watch the episode right away, or save it for later.

2. Disney announced a deal with iHeart to bring podcasts to their streaming platform. This will include the Jonas brothers’ show.

3. A stray comment has led to a series of little headlines about the potential return of MySpace, the social media platform from the Y2K era, something a few fans might be keen on.

If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one?
And please support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it.

Till next week, go make a flyer… or something.

David Bowie looked into the future back in 1972 in the iconic ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. Jamiroquai predicted a technological messy world in 1996 on his track ‘Virtual Insanity’. Charlie XCX predicts… well, not much actually, in her 2026 song ‘Camera’.

But they all land up in this week’s dispatch.
Doubt they could have predicted that.

As always, grateful to have The Colour Bar in your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches, or over on Linkedin, if that’s your thing.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Off Camera: The future is for everyone. Especially Meta.

2. On Camera: Charlie XCX feels the feelings in a one-shot video.

3. In Camera: Beefeater brings Jamirioquai’s Insanity back.

4. ➕ · One Disney · No AI on Charts · Title Nominees ·

1. Off Camera: The Future Is for Everyone.

Even David Bowie?

It’s the ‘summer’ of 2026. Why has David Bowie entered the conversation?
A simple answer would be- he never left. Creative, visionary, saw things others couldn’t, did things others dared not, all-round icon variety.

His kind are always here, sometimes hovering, sometimes smacking their feet on the table and demanding to be heard. This week though, he enters our consciousness courtesy the Zuck and his team.

Say, what?

Meta, like all the other philanthropic tech behemoths of our time, are all-in on AI. Unlike some others though, they now want to shape a different narrative, maybe occupy a different place in the AI discourse, in the new inevitable world being shaped by our soon-to-be-sentient overlords.
That place is one of optimism, warmth and humanity.

No, really- Mark said so. And they made a little video too.

So here we have it, this is a company that has been part of most/all of our lives for many a year- joyously, cutely, weirdly, insidiously, entertainingly, devastatingly. It now wants to restate its take on the future, and make sure we come along for the ride. Smiling.

“Some people will have you believe AI will have us less connected, will leave you behind. We couldn’t disagree more.” With that, the spot careens off a ledge of positivity, with a montage of happy people, sunshine, children, smiles and tech. And creators, of course.

This stance on AI comes amidst swirling AI scepticism, sure- but much of that is not about being less connected. It is about surveillance, privacy, copyrights, bias, ethics, the environment and unchecked power.

So this also feels like them taking an opportunity to improve Meta’s brand perception, in laypeople (customers!) who are increasingly conscious of the harms that social media and big tech have dealt to society at large. Yet, between the creeping (and creepy) unease with the Meta glasses, the mess with Muse video generation, the internal shenanigans, this dose of optimism and belief in the good of humanity can be a hard pill to swallow.

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Just as we’ve always done, we’re betting on people.” This has really struggled to ring through with many, given all the ups, downs, oddities and missteps Meta has been through both internally and externally- and given that their bet on people is, essentially, on advertising.

It’s talking to Silicon Valley and its investors, trying to reassure them that the vast amount of money being thrown at this isn’t all for naught. What it’s really saying is this: We’re betting that the public will eventually come around. _Fault Tolerant

Erm, but David?

Despite all that, maybe the most interestingly dissonant bit about the spot?

Its song choice. David Bowie’s ‘5 Years’ plays behind this dryly optimistic voice over, urging us to be positive about the future… except this is a song about the end of the world.

It literally is reacting to the news of an apocalyptic end to earth and humanity in five years. Sure, you could choose to not bother about the intricacies of a song from more than fifty years ago, but hey- a message about warmth, optimism and real human connection loses any fizz it might have had, when you realise all that warm human effort seems to have picked a song for just one line that repeats the word ‘people’ a lot.

BUT- there is always a but. Meta’s take (yes, they chose to wade in and defend this) was that Bowie himself meant the song to leave us “having optimism for the future.”. Just to get the entire context, I had to go look up his interview (Bowie’s, not the Meta spokesperson’s). Here’s what he said,

“I would strive to use that position to promote some feeling of optimism in the future, which might seem very hypocritical related to ‘Five Years’. There the whole thing was to try and get a mocking angle at the future. If I can mock something and deride it, one isn’t so scared of it. People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism.”

Make of that what you will.

Jeremy D. Larson of Pitchfork wasn’t ambiguous. “Hearing Bowie’s work used for AI just feels especially and specifically nonconsensual,” he said.

Internet punters don’t care much for it all- the song mismatch, or the general theme.
Prof G called Meta “the last people to be talking about the upside of AI.”
Ad Age called it ‘defiant’.
Techbrew finds it hard to believe the company is “betting on people”, saying Meta’s AI optimism comes “with a huge asterisk.”
questions who it’s really for (spoiler: investors).
Other kind terms I have seen include gaffe, ironic, awkward and facepalm.

To be sure, this is not the first spot (or movie or TV show or random IG reel) that has used a song out of its original context, so there is that too.

If this optimism is too much, you could always go back and watch Claude’s weirdly bleak spot from a few months ago,’ There’s Hope In Hard Questions’, where they might have taken the idea of ‘embracing your sector’s challenges’ a little too… literally?

You might find this Meta effort meh, or woeful, or wonderful- but if nothing else, take it as a sign to go listen to (discover? rediscover?) Ziggy Stardust? That would make me optimistic.

2. On Camera: Charlie XCX

I love oners- single uninterrupted camera shots that come with some mix of clever scripting, nifty movement, live set movements and usually some serendipitous goodness.

This one is fun.

‘Camera’ is a track from Charlie XCX’s latest album, and they’ve set this on what feels like a movie’s climax scene. The inimitable Vincent Cassel brings his expectedly compelling presence- a clearly grumpy, possibly preoccupied and devastatingly pissed-off star… about to be shot dead.

An uncut scene, portraying the fragility of all those moving parts coupled with the intensity a performer brings and how reliant it can be on everything and everyone else.
“When the camera is on, it makes me feel….
Makes me feel… feel the things I don’t normally feel.”

For what it’s worth, I think he was better in the first take where the blood doesn’t burst!

Only thing- it was too short! That’s me being a greedy viewer, I suppose- just felt unfulfilled at not even getting to see the ‘final take’.

But I guess that’s what pop songs are these days - 150seconds long short.

Director: Aidan Zamiri · DOP: Stuart Winecoff · Steadicam: Derek Walker ·
Production: Object & Animal · EP: Morgan Clement · Producer: Jacob Swan Hyam ·

3. In Camera: Jamiroquai

Remember Jamiroquai?
That depends on your vintage, where and when you grew up, what you watched and listened to… wait, that’s way too many parameters. But you’re likely familiar, if for nothing else than a pretty memorable music video back in the 90s where this odd-hatted man with oddly cool movements seems to glide about on a moving floor.

That MV for ‘Virtual Insanity’ won a bucket of awards, and spawned imitations and inspirations and spoofs. And oh, the floor wasn’t moving at all, that entire room was on wheels, so the ‘walls moved’.

“We thought the 30th anniversary of Virtual Insanity was the perfect moment to finally set Jay Kay free from that little white room,”

Now, 30 years later, we kinda know what Jamiroquai was reaching for, off cam- a glass of zero-alcohol gin!

Beefeater orchestrated his ‘freedom’ to promote their 0.0 drink. This time- the floor does move! In fact, the production team built nine practical sets (and found more hats) so ‘Jay Kay’ really does go beyond. They also want to point out that the production eschewed AI & CGI, instead “relying on in-camera choreography, set design and performance.”
It’s a fun (and well executed) riff on something three decades old, and I suppose it works for the TG that’s very much from Jamiroquai-land.

*Confession- I never really took to the video or the song back then, something about it just…. irritated me. So I would flip channels, and there was no Youtube to go check it out more ‘academically’, if one were so inclined. But years later I did acknowledge it was a cool little video with some very smart moves.

Directed by Julien & Quentin · Production Magna Studios · Producer John Bannister ·
· Agency Lucky Generals · CCO Tad Greenough ·

➕Quick Hits

1. The new-ish Disney CEO has been pushing the concept of ‘One Disney’- it is for not just kids and superheroes but adults and sports too. This is less alien to those of us in Asia (no sports though!), but it will take some doing to have it seen as a universal destination, especially in the US.

2. Major record labels have called for AI songs to be disqualified from Global Charts. They’d like only ‘primarily human made’ songs, and any AI-generated tracks included only if the AI use is authorized, lawful, with no issues around fraud or chart manipulation.

3. Here’s a tasty look at all the Emmy nominated Titles. I love titles.

   ---

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I flit around a few brand promises this week- a crafted history of Suede from Puma, Under Armour’s chaotic hotel, The Economists’s take on AI, and Bose properly entering the content scene.

But first there is an epic-looking production from a Dutch animator that harks to skeletons, Stalin and resurrection. It seems like a staggering effort, and as with so much in our time, there are little voices questioning it too.

Hi again- thanks for letting The Colour Bar into your feed, or you inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches here , or get The Colour Bar in your inbox.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. A Macabre Dance: A short film 11 years in the making.

2. Bose: Another brand with content ambitions. Legit?

3. Curated/Cuts: Puma x A$AP Rocky, Under Armour, The Economist.

4. ➕ · Peacock x Youtube · The Hundred · Music Influencers · Iceland Air ·

1. Danse Macabre

A recent animated short film saw the coming together of 75 oil paintings, over 30 artists, and 4 countries.

Knowing that and watching the trailer might well make you pause, to consider and admire the craft behind Danse Macabre. For some, it also coughed up questions around AI.

“Every day I was listening to the music, coming up with images that were inspired by the music, and then developing my ideas for the film.”

Hisko Hulsing has been working on this for around 11 years, and it all started with music and was utterly born from it- specifically, Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony.

His vision- at least in the trailer- is quite something to behold. A sense of the epic combines with dramatic scale and action. It is a film about chaos, death and fascism, as the symbolism immediately shouts; a march toward light that descends into chaos, the maker says.

“I didn’t have a script. The storyboard was the script.”

Long before the main production- years before, in fact- Hulsing was creating these large oil paintings that would form the striking world of Danse Macabre, eventually serving as backgrounds in the film. It was clearly a “tremendous undertaking required before other artists and animators ever got their hands on it.”

There has been some curiosity/chatter/displeasure that there is some level of AI used. Hulsing himself refers to it in the BTS, using the term Machine Learning, describing how they trained Stable Diffusion with hundreds of his own paintings. He even dove into that reddit forum to share his production flow.

About a year ago, he spoke with Asifa’s Stefan Stratil about his journey from animator to director for the likes of Netflix & Disney. They too touched upon his (then ongoing) production of ‘Resurrection’, which would later be renamed Danse Macabre.

Six years ago, we used projection mapping to make the 3D skeletons look like they were painted. But now we’re using Stable Diffusion, an AI program to stylize the skeletons. We fed Stable Diffusion with all my paintings to train it. The animation is completely done by animators using Blender, the 3D animation software. Then we use all the information from the 3D animation, the crypto map, the depth map, the line-renders to control Stable Diffusion to make it look like it’s painted by me.

Stefan : Well, you could let the AI do the last 20 paintings.

No way. No. And that’s the thing, you can generate paintings, but what I have seen looks horrible. We only use it to make the 3D animation look like I painted it. But the background is a different, a really different story.

Essentially, AI tool Stable Diffusion was used, but trained entirely on his own paintings. (There is something to dig into, that the tool’s underlying abilities are still trained via questionable methods.)

The doubt (and subsequent reactions) about potential use of AI in this short are representative of how the creative community (and fans) are developing sceptical eyes - for everything. Yes, it could be said that laypeople and ‘consumers’ won’t care (as much)... but methinks that’s a right proper argument, not a given.

The thing is- such ‘workflow’ use starts to fall in a grey area, and in an age of black and whites, polarising views, choosing sides, the greys tend to suffer. Because they need the most effort to understand and grapple with.

Either way, that’s still a short I’d like to watch.

2. Bose: another brand does content

Bose announced the launch of Bose Studios, a content initiative. An early big ticket announcement is an original documentary series being developed with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.

Brands entering content has, of course, become more common, it almost feels like there is some FOMO attached to it. But there being a genuine fit is much less common- and their success is wildly variable. This one though, feels about right on the face of it- its easy to argue that Bose has more of a ‘right’ to create entertainment and become part of “the rituals” we all have around music.

Bose has been giving content a go- I recall Turn The Dial, based on the sound premise of increasing the number of producers of all genders—not just men; which for some reason seems to have been very short-lived. But here we have a more coherent and ambitious proposition.

They have made the right noises- “”This isn’t product placement; this isn’t a long, 30-minute commercial,” the CMO has said.

They also announced a record label, to enable lesser known or ‘underappreciated’ artists to be discovered. A music label from a brand brings some narrowed eyes, questioning both intent and likelihood of success. Bose doesn’t want to own the music though, and they do transparently say that this will give them license-free music for marketing.

As with much in branded content, announcements like these come with some scepticism. But hey - we live in a time when a shoe company rebooted (pun intended) to become an AI company, so there’s that.

Talking of- Marriot Bonvoy recently sponsored content out of Coachella; ‘Arrival’ incudes a short follow-doc on girl group Katseye and their first performance at the festival. Fairly subtle brand integration, in their effort to “infuse its ethos of creating lasting memories.”

3. Curated/Cuts

· Suede Forever ·

Firstly, I only just learned that A$AP Rocky has been Puma’s ‘Creative Director’ for about three years now. I stumbled on this after watching this time-scrubbing homage.

It’s a nice little journey of the Puma ‘94 Suede in history, from 1948 through to the 90s. It feels authentic , lived, brought to life without too much unnecessary drama, with multiple visual and craft aesthetics thrown in for the eras.

The line “some people wear brands, some people become ‘em” stuck with me. It works for A$AP Rocky, but for us commoners it might feel like ‘I become the brand I wear’, which is… less appealing?

Cute ending, too!

· Chaos at Hotel Armoure ·

Under Armour figured ‘Rest Less’ should be the theme of the summer, conjuring an imaginary hotel where football stars (and others) show up and usher in chaos for everyone else. With incredible timing, Ferran Torres stars- he of World Cup final goal scorer fame- chilling in a pool of ice.

If anything, it feels a tad rushed, though their socials do give a slightly better glimpse into these VIPs : Ferran Torres , Ollie Watkins, Riles

White Lotus in 30sec, much?

Agency Mox

· An Economist 2-for-1 ·

Came for a counter-AI campaign by The Economist, stayed for their curious rebrand.

Their recent campaign builds their take on ‘cognitive surrender’, questioning how AI might affect the way we think, and “the growing tendency for people to accept AI-generated answers without applying their own critical thinking.”

The Drum mentions an interesting backstory. “It began as a series of speculative ads created by one Ant”; the Economist then commissioned Ant and his agency Cocogun.

In case you’re wondering what the black square is (someone said ‘dead pixel’!), Yafet Bisrat was kind enough to point us in the right direction- it lies at the heart of a 2025 rebrand done by Nomad. “The ufinish ends every article. Now it punctuates marketing headlines, frames key ideas and guides audiences across every marketing touchpoint.”

How does that work for you?

3. take: Peacock on YouTube

Peacock and Youtube announced a partnership in the US, whereby the streaming service will be available as a bundle with Youtube Premium in 2027. Such bundles are not uncommon in recent years as streamers in particular look for any avenue to boost subs. This one is a bit more interesting, and you can count on to tell us why (highlight mine).

…it seems unlikely YouTube is paying Peacock anywhere near its retail economics—probably no more than $2-3 wholesale. Peacock currently generates about $8 in subscription fees and $5 in ad revenue monthly. Why would it incur the cannibalization risk to sub fees? It’s a bet on advertising (and lower marketing costs and churn) making up the difference.

With the AI-powered content deluge upon us, with the likelihood that “content goes from profit center to cost center,” he feels the burden will fall on advertising to make the economics work.

It’s an idea he wrote more on here on The Mediator.

➕Quick Hits

1. Tom Novak talks of​​ a “shift from algorithmic curation to commercially engineered culture”, as he shares an NPR piece about music influencers who are paid to talk about songs, often without disclosing the deal.

2. Bursts of colour, and a happy fresh feel for this year’s titles for The Hundred.

3. Remember when Iceland Air was looking for a really bad photographer?
   Well, they finally found their hallowed choice last month, and young Blanche has just completed her road trip around Iceland. Her masterpieces will be revealed soon.

I have some juicy visual goodness too, from the BBC and Spotify.

Hello again, and thanks for having The Colour Bar in your inbox, or feed, or both.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Netflix Things: How much is it prepared to change?

2. Curated/Cut: What use is the Beeb anyway?!

3. Curated/Cuts: Spotify Reserved for fans, and a fine closing montage.

4. ➕ · Youtube viewing in Japan · AI biographies · Jiostar’s ecomm ideas · Suno’s hack ·

1. Netflix Things

Many a Netflix thing has flitted in & out of my mind the last couple of months. Here’s a little hop-skip around them.

* Netflix once wanted to be HBO. Then it kinda became HBO (some will debate this). Today, it is decidedly not HBO^{^}.

Take away the HBO literality ; I think Netflix does not occupy the premium space the way it did a few years ago. This is not a slip in standard, it is intentional. There is a distinct move to more ‘massy’ titles, more ‘female-focussed’ content, and fewer high brow, award-chasing series. While complaints abound about it becoming more like ‘broadcastTV’, It can be argued this approach has been, all told, a good thing for them. In gathering engagement, they want members to think (and most users do feel) that “I’ll find something on Netflix.”

But ‘something’ could also slowly become ‘anything’?
Which brings us to some new content on the platform, because:

* At another end of the spectrum, Netflix has just acquired short form content, ranging from 2-3min to 20+min . This is easy viewing from the likes of Conde Nast, People and Buzz Feed- lifestyle, celebrities, some how-tos.

This comes in the wake of significantly ramped-up efforts at working with creators like Ms Rachel and Mark Grober (creators =Youtube creators). Which in turn brings us to:

* The narrative everyone loves right now- Netflix and Youtube are the real competitors and one keeps the other up at night. This is both (a) true at some fundamental level, and (b) not as meaningful at a practical level- unless Netflix makes it.

It is true in the same way Reed Hastings once said Netflix competes with sleep, or Fortnite. All media companies want to command our free / entertainment/ information time, slip into every crack in our attention. It is also true because Youtube is the clear leader in the wider ‘content’ space, and across devices; Netflix is pretty much the clear leader in subscription streaming, or just ‘TV’. They are at the very least adjacent, and sometimes overlapping.

It is not as relevant when trying to lure eyeballs from Youtube to Netflix- especially those whose viewing is passive (music! background pods!) or educational (DIY!!). Which prompts the idea that Netflix wants to become more ‘on in the background’, much like traditional daytime TV used to be. See above short content to support this view.

“These partnerships help us deepen fandom and create more ways for members to carry those stories with them throughout their day.” _John Derderian, Netflix VP on the recent ‘digital’ shorts.

The comparison is also less apt when comparing the feed-based/ serendipitous nature of Youtube consumption versus the curated, controlled Netflix offering. Which brings us neatly to what is being done:

• The renewed chatter around Netflix looking to set up linear TV channel style feeds on the platform.

• The take that doubling down on the ad tier will be the way to regain growth/investor faith, which has faded despite some decent Q2 results. Ads + this content experiment are the closest it is to trying to ‘do a Youtube’.

• The continuing questions around what exactly they are trying to achieve with podcasts.

• The data that some of the creator content is doing well- Ms Rachel was #9 on Netflix’s 2026 charts and top of their kid content.

A lot of this sounds less like Netflix wanting to be Youtube, more like them wanting to be Netflix with an added Youtube flavour. A bit like having their cake and eating it too, though I am yet to meet someone who procures a cake without some intention of it being eaten. The new short form stuff is framed as a way to “watch some of your favorite videos from around the Internet without having to leave Netflix to find them.“ Sounds exactly like luring eyeballs from Youtube.

Yet, that appears the most well-rounded game, if indeed that game is being played. I think Netflix trying to transform into something it has never been, is to potentially slip into a sea of sameness. And if there is one one thing Netflix has been, it is assured of who/what it is. It must continue to compete on its own terms.

There’s a difference between killing time and spending time. So we’re in the… how you spend time business.” _Ted Sarandos in 2025 throwing shade to Youtube.

But this approach does come with the classic ‘quantity vs quality’ tussle. You can’t really gun for both, yet separating them and having each bucket work in different ways is quite the tough- and tasty- nut to crack. Which brings me to:

* Integration: What I think will be very interesting is how they actually start to integrate these offerings onto the platform. The podcasts have just…been there. I would love to see how they leverage a thus-far industry leading UI, to now shape my viewing habits in a different way. They have been so good (some feel less so now) at leading me down a carousel- but with short form, disposable content and podcasts they must not just curate my taste, but manage my time, let me sink into a couch of always-on comfort.

* Binge It! A tangential but related point is my long-held belief that Netflix has clung on to its binge model too strictly, for too long. They have had some exceptions, but those have not only proven the rule, but also given a glimpse of how staggered episode releases offer the chance for prolonged engagement, buzz and chatter. With tighter content spends and our odd world of less premium content and way too much content, I do think that the idea of extending shelf-life shouldn’t be ignored. The unequivocal value of the ‘yay, we can binge-watch!” excitement is a thing of the past, IMHO.

^{^} Apple is closer to HBO now, though its low volume, lack of penetration and unfathomable promotion does not help.

Some other takes:
- Lucas Shaw feels this whole Youtube thing can be called a “battle over creators’.
- Over at the Vulture they even want to question if there is panic at the disco Netflix, given it has been some time since they have had a real breakout hit.
- Podcasts on Netflix- some earlier takes.
- Samir of ‘Colin & Samir’ is happy to even call it a ‘Youtubification of Netflix’, wondering with Colin Rosenblum (also of ‘Colin & Samir’), if Netflix will head to UGC next. Now that would surprise me. A lot. A LOT.

2. Curated/Cuts

What Has the BBC Ever Done For Me?

This spot dropped in the World Cup Final half time in the UK (does it get bigger in terms of placement?). With a sceptical Romesh Ranganathan in tow, the BBC embarks on an ambitious, grand, nostalgic, slightly cheeky, supremely confident ode to its very existence. Romesh’s persistent prodding takes us on a whirlwind of BBC content, achievements, and yes- contributions.

I don’t live in the UK, but the prickly debate around the TV license and BBC’s ‘worth’ has been swirlingly familiar for years now. “Why should we have to pay a licence! Let them figure their own business model! If its so good, let people choose to pay for it!”

Of course, the institution’s place in (their) culture is more than these reductive questions. So I reckon it’s pretty fine how the BBC chose to take it all head-on, and have some fun with it.

“This Is Our BBC” is directed by Dougal Wilson- you have most likely seen his wonderful works, say the ‘Superhumans’ spot for Ch 4 / Paralympics, or the Jon Lewis spots, and last year’s superb oner ‘School’s Back’.

BBC: Director of Creative Justin Bairamian · ECD Dave Monk · Writers Paul Bailey · Russell Hendrie ·
DOP Joost Van Gelder · Production: Blink · EP Paul Weston · Editor Joe Guest · VFX Untold ·

Full credits here.

* I was also reminded that it is a callout itself to the John Cleese spot from the 80s- this is a grander, more musical version but the idea is much the same- What Has The BBC Ever Given Us?

Reserved for Fans

Some time back, Spotify announced a program for super fans to access Live concerts. They have now dropped a wonderfully animated spot for Spotify Reserved, imagining the extremes that real fans would go to, just to get concert tickets.

“Every single frame is drawn by hand”

The visualisation and animation is great to watch, though is it me or is the voice work pretty ordinary?

If you’re curious (or sceptical) of how the Reserved programme actually works, head over here for Spotify’s own guide. There is some inevitable spiel, and it’s not all transparent (how could it be), and no I don’t see Spotify really getting me’ even after all these years…. but this is a cool idea nonetheless.

Spotify: Marie Ronn Group CD · Jeremy Wirth
Remembers Studio · Animator Jocelyn Charles ·
Music by Citizen Music

End Montage FTW

Sports series/tournament closing montages can be so so good if given the love, and it’s disappointing when they aren’t. But here’s a pretty fine one from the BBC and Alex Ewing + Dominic Robson Smith

3. Youtube in Japan

AMPD Analytics published the first behavioural read on YouTube in Japan. Some key insights:
- Japan watched 2.8 billion hours of YouTube in a single month. Significantly, this means one single platform accounts for more than 65% of all digital VOD viewing in the country.
- Wide viewership: 72 million monthly viewers, watching on average 38.5 hours each, split almost evenly by gender. spanning every age band- 18M viewers aged 10–29, 13M aged 60+.
- Long-form remains the leader, accounting for 70% of all hours watched.

ampd analytics promise to roll out similar data on Southeast Asia shortly, which I will be most keen to see. I expect some similar shapes, but also different specifics, and likely a different story for the premium tier.

➕Quick Hits

1. A journalist found her biography on Amazon and stumbled onto the world of AI generated biographies churned out for ‘easy money’. Yay, AI is democratising… something?

2. Indian steamer JioStar wants to tap conversational AI for shopping on the app, or “content commerce.”

3. AI music generator Suno was hacked. 404 Media saw the source code; the company has scraped YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius- decades worth of music from the internet. Just gen AI doing gen AI stuff- nothing of note to see here, then.

Till next week, go watch some Netflix. Or Youtube. Or Youtube on Netflix. Or something.

I spent time letting two spots swirl in my head the last couple of days. And much of this dispatch stems from that.

There are questions aplenty circling around Rick Rubin and non-gambling gambling platforms. Come, wonder with me.
And there is the furious and fiery short from India with women behind, in front and all around the camera, the story, the narrative.

Also, some takes on A24 and Enhanced games- with some nuns thrown in for fun!

You can get every missive here on Substack, or over on Linkedin, if that’s your jam.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Eloquence of Prediction: Questions are everything, what is this?

2. Curated/Cut: Stare: powerful intensity from two Indian brands.

3. Takes: Enhanced games? A24 and Google? What say you.

4. ➕ with · nuns on pods · Tidal on AI · Singapore’s animation pride ·

And oh- TCB will be away next week, don’t go calling the cops.

1. The eloquence of prediction

Here is a good-looking, profound-sounding, important-feeling spot.

Directed by Gabriel Moses, we have eight-time Grammy winner, genius musical producer and now very visible creative guru to the world bookending the spot, as he narrates what sound like significant questions of our time.

Indeed, “Questions Are Everything”, we are told.

Questions like, “What borders will matter in 100 years? Do aliens exist? Will tradition evolve? Can the youth lead a nation? Can you predict the future? Do elections matter? Will we be divided? Do you believe in anything?”

But the existential queries start with football hooks, because it’s FIFA World Cup time, and all messaging must be passed through that filter. “Can the US win it all? Will France return to glory?”

Getting into the spirit, I had some questions of my own. I will also answer some (Rick didn’t), but as per the vibe, most shall remain rhetorical.

What is this ad for? Polymarket.
Great. Erm, what is Polymarket? It is an online ‘prediction market’, a thing that’s become a thing in recent months or a year or two. You have a take, a guess, a hunch? Stake money behind your opinion and stand to win. Or lose.
So, betting? It is essentially a stock market for predictions. Instead of buying shares in companies, you buy shares in the outcome of future events. So no, clearly not gambling at all.
What? Yeah, if you don’t live in the US, large parts of the world won’t know what this is, and wouldn’t have heard of this great new not-gambling trend.
Who are these people? Besides Rubin, the spot features rapper Future and Mexican singer Peso Plumas, and many other anonymously important global people.
What is this ad? This is a borderline rhetorical question, because clearly this ad does not need to be questioned, even though, of course, questions are everything.

Polymarket wants to inhabit a space that makes the brand seem intellectually stimulating, a lofty space about truth, uncertainty, knowledge and the future. Almost like they wish to be a ‘cultural brand’, if that’s a thing.

termed this spot ‘Nikeslop’, saying “unlike the glory days of Nike or Apple manifestos, it says almost nothing.”

But now, back to some more questions- sans answers.

Why is Rick Rubin doing this ad?
How is gambling a way of life?
What about the high heels?
Do you know a Spaniard who cares about the ‘football vs soccer’ debate?
Is it a skill to elevate words without elevating their meaning?
Did you feel swept up by the poetryness poeticism of it all?
Did you know poetryness is not a word?
Do you like to gamble? Did you know it’s not gambling to have an opinion?
What percentage of world cup watchers will pause to see and hear Rick Rubin?
What is Rick Rubin doing?
Why?

· Directed by Gabriel Moses · Better Half · Four Four Ent ·

• Look, I might come across as disparaging the spot, but I am not sure that’s it. It is finely made, its vibe could well be the kind I myself would have made in times gone by (and kinda have- on opinions too- way, way back). Heck, I would like to do a spot like that now too. So, well done to the production teams (and against a crazy deadline too, I hear). It’s the wider frame that leaves me sceptical, the use of a faux-philosophical feel that (in my humble view) doesn’t hold up to deeper scrutiny. The fact that it is for a slightly questionable product, sigh, doesn’t help.

• Many commenters have felt a kind of sadness seeing Rick Rubin sell a gambling platform, and find it all head-shakingly incongruous. The other leading prediction market is Kalshi; they did a spot with a certain Chalamet a while back. It similarly said nothing about the product, was a bit surreal or lateral, and had a similar “no Timotheee, not you too!” reception.

• Predictive markets are engulfed in debate around gambling and targeting young people with the promise of easy money. Both platforms have been accused of deceptive (even outright false) marketing efforts. And more here ($).

• Vaguely relatedly, Rick Rubin is speaking with Jay Z in an 8 part docu on HBO coming later this year.

• Also relatedly, it is said Meta explored acquiring Kalshi. Because, Meta.

2. Curated/Cut - Staring

Stop. Stare. Watch this.

Very bold, very wild, a bit weird, a lot of power, some mystique, plenty of fearless expression.

But what is it?

Is it another spot, like Polymarket’s, where the vibe is primary and the product incidental? Maybe, but unlike that spot, once you know what this is for, it falls into place much better.

This is made for a jewellery line. And its not intended to feel like an ‘ad’.

Nor Black Nor White (NBNW) is a young Indian fashion brand started by two friends raised in Toronto, returning to Bombay to dig deeper into their roots- “to respect the past is to respect the process and the people who carry it forward”. You might have seen their striking partnership with Nike last year featuring Indian women cricketers.
Bhavya Ramesh is a jewellery maker, “a silverware brand, fostering love & oneness “.

They have come together to a self-described exploration of feminine extremes and the power of the mystical, ”Reflecting on the softness in rage, strength in vulnerability and the beauty in acceptance.”

The result is STARE. A line born from the collaboration of three creative minds, three women and their shared perspectives.

“Diving into the ideas of how we deal with an unwanted gaze, what measures we take to protect ourselves and honour the feminine experience of it all.”

The film comes from the fiery mind of director Bijoy Shetty (you might know him from the killer Hanumankind music videos). Inspiration seems to come from myriad places, like the nazar battu, Kerala, chudails (?), even this viral staring lady.

The short feels like a spectacle, its intensity burning through every frame, leaving you wondering what exactly that was, why it made you feel that way, and why you aren’t watching it a second time.

And yes, the ‘product’ is very much alive through most of the film. There is craft, flair, style- but there is also intent, substance, power. In a very intense piece, the jewellery shines. It is as much about the mood and the suggestions of elemental power, as the specific artefacts.

· Brown Crew Productions · DoP Abhinay Kumar · Editor Meran ·

An aside. I did pause to think- did the fact that I knew beforehand this was made for jewellery change how I viewed it? I think, yes. I was likely drawn to the specifics in each visual a bit more than I expect I would have on a ‘regular’ viewing.

This is, of course, true of so much of our digital viewing, where the most exquisitely crafted or cleverly hidden or twist-ridden pieces lose some of that ‘a-ha!’ element, because we already know what we are being served up.

You can read more about the line here.

3. Takes

Enhancing what?

“Boring as f**k with washed up athletes and Nickelodeon announcers.”

One of many takes on the Enhanced Games, which concluded a few weeks ago.

For some reason I decided to look up some reactions. I was careful not to spend too much time on it though, because… well, because though it is a fascinating sign of our times, I don’t really consider it worth more than a little attention.

What are these games, you may well ask.
The Enhanced Games aka the Steroid Olympics is a multi-sport event that permits athletes to use performance-enhancing substances under medical supervision. Founded by Australian businessman Aron D’Souza (who once said, ““This is the route towards eternal life.”), its aim is to “push the boundaries of human performance.”

Or, as preferred, ”more like the top of a sales-funnel for steroids masquerading as sport… [the] long game is to sell peptides and other drugs to the person watching at home.”

Another Redditor said it “felt like the AI version of an athletic event.” And though someone offered some concessions, “Imagine if they had 100 top athletes. Gotta start somewhere,” I am happy to continue my apathy for it. Steve’s post on “Schmexcellence” (something that has the veneer of excellence, with no substance underneath) is worth reading, where he described it as

a tech-bro fever dream where arrogance was prioritized over any actual knowledge of performance.

Indie darling to the dark side?

A24 has entered into an AI deal with Google. You likely saw the headline or tweet. Google is investing $75m into A24 for a combined research project, “to learn, iterate, and build, having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows.” Many have had much to say about this. Is it the inevitable stamp of a new era, or the fall of a great indie brand? Many felt that a studio built on the culture of taste and craft was selling out to big tech.

The Ankler called it an “odd-couple pairing,” reckoning this was “Google borrowing A24’s credibility to make its own AI ambitions seem cooler”.
Indiewire’s piece lays out the rationale, “The most credible argument in independent film, that taste and creative authority are a distribution strategy, is now a research asset.” The piece has an undercurrent of betrayal, saying “it’s a little stunning to see A24 spend years fiercely protecting its ‘how’ and then selling it to the highest bidder.”

For their part, A24 will want to maintain their artist-friendly profile, framing this with “We’d rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines.”

➕Quick Hits

1. Singaporean Ervin Han (of Robot Media Playground) has lived with his film for over ten years. ‘The Violinist’ just won the Annecy Cristal, a brilliant achievement; Variety spoke to Ervin and co-director Raúl Garcia about it.

2. Music streamer Tidal released a new policy around AI music on the platform, aiming to protect artists. Among the steps, 100% AI-generated tracks will have AI ‘badges’ and no royalties, and listeners will be able to filter all 100% AI-generated content out- well done.

3. A podcast with nuns is doing quite well! ‘Dominican Sisters Open Mic’, is apparently endearing and wholesome, with insights into the daily life of a nun. A Tiktoker called it ‘Like a sorority for Jesus.’

AI is enabling a certain kind of cinematic storytelling- I am not talking today about Fruit Island or Tiktok AI quickies. I found myself writing many words about how it’s doing this, and wondering what effect it could have on a generation of creative expression. Of course, this came off the back of watching some mildly captivating short films.

But there’s some hand-crafted animated goodness as well this week, so kick back and let some cool visuals and interesting takes wash over you (or is that interesting visuals and cool takes?). Because this is where creativity, entertainment, and tech collide.

You can get every missive here on Substack, or over on Linkedin, if that’s your jam.

Thanks,
Shakey

1. Goblins & Humans: Where is AI taking cinematic storytelling?

2. Curated/Cuts: Animated goodness with Loewe and FIFA.

3. A Poisoned Chalice: Refusing AI for journalism?

4. ➕ · Shapely Levi’s · Crayonish Camelbaks · Resolute govts ·

1. Goblins & Humans

Where AI is taking cinematic storytelling.

Stories can be told in so many ways, that is part of the beauty of creative expression. Each individual will have their own way or bringing a story to life. Their expression will be shaped by a thousand different elements and experiences. The narrative will be shaped in ways that can be inspired, referenced, wholly original to their consciousness or- mostly- some amalgamation of all of these.

The medium is instructive, in how storytelling can come together. One of the most fascinating, rewarding, humbling aspects of much of the creative work with video- short, long, very short- that I have done over the years? The collaboration, without a shadow of doubt. Seeing a seed grow into a sapling with different water and soil and light. Seeing an idea blossom as it is touched by writer, director, actor, editor, designer, musician.

I sometimes wonder what is to happen to that village of creativity, as so many around me drift toward the powerful allure of generative AI. One powerfully creative mind, with a fine grasp on the tools and services at our disposal, can create (generate) a version of their story, their idea, their seed. Their ability with these tools is enhanced by the happenstance of the technology. With an actor, a musician, an art director, a DoP that kind of additive layer can be classified as a ‘Je ne sais quoi’- something inexplicable, indescribable, intentful that they specifically bring to the process. What the tool and its technology brings is also unclassifiable, mercurial even, yet dissimilar- it is absent intent. It adds to the creator’s vision through a chance collision of bits and bites.

I have found myself at the inception of a new thing where there are no rules. _Zak London

As the actual output from some of the more crafted, hard working, ambitious gen AI projects gets better every month, the gaps narrow. (I am setting these aside from demos and social media hype clips that promise apocalypse or new dawns). These are the kind of projects where there is a strong, distinct germ of vision, almost always from one individual. (The space is also dominated by sci-fi and fantasy, allowing for the ‘unreal’ to work better). As more such projects start to appear, the gap both narrows and becomes more particular. Tell-tale hallucinations, errors, poor renders- these will be brushed aside in time.
What remains? One vision and its generative friends.

Pinning down the gaps, or ‘what’s missing’ will becomes less obvious, more intangible. Much like real creative work review and editorial judgement has always been. I find myself looking at promising, alluring ideas, depicted in increasingly assured, solid ways… and at the same time I find myself missing the eyes of a human actor. Quite literally.

This was most evident to me recently in The Patchwright, a successful short from Gossip Goblin. I am reluctant to sweep this into a bucket of easily generated AI shorts, and it clearly has resonated with many viewers - besides the 12m views, have a browse through the comments. The cyberpunk imagery is striking, of that there is little doubt; the plot and flow less so. Director/Founder Zak London says they “adapt to the limits of AI acting.”
Then, there is The Chronicles of Bone, where a solo creative- Kavan the Kid- has been supported by AI platform Magnific (formerly Freepik) to launch a fantasy series that draws upon available IP characters like King Arthur and Peter Pan and Robin Hood (and vampires, because why not). The world building is promising, the writing stilted, the character acting amateurish, even in comparison to Patchmaker. Note, I take these two as examples, and don’t mean a direct comparison is necessarily meaningful here. Both though, look to build ‘IP’ with shorts, character intros, ‘prologues’, and then longer pieces of about ~20min.

Cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve. _Martin Scorsese

I am prepared- in the interest of a creative discussion and with a nod to a rising inevitability of it all- to set aside for a time the more fundamental debates around provenance, copyright and ownership.

Even with those conveniently ignored, I can’t help but feel that what the human aspect brings can be so easily, glibly, carelessly sidelined by such technology. As a new generation of creative minds is shaped, grows up, learns, I wonder if we stand to lose what their imagination and expression could bring. I say lose, because it is that formative creative growth could be funneled into something more derivative, less collaborative, missing the same level of emotional intent. Again- and crucially- not from the sole individual, but from the missing collaborators.
Of course, Gossip Goblin describes that “every story is imagined, written, and directed by humans”, AI is only their ‘force multiplier’. This too, is a recurring theme.

“If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would.” _Kane Parsons

This piece on Zack London and Gossip Goblin is worth reading for a window into that world, even if you don’t play in it just yet, or consume it. Their output is meta-relevant insofar as “the quandary of what it means to be human in a world of ever more powerful technology” is a recurring theme.
Relatedly, veteran French director Mathieu Kassovit was ‘stunned’ to see one of these cybernetic actors with “an emotion in his eyes that made me shiver”.
He also feels, “Fuck copyright,” so there’s that.

Besides making the effort to watch some of the more successful / striking generative AI pieces out there, the other little nudge to this piece came from Kane Parsons, the young director of Backrooms. Clearly in a different corner of the creative internet, the 20 year old self-made Youtube filmmaker’s recent take on AI can essentially be summed up as- thanks but no thanks.

“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” he said, “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”

2. Curated/Cuts

Animated goodness.

· Loewe ·

“Craft as an art, imagination as a tool.”

Founded in 1846 in Madrid as a small leather workshop, Loewe is the second-oldest luxury fashion house in the world. For their 180th anniversary, they crafted a hand-painted labour of love.

From Blinkink, and directed by Isabel Garrett, every frame was crafted by hand, with a team of 10 painters across 2000+ sheets of watercolour paper. BTS stuff here.

· FIFA World Cup branding ·

How can we not visit some aspect of the FIFA World Cup? These animations for different venues, done by Buck Studios, are smooth, vibrant, clever and generally fun.

3. A Poisoned Chalice

Last week I wrote about Objections, the AI-powered platform claiming to being truth and accountability to journalism, which many feel is just a way of actually cowering down investigative reporting.
Present day challenges to journalism arent of course limited to platforms challenging their authenticity, but generative AI actively enabling ‘easier reporting’.

Easy can mean better, sure but equally, and often, quite the opposite. Particularly when it comes to speed trumping depth.

I recently read a piece by titled “Refusing to accept an AI-poisoned future of journalism”. It is a powerful piece which relates both to that story on Objection, as well as some thoughts similar to Kane Parsons’ shared above in the AI filmmaking essay - more is not always more; having fewer resources is not carté blanche to take short cuts.

Marisa feels that journalism comes with purpose, and the pride accompanying the desire to fulfil it. “The process is the purpose. You don’t have to always like or enjoy the process, but if you don’t respect it enough to do it yourself, there is no purpose.”

One Katarina Brau’s comment brought back some fascinating Isaac Asimov words. In an early story, in 1957, the master wrote about a robot that proofreads ‘galleys’ (the final version of a book to be proofread). In it he wrote:

“‘Your robot takes over the galleys. Soon it, or other robots, would take over the original writing, the searching of the sources, the checking and cross-checking of passages, perhaps even the deduction of conclusions. What would that leave the scholar? One thing only – the barren decisions concerning what orders to give the robot next!”

➕Quick Hits

1. Levi’s covered its logo in the Levi’s stadium because FIFA said it must. But it still had ‘a win’. But they hid it creatively- the bat-shaped polygon was wrapped in white, making it as or more recognisable, just by the shape. People enjoyed how it drew even more attention to the Levi’s logo.

2. The UK government is the latest to announce that social media will be banned- for those under 16, starting early 2027- saying it would “go further” than other countries. Low down here and reactions here.

3. Crayola (crayons people!) and Camelbak (water bottle people!) joined forces to drop some very cool looking happy bottles. “Inspired by creativity and the spirit of the outdoors,” they might have thrilled more adults than children!

Because this is where creativity, entertainment, media and tech collide, and you can get every missive here on Substack, or over on Linkedin, if that’s your jam.

Thanks,
Shakey

1. If Serif: On serifs & AI.

2. Giant Missteps: Oh Manchester, what have you done.

3. Curated/Cut: Apple comes for the Clingers.

4. Objectively Objecting: AI, our custodian of truth!

5. ➕ · Scorsese’s AI · Murdoch’s Vox · Lacoste’s serif ·

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.

1. If Serif

I have always enjoyed playing with fonts. Maybe it goes back to my dabbles with calligraphy in younger days, occasional stabs at it in older days, even a type-design course once. I tsk tsk at default font choices, frown at careless multiple fonting in documents, and pause to look at fonts that I like or dislike… or, erm, make me pause.

A general, non-nuanced distinction between serifs and non-serifs goes along the lines of- Serifs stand for the formal, the more literary, even authoritative, they ‘have character’; sans serifs are modern, clean, better at communicating.

But maybe the distinction has been made most in the last two-three decades, going back even to the 90s. As screens took over our reading lives, serifs suffered. Originally this might have been driven by serif fonts’ lower clarity on monitors with lower pixel counts. As websites, then apps and social media became primary funnels, sans serif fonts became the accepted norm for digital, particularly UI/UX but liberally across logos, brand identities and advertising too. Wrapped in other themes like minimalist, bold type, flat design, the majority of digital design became dominated by sans serif fonts.

I have presented title design or brand identity proposals that spouted this very need to belong to a ‘modern, digital’ look and feel. (I mostly stand by those!). But at some point in the last six-eight years, I started to tire of sans serif being ‘a given’, a default. Serifs started populating our feeds more, sometimes driven by hipster/indie/small business vibes, at other times riding on the back of retro/nostalgic themes.

This is not an academic analysis, but paints a little trajectory I have noticed and my own personal likes. I write The Colour Bar largely in sans serif, but soon after launching it moved to serif font headers; I publish Coffee & Conversations largely in serif, probably falling on the literary/eclectic trope for those writings.

All this to say that I wholeheartedly see the influence, importance and irrationality around fonts. Now, with the ever-present spectre of generative AI and vibe coding, fonts are played with in a different way, allowing for AI models to draw on known clichés or perspectives, and use them in ways that can seem clever to some… or sneaky to others.

As said last year on her substack post which I enjoyed but lost to to the ether, “It’s not that difficult to discern why AI-native companies in particular are being drawn to serif fonts: AI is inherently cold and without opinion. Serifs add visual interest and warmth. It signals “we’re AI! but real humans use (and made) our product! we swear!”

Then Wired’s gone and done a piece called ‘AI Has Come for Serif Fonts’, in which they say, “AI companies are using serifs to project humanity. Critics are calling it ‘tasteslop’.” There is an interesting case John Semley makes for this, citing a general trend for AI startups to minimise their tech-overlord connotations and bolster their human, friendly, assistant vibes.

Most apparently, you might think of Claude (serifs) vs ChatGPT (sans serif). Do you find one more personable, trustworthy than the other? Or are you firmly in the “fonts don’t matter” camp?

2. Giant Missteps

Teams in the Hundred, England’s franchise cricket jamboree, are releasing their new kits. The team from Manchester has new ownership, and is now the Manchester Super Giants. Their kit drop came in a video spot with the lofty message of uniting Manchester, bringing together the blue and red divide.

Say what you may about the message, or indeed the kit itself. LIke it or hate it. But most of the reaction I have seen is about something else.

The fact that the spot is, so obviously AI generated…. wait for it… slop.

It is an easy target for those who have more fundamental issues with visuals created by generative AI. But even if you’re happy to put aside such macro issues- the ethics, the impact etc etc; looking at it merely as another spot from an exciting sports team in a thrilling tournament… it is bafflingly poor. In fact, most gen AI evangelists should especially rail on this spot, because this is exactly the kind of apathetic creative output that confirms the effect so many of us fear - gen AI is democratising mediocrity, not creativity.

The list of missteps here is a long one, and right now I won’t look past floodlights in day time, opponents in whites, a bowler bowling without a ball, batting gloves for a wicketkeeper and just the kind of stilted, chopped up flow we have grown accustomed to seeing in such videos.

It boggles the mind how multiple people involved in something like this all felt it was good to go. Unfortunately, it reeks of the blind belief in the efficiency and benefits of AI that pervades all walks of work in 2026. Do it because it’s quick. Do it because it’s ok. Do it because it’s cheap. Do it because everyone else is, and gosh, we’re all so smart for using it.

So yeah, I may not have set out to skewer this spot, much as it deserves to be; it is the growing ecosystem it represents that leaves me shaking my head every week.

3. Curated/Cuts- Clingers

Apple is back with another privacy campaign, with its reliable route of personifying data tracking. Striking visual device- silver-suited people atop shoulders-tick ‘; suitably helpless internet users, tick; cool apple user making them all go ‘poof’, tick.

It might seem ‘a bit on the nose’ to some, but it’s pretty consistent with how they have tried to position Safari and their privacy chops. Not so long ago, Flock brought us creepy camera-birds, and a few years ago the Trackers were literally people following. Admittedly, the vocalised “Chrome!” reference is a bit jarring.

It’s being called sinister, creepy, funny, massy and un-subtle.
Please, choose your judgement.

Credits: TBWA\Media Arts Lab · SMUGGLER · Director Ivan Zachairas · House of Parliament · TRAFIK · WORK USA ·

4. Objectively Objecting

You can have the truth, please pay here.

Facts and truth seem to be at a premium in our information age. Reams are written about the incongruence of a time when so much is at our fingertips and so little is reliable. The trust deficit with traditional media; the battling embrace/ backlash around AI; the instinctive, sometimes disproportionate faith in individuals; the accompanying disappointment with institutions.
Questions abound around truth and how to ensure it is not obfuscated.

At such a time, please meet an AI-powered platform that claims to usher in accountability. How? By being a pay to play platform where journalism can be challenged- in theory by anyone- its credentials investigated and adjudicated by a jury of LLMs. Yes, that’s right- a panel of your friendly neighbourhood chatbots will find a report and its writer ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty’ of peddling untruths.

Hear it from them:

If I had no context, I would have thought this satire. A spoof piece from SNL, or a Youtube skit- the cheesy VO, the hyped up script, the (un?)shockingly poor visuals that serve as a launch video for a new product. But in fact, all those tell a story of their own.

“it’s the same as [X’s] Community Notes. The wisdom of the crowd plus the power of technology to create new methods of truth-telling.” _Aron D’Souza, founder.

There are many concerns around this- another tool for the privileged to protect their reputations, will paint all anonymous sources as unreliable, its dangers for whistleblowers, the irony of error-prone LLMs judging facts. Peter Thiel’s involvement has only fuelled these. The founder, Aron D’Souza, is known amongst many things as a key figure in bringing down celebrity news site The Gawker, and founder of the Enhanced Games (quite simply, Olympics + drugs).

at Techcrunch says, “his solution presents a lose-lose for journalists: either divulge sensitive source information to Objection’s “cryptographic hash” that determines “if it’s high quality reporting,” or face demerits for protecting sources who share important information at great personal risk.” She also quotes defamation lawyer Chris Mattei much less polite take- “seems like a high-tech protection racket for the rich and powerful.” ^{^}

John Mac Ghlionn writes that “Objection poses as a truth-seeker. But at bottom, it is a reputation protector for wealthy companies and individuals — a weapon to add to their arsenal of defamation attorneys, communications firms, and friendly political contacts.” ^{^}

But. Objection is pausing. If you head over to their website, you see this incredibly clear and reassuring message.

That’s pretty clear, right? But I thought I’d ask for it to be decoded by some of their friends.

ChatGPT had a lot to say, including, “Reading between the lines- the wording is quite unusual and somewhat intellectualized…. It’s essentially a shutdown/reboot notice dressed in the language of information science and AI culture.”
While Claude felt, “The notable thing is that it’s the sole message- no logo, no product description, no timeline. That’s either confident minimalism, or they’re in early enough trouble that they don’t have much else to say yet.”

Harriet Williamson says the platform has told Novara Media that “it’s being rebuilt and relaunched with “significant retooling” after customer feedback” ; she also has a good video story, including the wider context for journalism.

➕Quick Hits

1. A survey carried out by Lacoste in 2023 revealed that while the majority of respondents instantly recognised the brand, many were unaware that the brand is French. Cue the return of the Serif!

2. Martin Scorsese has become an advisor on an AI software for pre-vis & storyboarding. Some say this means “Martin Scorsese is betting on AI”, while others are a bit surprised/disappointed that the generally traditionalist legend has crossed over.

3. James Murdoch has bought New York Magazine and maybe more crucially the Vox Media Network, i.e. podcasts.

Don’t be a lurker.

Thanks,
Shakey

1. Sacred cows: Australian sport, cricket, and crossroads.

2. The Horror: May movie musings.

3. Eat Your Words: A take on the AI’s messaging issues

4. Fake It, Don’t Break It: Virtual assistants shaping Linkedin

5. ➕ · Wicked wickets · Spotify’s AI tool · Top50 Asian brands ·

1. Sacred cows, mate.

“For the first time in its modern history, Australian sport is fully exposed to outside forces it doesn’t control.”

I have always viewed Australian sport from afar and yet, felt it oddly familiar. The primary reason for this is predictable- cricket. It has fostered a faux-understanding and connect with Aussie sporting culture that is further boosted by the Australian Open, the presence of Aussie athletes in most sports, their outsized success, and their widely accepted image amongst many non-Aussies (especially Asians?) as a nation that “just has sports in their blood.”

As a cricket tragic, I also share the uncomfortable space of having plenty of cricket at my fingertips, yet not enough of the kind I enjoy the most. (Nation vs Nation Test matches, if you must know). It is easy to find many who both like the T20 format yet adore the Test format more, we lament the very apparent threats to the oldest shape of the game, while enjoying the buzz of the newest. Individual fans might find some personal stability in grappling with these two, but the sport itself is far from finding such balance. In fact, it has been viewing the impending inevitability of a reckoning with some trepidation, and a generous dose of plain. Even naive hope.

So, I read this piece in SVG by Callum McCarthy with some interest. He makes the case that cricket in Australia- not uniquely- faces a bit of a reckoning. For a great sport that enjoys a passionate following yet has lost money every season since 2018-19, (A$11m in 2024-25 despite revenue growth), difficult decisions knock on the door, harder by the week. More specifically, the recent vote to not privatise the BBL teams (to most likely Indian investors), does not seem like one that can stand for very long.

These kinds of existential threats are entirely new to an Australian ecosystem that has never had to worry about the outside world. Domestic TV and sponsorship revenues have been growing consistently ever since the 1970s and its sports media has always been Aussie-owned in one way or another.

2. Oh, the Horror!

You might not know about the two biggest movies in the US in the last couple of weeks… or you more likely absolutely have heard about Obsession and Backrooms. Both come from the generally reliable cheap-horror format, but that’s not the story here. Both also come from young directors who have made their name and learnt their craft as Youtubers. I mean, Kyle Parsons who helmed Backrooms is 19, the youngest director ever to top the box office. When the producers first spoke to him on a Zoom call a couple of years ago, they had to go through his parents- he was just 16 then.

While creators have built businesses and followings online on their own, that doesn’t mean they don’t need any help. If you want to make a hit movie or release a No. 1 record, it helps to get support from people who’ve done it before.

The two themes most popular for commenters are predictable- ‘cinema is not dead’, and ‘Youtube eats Hollywood’. Both have truths and both can be overblown. The promising aspect definitely is that this is the best May for the industry since 2019, and spread across more titles than one Marvel blockbuster.

The other interesting aspect in my mind is how the success of such ‘Youtubers’ comes when there is proper collaboration with movie people who have done it before. Success is, after all, more than only creative vision or knowing your Youtube audience. Backroom was produced by Atomic Monster, the production company from James Wan, the creator of The Conjuring franchise, and co-creator of Saw and Insidious franchises. A legitimate horror maven. Financing came from the likes of Peter Chernin- no Youtube kid. Obsession saw producer Jason Blum and Blumhouse (horror masters) enter the story late in the game to help market and land the film.

So while for much of the last decade or more, establishment Hollywood and Youtube creators have struggled to figure out what to do with each other, the successes will come with the other, not despite.

More here & here.

3. Eat your words

Say what the thing does. Describe what it changes. Let people draw their own conclusions about the stakes. Sadly, that is too normal a stance, too practical.

I don’t analyse the markets, and this is not a business newsletter by a long stretch. But I have views. They could probably be encapsulated in something along the lines of, ‘Why (and how) is everything purely fuelled by shareholder value that need not translate to any greater impact, nor be concerned with externalities?’ Probably no place is this more apparent to me than in AI, where the hype cycle that we thought we had gotten used to from SIlicon Valley, has outdone itself.

I read after a long time, actually. In ‘Eat Your Words’, he speaks of ”AI’s self-inflicted messaging crisis”. That opening quote above seems all too common sense, and all too unlikely to ever be the way things actually move.

Oh also- George from Seinfeld makes the most unexpected and amusing appearance.

Normal does not get funded. Measured does not get an $850 billion valuation. Sober does not land on the cover of every magazine in the world simultaneously.

The whole industry is caught in this loop now. You need the fear to justify the funding. You need the funding to build the thing. The thing then justifies more fear. Try telling the story in plain, simple language. $850 billion is going to shrink faster than George Costanza’s prospects when coming out of an icy cold pool.

4. Fake it, don’t break it

“It’s all AI comments by fake people answered with fake replies by other fake people.”

For all of us who feel like some of the posts and interaction on Linkedin seems hollow, have a read on Rest of World about the “self-sustaining industry of humans and bots generating an illusion of engagement.”

You know it, or you should. There are some ‘leadership lessons’ or ‘life experience’ posts that you just know are engagement first, personal meaning second. If you get that sinking feeling that the person you follow didn’t write that, its pretty possible they actually didn’t. Because “for $7 an hour, virtual assistants use AI tools to write LinkedIn posts and comments on behalf of Western executives.”

Sure, the piece by Michael Beltran suggests both the platform as well as the individual might be looking to move away from enabling these ‘virtual assistants’ who generate both posts and content for their thought-leadering clients. Whether that happens remains to be seen.
But even that is not likely to stop the already everyday occurrence of real people using AI-generated comments to express their ‘engaged’ selves.
It’s the deluge some of us trawl through every day.

I am not holding my breath on real thoughts dominating here.

➕Quick Hits

1. The ICC has (along with SKY) collaborated with Wicked for the opening of the Women’s T20 World Cup. “Wicked to wicket action”, they said.

2. Spotify and Universal Music Group have an agreement; Spotify will launch an AI-powered tool, for paying fans to create licensed covers and remixes. It is “grounded in consent, credit, and compensation”, a clarification it is unfortunate has to be explicitly stated in these times.

3. There was a Top 50 brands of Asia list, as voted by 2million customers. Shoppee topped it, but ‘digital’ brands like IG and Spotify made it on for the first time. Yay?

But I thought I would do a version of ‘Shots from The Colour Bar’ which I started doing on Linkedin last week as a post.
’Shots’, ‘Bar’, quickly shared tidbits. Geddit?
I know, genius.

Cheers,
Shakey

But first a couple of goodies to watch

Curated/Cuts

· Four Letters ·

Four letter words have a bad image. All thanks to one errant member. But, cool is also a four letter word.

YETI dropped ‘Four Letters’ - this great piece with the kind of of punchy, rhythmic, powerful copy + text vibes that made that old promo producer in me quite joyful.

Alex Maleski shared it on LInkedin with a post entirely mae up of four letter words. Nice.
· Wieden + Kennedy · Cartel · TRAFIK · Pariah VFX · Field Day Sound ·

· Change Drivers ·

The team at Studio Birthplace made this striking little piece as part of the Change Drivers series. Simple content, elevated visuals.

This was with restaurateur and food waste pioneer Douglas McMaster., founder of the world’s first zero-waste restaurant, Silo London.
“Douglas reminds us that waste is not natural; it’s a human thing. And if we designed our systems more like nature, where nothing is thrown away, we could transform one of the most harmful systems on our planet.”

Shots

1. Students in the US booed Eric Schimdit when his commencement speech spoke of AI. Elsewhere, students booed another speaker who dared touch on AI. I guess young people being anti-AI really is a thing!
   But also, another student cohort walked out of Jaonathan Haidt’s commencement address. Maybe anti-speeches is also a thing?

2. YouTube declared this the YouTube Era’. Ok then, I thought we have been inhabiting the YouTube era for a some time now? No?
   Jim Louderback warned us why such proclamations are dodgy.

3. Spotify changed its logo to shiny disco ball thingy. This was in celebration of our lifetime listening journey (oh, and their 20th anniversary). People moaned and gagged at the retro maximalism of it all. So Spotify said, oh yeah, “glitter isn’t for everyone. We’ll change it back.” But then some people clamoured that it was great, and they wanted it for themselves please! Classic online love/hate.

   

4. France announced its World Cup squad with a video that is meant to feel like an outdated saccharine sweet American sitcom. I guess it works?

5. I was amused by a video debating the value of the phrase ‘I Love You’. The dialogue had vaguely Tarantino feels- meandering, curious, compelling, a bit self-indulgent.
   It was from singer Noga Erez and was meant to tease the drop of their new single called, erm, I Love You. The fact that I didn’t know Noga helped.
   

That’s all folks, too many shots can’t be good for you at this age.

And apparently, who drinks anymore?

Welcome to another collision of creativity, brands and tech. Today I look (again) at clipping, the practice of extracting clips from shows and podcasts to build momentum around them. It has become more and more a sophisticated tool to market and engineer ‘virality’. It has led some to wonder if the clips themselves are the point of it all, and their impact is increasingly also conflated with all shorts in general.

Besides clipping, this week’s scroll sees graphic novel-esque journalism, football nobodies & legends, Tiktok branding and stormy boyhoods.

I write The Colour Bar every week and you can get it over on Linkedin or subscribe on Substack, whichevr is your thing. And it would mean a lot to share what you like, please!

Thanks,
Shakey

1. Clipping: The things that promote the thing are now the thing?

2. trAPPed: web comic x journalism

3. Curated/Cuts: Backyard Legends & Tiktok branding

4. ➕ · Warner Music wants movies · IG wants originality · AI wants music ·

☝🏽 Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.

1. Clipping: new vistas or sunsets?

‘Clipping’ has received plenty of attention in recent months. I wrote about it last year when the clipping farms agencies were starting to get some attention. The term is generally used these days to refer to the posting of video clips from premium shows, comedies, stand-ups and podcasts. They appear seemingly organically, but are increasingly part of a deliberate approach at flooding social feeds with the show’s content. Much of what we see and engage with in our feeds is a byproduct, actually ‘from somewhere else’. Clipping is pretty much its own ecosystem, though impact on actual listenership and audience growth is questionable, and remains debated.

My questions around the approach remain centred around short term numbers versus meaningful consumption of the ‘actual’ content. They definitely can create buzz or virality, and the value of this is not to be discounted. Yet, how much do they drive long form listening or viewing, i.e of the actual product. What do they do to build a brand/persona/IP that actually sustains itself?

Some, like podcaster Ed Elson are starting to make the case that the clips are the content. I am sceptical as to how that is sustainable, nor have I heard any rationale how that helps build an IP.
OpenAI recently (unexpectedly) acquired the podcast TBPN- many feel that the deal value came as much from their viral clips as the show itself (TBPN is a rare one that actually monetises the clips themselves). A reference point was thrown out- a set of TBPN’s ten episodes had 7K live views vs 257k clip views. I would argue that the value of views in each of those groups is really not like for like.

In “The Video Clipping Machine Behind Clavicular’s Viral Fame”, ($) Bloomberg’s Cecilia D’Anastasio looks to paint us a picture of how virality is engineered in today’s content landscape, using ‘looksmaxxing’ poster-child Clavicular’s case as a reference.

I also think much of this gets a bit murky in terminology. Clips, clipping, short clips, short videos, original short form, premium clips. And different commentators coming from different ecosystems and addressing different elements use these loosely.

On that- clips aka clipping can’t and shouldn’t be confused with original short form content. I am unsure why the two are being conflated. (“Hollywood’s clip-feed strategy is dead wrong and these short-form mobile feeds simply recycle long-form content into promotional snippets. Instead of quick clips, streamers need to explore how to tell new stories via vertical microdramas or other emerging narrative formats.” ^ via Jim Louderback).
Or say, in the light of Netflix recently announcing their own ‘Clips’, seemingly an extension of the moments feature they introduced last year. This is very much a funnel for them, not an end in itself.

Each of these short video buckets have their own purpose/place. Original shorts have always been something that creators, brands, publishers can (should, mostly) lean in to build a following around. Storytelling in the service of their IP or product or persona.

As a wise man once told me- do you want to make the thing or the thing that promotes the thing? I disagreed with that line of questioning then, but it is appropriate in this context.
The things that promote the things- i.e. clips, shorts, extracts, ads, are not the point of the endeavour. Surely? If they are, then the ambition should not be a show or podcast at all- you should just be aiming to get clip virality and whatever you make from that.

Related to all of this and wider yet, is this excellent piece from Ryan Broderick. He boldly but gently stakes the claim that “short-form video collapse is clearly just over the horizon.” Read it to trace a take from GIFs and Vine through to all our platforms now and, yes, clipping.

“There was an assumption that carried across Vine, Facebook Watch, TikTok, and Instagram Reels that the economics of scale and attention would eventually make sense. That short-form video would eventually mean something. That either creators would get the chance to “graduate” from short-form video to TV and movies or, at the very least, make something that felt more important. Instead, things have only become stupider and more wasteful, as platforms demand more video content than ever.”

2. trAPPed

A web comic meets investigative journalism?
Creative is not just in advertising, branded content or design. This week I want to share a wonderful example of how journalism and creative storytelling can come together. Bloomberg’s reporting on a digital scam in India was crafted into a graphic novel style narration, and I think it is done so well. It did not feel like a cosmetic layer of art, nor a version of a report. trAPPed felt like its own story, crafted ground up to be what it eventually was, a seamless scroll into the ordeal of a scammed single mum. And that, I think, makes the difference in how it touches the reader.

“an illustrator in Mumbai, an investigative reporter in Delhi, and an investigative reporter in Tokyo—worked together to document and illustrate the psychological ordeal of a scam victim in Lucknow, India.”

It was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.

Art Anand RK · Reporting Suparna Sharma · Natalie Obiko Pearson ·
Lettering Aditya Bidikar · Color by Nisha Singh ·
· Producers Nadja Popovich, Amanda Cox, Ken Armstrong, Flynn McRoberts ·Jui Chakravorty ·

3. Curated/Cuts

· Backyard Legends ·

“Some of us are destined for athletic greatness, some of us are destined to cheer on athletic greatness from a respectful distance ... like yours truly”
That’s one thing Timothee Chalamet and I have in common, then!

It’s entirely possible you have not seen the Adidas football spot that smacked into our consciousness last week. Possible but not probable.

This is World Cup year, and the expectation we all have is to have plenty of entertaining, enjoyable, powerful, fun, surprising advertising. Adidas’s latest is one we will likely be seeing in plenty of year end lists and awards. I first saw the trailer and it was a great little tease. But then the real thing dropped, and smashed it out of the park. Or hit the target. Or landed in the top corner. Kindly insert football metaphor of choice.

Jude Bellingham. Lamine Yamal. Trinity Rodman. Messi. Bad Bunny (because, why not?).

And Chalamet.
[Opera misstep, bye bye. The Timothee is back. Schwep! ]

And oh yes, some other minor characters you might find familiar- David, Zinedine, Alessandro, anyone?

All in the story of trying to beat a legendary undefeated street trio.
I love the storytelling, the pace, the delight. Its the kind that can even touch non-fans. I was already asked by one, “I was captivated… but what happens next?”

We are going to see all kinds of amazing World Cup related ideas. But adidas ain’t messing about with this. Everyone else, the ball is in your court.
I mean your half.
I mean half line.
Or something.

Watch this if you haven’t. Watch it again if you have.
Go on.

PS- have had some animated conversation that the young 90s/2000s version of Zidane, Beckham et al are “AI-generated”. While AI workflows are slowly making their way, my instinct was these are not, simply, ‘genAI’ but de-aging and VFX workflows. My searching has only found it some speculation around AI being used, and described as “cutting-edge CGI and visual effects”. It was done largely by the team at Untold Studios (and their long list of credits doesn’t include any ‘AI artist’ title).

At any rate, the fact that people feel there was no Beckham or Zidane on the shoot and they are entirely AI-generated, is very telling of our times.

· adidas · Lola USA · Smuggler ·
· Director Mark Molloy · DoP: Harry Wheeler ·
VFX: Untold Studios Tomek Zietkiewicz Nicole Duncan, Ange Toner ·
Music & Sound Design: 750mph

· Tiktok Branding ·

Tiktok has a new brand system, though its not the kind of thing that will hit consumer lives too much. Its from the fine folk at Dixon Baxi, who share more on it.

Storms

The last of my Curated/Cuts has to be the explosive new creation from Gener8ion & director Romain Garvas. It is an 8 minute short that serves as a music video for two tracks, and it did far more than make me think, ‘cool music’. You might have seen it appear in your feeds, but it likely was the second half, a brilliant one shot choreography. But I would recommend watching the whole thing, because the arc is so powerful.

Watch it, then read - I put down my thoughts on it as well as more about the people behind it in my substack .

➕Quick Hits

1. Warner Music Group x Paramount Pictures announced a multi-year deal to “develop movies drawing on the lives and music of WMG‘s roster of artists and songwriters.”

2. Instagram is expanding its crackdown on unoriginal content and content aggregators, meaning accounts that regularly repost content they didn’t create. Good explanation here from Lindsey Gamble.

3. I wrote last week (again) about AI music models and the proliferation of gen AI music. Despite the so-called deals Suno and Udio had to make with music labels around copyright and licensing, the enthusiasm around building these is still high- 13 have been released in 2026! Jake Handy is handily tracking all the services here.

This week’s swirl includes a meme from Devil Wears Prada, Rolex meeting puke, AI & music’s ongoing tussle, very odd phone love, and more on everyone in media’s second-favourite ride, the micro-drama train. Hop on!

Thanks,
Shakey

1. Artists, Memes, AI: crafted cheapness, sensing Aesop, vomiting Rolex.

2. Verify The Humans: Spotify, Deezer, AI music & fraud.

3. Curated/Cuts: Phones Love, Transport Love

4. The Micro Train: Some micro breakdowns

5. ➕ · disappearing trends · AI chat groups · ElevenMusic ·

☝🏽 Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above to hear me read this to you.

1. Artists, cheap memes & AI.

· Want Some Lies With That? ·

The Devil Wears Prada 2, aka DWP2 brought the 2006 hit back to cinemas and is doing plenty well. The marketing and social around it too, has been hard to miss- it felt like it was everywhere.
Yet, after the movie’s release, one of the little things that made waves (or some ripples) was in fact a 2-minute snip from the film. It comes from a bit where memes are being made disparaging Miranda, the character played by Meryl Streep. This one meme, appearing amongst a few, felt to many as a hat-tip to AI slop.

In fact, as artist Alexis Franklin shared on her socials, this was made by her and her alone. Additionally, she said that mimicking AI was not really the intent.

“I was not attempting to mimic AI when I painted this. AI studied what we do, of course there are similarities. I was just trying to make a cheap meme, guys. The theories are wrong. 🥲
Absolutely no disrespect to Queen Meryl, but this is something I would’ve painted in my free time, so when they asked me to do this it was nothing but fun. 😈”

Elsewhere, she said she was going for a “cheap, plastic look that reminded me of the photoshopped 2010’s meme aesthetic.”

This is a fine example of how our times will see us all both readily believe AI-fakes, and jump on accusing human creation of being AI generated.

Both sides, at once, confusingly and inevitably.

· Sensing Aesop ·

Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon where the stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers experiences in a second, unrelated sense. Some refer to it as ‘sensory crossovers’- think tasting colors or feeling sounds. People describe it as having “wires crossed” in their brain because it activates two or more senses, when there’s only a reason for one sense to activate. It is not a disease- more a consistent, lifelong sensory blending.

This rare phenomenon has given Irish artist Jack Coulter the ability to perceive sounds and smells as colour. In a sense, he can translate music or scent into pigment.

“If I hear sounds they’re all connected together, that’s when I see very prominent colours. Depicting scent is a very different process.”

Aesop, the Australian cosmetics brand teamed up with Coulter some time ago. Instantly, you might think- that is such an obvious collaboration/ commission! And so it does, in hindsight.

Aesop presented the work as hues of their perfume Above Us, Steorra Eau de Parfum. “For synaesthete artist Jack Coulter, the aromatic is experienced as colour. His latest piece draws inspiration from Above Us, Steorra Eau de Parfum, offering an abstract take on the fragrance’s compelling constellation of notes.”

A fascinating collaboration.

· Vomiting Rolex ·

Spanish art collective milfshakes (yes, thats…. milfshakes, let’s run with it) recently did a one piece giveaway for a Rolex.

Oh, but this was no ordinary Rolex. The dial was uniquely art-ified. It was detached from the watch, put in a ‘controlled chamber’ where- wait for it- housefiles were sent on a vacation. They were fed plant-based coloured dyes. Now- flies digest by releasing digestive fluids (or something like that).

You guessed it, they puked all over the dial. Make no mistake, this was unique.

The project was titled “Time Flies,” and used a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. The collective called it a ‘biological art project’, artistically customised by flies, clarifying that Rolex was by no means involved.

BTS here, if you are curious.

2. Verify The Humans!

I am repeatedly drawn to movements in the AI-generated music space and all its ramifications. This week, Spotify has announced ‘artist verification’, largely in an effort to improve authenticity and credibility on the platform.
This is welcome.
It is not everything, but nothing can be, in the very messy space of AI-generated / assisted music. So this is welcome.

Spotify is more often than not in the crosshairs for much, but definitely including AI generated tracks, which I have spoken much about. Deezer has been far more proactive and decisive in their ambition of filtering out AI generated music and artists. It has filtered millions of AI-generated tracks being uploaded, ensured AI tracks are out of their playlists and algorithm, all with developing their own detection tool.

My 2025 year lookback on the space- Music & The Machines- was full of aha moments and things that make you go hmmmm.

Spotify has taken a slower, wait & watch approach, citing the complexities around it all, and largely letting the onus be on the artist /uploader to opt-in their AI use.

With ‘Verified by Spotify’, we are promised “a clearer signal on artist profiles”, with the badge meant to be a symbol of “an artist profile (that) has been reviewed and meets Spotify’s criteria for authenticity and trust.”

Note, this is not by any means a stand against AI-generated music, nor a clear statement of intent to weed it out. Its another small step, though a potentially better one than any before, to make progress. Indeed, a verified artist uploading a 100% AI-generated track seems perfectly clear for now.

Fake streams, already a source of siphoning away streaming revenues, have been powered by AI. The volume that gen-AI services help provide, are a way around fake streaming that has been identified by high numbers of streams. In a recent piece entitled “How AI-Generated Music Became A $4 Billion Fraud Machine”, Virginie Berger runs through the landscape really well.

Fraudsters now use AI generators to flood platforms with millions of tracks and stream each one just a few thousand times, enough to generate royalties from each but not enough to trigger detection systems tuned for high-volume replay.

She also talks about the services allowing users to strip away AI artifacts, saying “The detection and evasion layers are scaling in parallel.”

Her take on Spotify’s verification move is less than enthusiastic. “The badge authenticates the artist, not the music. A verified human artist can still upload fully AI-generated tracks under their verified name. Spotify is drawing a line around identity while taking no position on content.”

An aside- badges, badges everywhere- with varying parameters for varying uses, on varying services, paid and unpaid. How soon before we are all confused across platforms and those pesky ticks are rendered wallpaper?

This is from my recent piece on Coffee & Conversations, where I found myself captivated by a darkly compelling music video. Have a read?

coffee & conversations

Music, Mayhem, Moments

Wa’am star, how nah…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Abhishek Rao (Shakey)

3. Curated/Cuts

· Phone Love ·

Here’s an off-kilter one this week. It comes from Blink’s Youtube series ‘im glad i know that now thank you’, created by artist and writer Chris with director Mike Greaney. This one is on phones, and how much we love them.
You might chuckle, guffaw, gag or shrug your shoulders- but I don’t need to introduce it more. And you needn’t think too much more. Just watch.

The full episode is here.

· UK Transport Love ·

“Sometimes it’s about how you say it”. With this little copy, UK’s Department of Transport shared a bunch of clever, amusing images on social.

“Transport is a universal language, that’s why we’re working hard to make sure your journeys are simple and reliable, wherever you are and wherever you’re going.“

It amused many, but riled up enough disgruntled London commuters too. Ah well, the nature of the social beast.

Also, likely a riff off the PETA stuff from many years ago.

4. The Micro Train

The micro-dramas juggernaut, we are told every week, continues its march. The format has become an undeniable force with its sheer eyeball numbers. The structural aspects seem less clear or water-tight. Too many of us view the micro-drama space with a hint of scepticism based around the high cost of acquiring viewers. Marketing spends are the real key to making this work. Production costs are increasingly becoming secondary, not really a meaningful differentiator.

I always felt that the big players will inevitably own or control or dominate the funnels. This does run counter to some of the hype around the micro-drama space in general I feel, without taking away from the momentum the format itself clearly has.

These aspects and much are explored by Patrik Wilkens in this excellent breakdown that links micro-drama, AVOD, Platforms (Tiktok & Meta particularly), with production perspectives.

For producers, it is starting to be that production costs are not the central issue- the revenue model with the platform/ ad-sharing/ subscriptions is where the choice lies between being a supplier or participant.

I am reminded of this quote from last year’s APOS which I shared in one of my previous micro-drama explorations. Zhou Yuan, Founder & CEO of Content Republic, had put it plainly, “I don’t believe there will be a Netflix of micro dramas. It will be the three big guys—Meta, YouTube, and TikTok. We will be vertical production studios.”
Indeed.

The real cost is not in production or storytelling, it is in discoverability. Patrik tells us that for series with ~$200K production costs, the marketing campaign typically comes in around $2M.
This- amongst other plays- makes Bytedance and Meta the genre’s ‘tax collectors’.

“Standalone micro-drama platforms spend up to 90% of their total operating budget on user acquisition…. The dominant UA channel for English-speaking markets is Meta. The secondary channel is TikTok itself.

His piece is well worth a read if you are curious about this space and Tiktok’s own microdrama app PineDrama.

➕Quick Hits

1. After all that about AI in the music industry, there is no slow down. ElevenLabs, which is a leader in the voice space, has launched a music generation platform as well. ElevenMusic also has a monetisation component akin to the voice arm, which could set it apart.

2. Staying real? Bah! Overrated. Say hello to Shapes, an app where humans and AI characters chat together in shared group conversations. Think Discord, but with AI characters alongside humans.

3. Modern day trends are notoriously ephemeral. Now we are told, nearly half of all trends on TikTok disappear within five days and only a small minority remain relevant beyond two weeks! (Yet, to salvage it all, a new study by Publicis Groupe says those that do endure, shape culture.)

Till next week, stay real.
Or not!

AI can boost creativity, but I may not mean it in quite the way you might think. On the one hand, that proposition is propped up this week when I look at Netflix’s acquisition of Ben Affleck’s AI company. On the other, the thought is flipped on its head by the fan reaction to a masked rock duo from Canada.

Enter this week’s collision of creativity, brands and tech on The Colour Bar. There’s enough to enjoy, or contemplate, or both.

Cheers,
Shakey

1. The Last Picture Shop: An old-timer’s search for Tarantino

2. AI vs Microtonal: Music shows the way?

3. Brands at Play: Bad photos, please + Nike’s misstep

4. Affleck + AI + Netflix: What’s the deal?

5. ▶️ Curated/Cut: Dinner date from hell

6. ➕ · APAC joy for Netflix · Norwegian good · YT’s deepfake protection ·

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.

1. The Last Picture Shop

Now here’s something that will feel good.

This here idea, campaign, project- call it what you will- ‘The Last Picture Shop’ strings together the battling vestige of cinema, the charm of times almost gone by, with that quintessentially modern-day idea of crowdsourcing and social media buzz.

“If you have ever fallen in love with a film, a record shop, a bookshop, or a place that made you feel less alone, you already understand why this matters.”

Umit & Son is a quaint shop in East London. ‘Film Archives’, it says under the main shop sign. 65 year old Umit Mesut has run it for over forty years. A projectionist and unabashed lover of celluloid, he and his beloved shop now face trying times.

Back in 2011, documentary maker Liam Saint Pierre made a film that introduced him to Umit. One filmmaker, one film preserver, film lovers both. They became friends, and set up a rare film club projecting old movies off 16mm. Years later, Umit & Son finds itself in darker times… and an idea is suddenly sparked.

‘Lets go to LA, and find the ‘high priest’ of celluloid- Quentin Tarantino, no less- and see what he thinks of saving this bastion of film. And oh, let’s make a film while we are at it.’

Ok, then!

Umit did leave London for the first time and hopped across to LA once. Since, The Last Picture Shop has blazed past its target amount on Kickstarter this year, and the team are back filming and editing. I don’t know if they met Tarantino, nor what is to happen to the shop.
Yet.

But I do know that this is the kind of coming together of creativity meets passion meets wild idea meets clever commerce that makes it all make sense.

· Liam Saint Pierre · Nan Davies @ One Wave ·
photos courtesy Last Picture Shop Kickstarters & IG

2. Microtonal vs AI

AI can boost creativity, but I don’t mean it in the way you might think.

We all talk about AI now- online, offline, professionally, personally, casually, contemplatively.
Last week I- very unexpectedly- bumped into a music recommendation on, of all places, Linkedin. And I guess I have AI to thank for it. More accurately, a less-than-enthusiastic gen AI lens.

You might well have seen Angine de Poitrine in your feeds. Or not?
This is a Canadian rock duo that’s been around for about two years, but exploded a little bit in the last few weeks courtesy of a live performance uploaded to YouTube.

With their costumes and masks, they look gimmicky, sure. But their sound is distinct. Bold. Odd. Compelling.

I did a piece on them a few days ago- watch and get a glimpse into what they’re like.

And while there are a few reasons why they’ve been embraced by so many, one of the filters they are being viewed through is… AI.
Not because they have used AI in their music. Because they have not.

And listeners (viewers) think their distinctive sound makes them a good symbol of the anti-AI , the real, the unique, the humanly expressed.

But the point I’m making here, is this.
We seem to be entering a time, a window for a different sort of real creative freedom right now.
For those who want scale and optimisation and volume, I am sure you are leaning right into the AI, or considering how you can. Those who want to stand out, ‘break the clutter ‘(ugh), shake up their audience? Maybe get the heck away from AI and be weird.

It has always been thus, you say? Yes, fair, that’s often been the mandate for creativity- to ‘stand out’. It has- but not by everyone- been seen primarily as a vehicle to become distinctive.

But as more and more people will be surrounded by a sameness, even if they don’t recognise it, this time we are in feels like a free pass to be weird with our expression…reckless, even.

And the pass comes with an expiry date, I think.

So go on, let’s find our inner weirdos.

3. Brands at play

· Crappy photos FTW! ·

Iceland Air is looking for a ‘really bad photographer’.

In this latest stunt, they want to prove to the world that “even the worst photographer can take great photos of Iceland.” Because hey, the country is just so damn photogenic.

Fair call, actually!

Requirements include “You’re frequently disappointed with your own photos”.
And then they had to go follow it up with another post just to clarify that it is all very real. A fully paid trip, $50k cash and a few hundred more crappy photos on your phone.
Sounds like a deal!

Well played, IcelandAir.

* Last year they played off the whole real/fake conversation with this spot, following a bloke who claims Iceland is AI-generated. Yes, the country itself.

· Nike’s misstep ·

At the Boston Marathon, Nike might have thought it was re-channeling its edgy attitude with a billboard that said, “Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated.”
While some thought it cool / amusing, most reactions weren’t great, including from runners who felt it was not in sync with the community’s ethos.

Nike pulled down the ad, and, erm apologised. “We want more people to feel welcome in running, no matter their pace, experience or the distance. One of them missed the mark.” Yeah, no that copy doesn’t exactly scream ‘welcoming no matter’.
Quite literally.

Some reactive advertising followed, too. I’m not a fan of the ad, sure, but this is also a reminder of how brands are not as in control of their own narrative as they used to be, and how quickly they can lose some of that control.

This came around the time of some similar ‘non-inclusive’ messaging in London. FWIW, the Boston board was replaced with one that said, “Movement is what matters.”

4. Ben Affleck, Netflix, AI

A brief stroll today around the Netflix acquisition of Ben Affleck’s AI company, ‘InterPositive’. Many were surprised when it was announced back in March, but then the dots connected well, explaining Affleck’s fairly clued-in takes on AI and movie making in recent times.

First off, be clear this is not another consumer-facing text-to-video play. It is an internal filmmaking toolset, not one intended to magically generate movies ‘from prompts’.

Netflix and Affleck both have leaned hard into the “creator-first” narrative; this is framed as a tool that supports filmmakers, not undermines them. The AI trains on a production’s own footage to help solve expensive, time-consuming post-production problems- think continuity fixes, relighting, reframing, wire removal, background cleanup and color matching. In theory, this means it is less about reimagining the creative process, or nudging out directors & actors, and more about removing friction from filmmaking.

Needless to say, there is both positive interest as well as scepticism. Because many or all of the tasks it will take on, are human tasks right now. The economic incentive for Netflix here clearly and unsurprisingly seems to be speed, scale, lower costs. And while some might wish such tools can enable new and independent creative voices, gotta point out that this one is very much locked within Netflix’s walls- not something openly available to the filmmaking community.

The patent was made available, and inevitably eyes were drawn to examples in the filing of projections which shaved double digit percentage points off costs in various departments using this tech in a sample production- from VFX to Art, set and background actors.
Adrian Lopez broke down the shaky ground for the VFX community, while Rest of World looks at the impact on the global workforce.

“If AI tools begin handling tasks like cleanup, relighting, or even base compositing, the biggest impact will be at that entry level,” DNEG’s Kazi told Rest of World. “Those early-stage opportunities are where artists traditionally learn by doing.”

Relatedly, I also learned that Netflix opened a new facility called Eyeline Studios in Hyderabad, India last month. It is designed for what Netflix calls “generative virtual effects.”

I am far more interested in these developments than the “look I can prompt Hollywood level stuff” that is flashed around our feeds.

5. Curated/Cut · Dinner Date ·

This is the kind of thing you may or may not give a moment or three to when it shows up in your feed. But today, you could give it a shot.

This is an example of what modern brand storytelling can be. I say ‘can be’ not ‘is’, because far too many brands are nowhere near this confidence, displayed here in ‘Dinner Date’ by apparel brand Mahila in the UK.

Yes, Mahila appears to be small brand, social-native, with a niche audience and shorn of some of the trappings ‘bigger’ brands have to deal with. Beyond that, honestly- this is not about some stunning craft or pathbreaking narrative. Even if the ‘genre’ or content or attitude (and man, there’s attitude!) may not be your cup of chai, I like how a pretty simple idea and execution is made memorable (great writing!), *and that the brand believes this will leave a mark on its audience.

➕Quick Hits

1. For Netflix, APAC is emerging as its fastest-growing market in Q1 2026. The region posted a 20% YoY rise in revenue.

2. Deepfake protection coming to Youtube. Their proprietary detection tool, “is now open to anyone at high risk of having their likeness abused: Actors, athletes, creators and musicians, whether they have a YouTube channel or not, can sign up to identify and request removal of deepfakes on its platform.”
   Any public figure will need to opt-in for this. Here’s the full (disproportionately long?) THR piece.

3. Norway is the latest country looking to pass a bill later this year on banning social media for U16s. One of many European policy conversations, after Australia led with a world-first ban in ⁠December ‘25.

I find it all absurd. So when I see a brand like Kotex embracing period blood, I am so here for it!
I’m also down for some digital nostalgia courtesy Pinterest, plus I weigh in on the AI voice artist landscape and another micro drama player.

Come join me in this bloody, non-violent edition.

1. There Will Be Blood: Art’s Missing Period.

2. ▶️ Curated/Cut: How did they live before social media?

3. VO Wars: My voice, your voice, no voice.

4. Tadka: India’s new (big) micro drama offering.

5. ➕ · Nipple sponsorship · Clipping economy? · Kill YT Shorts· ·

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.

1. There Will Be Blood

Brand x Art x Relevance.
A rare fit.

Most of us have heard something about art making us uncomfortable, and how that is a specific role it can/should/must play. Many are happy for art of any kind to be pleasing, satisfying, and yes- comforting. But that is that beauty of art- it is infinite and there is room for every kind. Whatever you might consider the role of creative endeavour, what is distinctly clear, is that art is an expression. Be it from an individual, a team, a collective. Be it a statement, a question, a wish, a memory, a speculation.

Most of us have been born into worlds which value that expression. I won’t be naive- freedom of expression is demonstrably hard to agree on, across cultures. It collides with norms and clashes with beliefs. And, it is constrained by systems, crushed by power. Yet its core value remains largely embraced.

This little trot into art philosophy is spurred by a short documentary. Art’s Missing Period is an 8 minute piece exploring the systematic deletion of women’s menstrual cycles from art across the ages. Here’s the trailer:

It begins with the striking observation that blood has flourished across art forms, across time. The violence or tragedy it depicts is not found inappropriate, nor too sensitive. The blood flows freely, so to speak- except period blood.

This film (Youtube link to full video) is part of an effort to ‘uncensor’ the art around menstruation. It is brilliantly coupled with a virtual exhibition that can help find some answers, and raise more questions. Art featured goes back as far as a few thousand years BCE, with pieces from our times that have been rejected or censored by galleries and other custodians of morality.

“Why is some blood revered in art, while menstrual blood is silenced? The exhibition confronts the stigma, showcasing menstrual-themed art from around the world.”

And so to the who.

This is part of a campaign devised by Kotex, with agencies David in London and Ogilvy in Singapore. Given how relevant this is, it almost seems immaterial who is behind it- which is part of the brilliance of Kotex choosing this path. The fit is obvious, the choice anything but.

It is very, very hard to combine layers of meaning and product and brand, yet create something of substance, without feeling opportunistic or shallow. I think Kotex nails it meaningfully here. Kudos.

The question I have- to connect and challenge the thought in my opening line- why do we even feel uncomfortable about this? I am all for art ‘disturbing the comfortable’, but menstruation is the most natural of biological occurrences. To analogously hand it a popular modern phrasing- it is a feature, not a bug. A pity then that we have over the ages been conditioned to recoil at its mere mention, to make it taboo.

My only gripe? The short film left me feeling like we skimmed the surface- even at over 8min, it feels like a trailer for a full thing. I suppose in some ways, that’s a good sign.

Kotex CCO Luiz Sanches · CD Denis Kakazu · Head of Creative Gustavo Sarkis · Marketing Katie Nikolaus ·
DAVID ECDs Selma Ahmed & Genevieve Gransden ·
Production Object & Animal · Director Kathryn Everett · EP Dom Thomas ·
Noor Tagouri, Journalist

2. VO Wars

It will come as no surprise to most reading this that AI is being used heavily in localisation & versioning of film & TV around the world- captioning, translations, dubbing, ‘vubbing’. Some of the output from the SaaS voice services can be truly impressive, though not all of them have their provenance sorted.

At one end you have Matthew McConaughey & Michael Caine who have licensed their voice likenesses, available in the Eleven Labs marketplace; at the other you have Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks who have explicitly refused to do so. But there is a vast majority who lie between these high profile extremes. And they are struggling to come to terms with how rapidly this is moving- especially in markets outside of Hollywood.

Unsurprisingly and inevitably this impact is often left by the wayside in much commentary. But many territories do not have robust systems in place (unions, rights, etc), if at all. Rina Chandran in Rest Of World has a piece with some real perspectives from countries like Brazil & India. “AI is increasingly used to deliver content cheaply and quickly, and voice actors are beginning to push back, even though they don’t have strong unions.” With touch points around the world, we get a glimpse of the fights voice actors are waging to salvage their livelihoods.

My take- voice often seems the easy one, the early fall guy. The tech has moved fast, and there is a general perception of “it’s just a voice”. But there is more to this than hand-wringing over lost jobs. Central though that must remain to such conversations, we mustn’t lose sight of the impact on local cultures. There is an intangible value to the nuance, storytelling and flavour imparted by the person behind a voice. To any story or narration, they bring their own perspectives, ability, creativity and- maybe most importantly- their lived experience.

If we shrug at those in the name of efficiency, we do so at our own peril.

3. Curated/Cut

· How Did They Do It? ·

Life before social media- what’s that?

Pinterest continues its efforts to be apart from other social media. Last year, their campaign encouraged ‘unfollowing’, assuring us we could find our own unique take. With a little help from Pinterest, of course.

Their latest is a warmly crafted theme film that suggests the best thing we can do online is find a reason to go offline. The brand leans into the palpably growing sense of overly-plugged in lives, coupled with an affection for the before times. What we have is a rose-tinted look at how life before social media was less influenced, less validated, more our own.

I say rose-tinted, but I do mostly mean accurate. The struggle to touch grass is real.

Almost as enjoyably, their ECD Becca Morton has a bit of a back story here, which will show you how it is just so bloody easy to come up with excellent creative stuff.
Not.

Pinterest Global Creative Xanthe Wells · ECD Becca Morton · Writer Gage Clegg · Global Mktg Sara Pollack · CMO Claudine Cheever ·

4. Micros come to JioHotstar

The micro drama (nay, micro shorts; nay micro shows, series, micro something) electric train whizzes on. The latest significant player, this time in India, comes in the form of Reliance behemoth Jiostar. Named ‘Tadka’ for the little concoction of flavour or spices splashed on in most Indian cooking, the service launches within the ‘main’ streaming JioHostar app.

Its campaign boils down to “my shorts are better than yours.” An active diss to other social feeds- don’t waste your time on reels, it says, get on to Tadka.
We could debate the virtue of addictive micro dramas vs addictive random reels into the wee hours (ok, I could but I probably wouldn’t… but you get what I mean). But that ship has sunk sailed.

The nuts & bolts are familiar now. ~2min episodes, 20-50 episode runs, 100 shows at launch.

The Tadka rollout, conversational discovery tools and the scale of content investment suggest JioHotstar is not treating micro-content as a side experiment. It is positioning it as part of a larger play to widen engagement, hold on to users longer and build new monetisation layers inside its streaming ecosystem. ^

If there’s been a gold rush into the micro drama space (even if many still question where the gold is), there is also an inescapable feeling something will eventually give. The entry of established streamers/legacy players is the most obvious harbinger. As I noted in a roundup last year, the big boys are widely seen as the ones to dominate. We have known for some time now- and as we have seen in other markets in US and Asia (ex China)- once you get past the logistical ease and low production demands, it is the discoverability + marketing spend in acquiring viewers that proves to be a challenge.

Tadka is bundled into the overall JioHotstar offering; Fatafat (Amazon’s shot at the space on their MX Player) is entirely ad-supported. Such players most likely see this as a funnel for wider discoverability of content, customer acquisition and ad/brand plays.

While we wait to figure this out, you could always go check out what’s happening with the Security Guard & his CEO Girlfriend.

➕ Quick Hits

1. The Nipple sponsorship- Vaseline has been named the ‘Official Nipple Protector’ of the 2026 TCS London Marathon, to keep runners ‘safe from the chafe’. Clever.

2. I‘ve written about the deluge of clips of shows or podcasts that flood our social feeds. I had looked at how the business of ‘clipping’ is fast becoming a lucrative one, i.e. those who do the actual job of making clips (yeah, ‘editors’). Ed Elson over at ProfG M has a rather more gung-ho view on clipping as a revenue source for creators, suggesting everyone (especially legacy media) needs to get on the train. “Clips are no longer the byproduct of the main product — they’re the main product.”

3. If you’re not a fan of how Youtube keeps propping up its shorts while you use it for ‘proper’ videos- well, you can now turn off Shorts on YT entirely. Its more a hack really- limiting the time for shorts- but I guess we’ll take it? Now- someone tell me how I can switch off videos on Spotify!

Yes, the Amazon (the real one, not the Bezos playground) finds its way into our delighted field of vision courtesy the ‘first ever’ branding of the region it flows through. It comes with a fascinating design approach. So does a video game TV show that recently wrapped a second season and I felt compelled to appreciate. And a clever team pull off a copyright heist with meaning.
Oh, if you have not seen Zendaya whimsically attempt fashion, this is your chance. Take it!

1. Mumumelon: Yes, it sounds like what you think. A ripoff.

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: The shape of Zendaya’s dreams, and a river’s brand.

3. Concept or cop out?: A note on Bieber @ Coachella

4. Fallout: Apocalyptic design.

5. ➕ · Mass comments on YT · India’s FIFA WC · prompt a playlists ·

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.

1. Mumumelon

Say hello to mumumelon.
Oli Frost has done it again. He & the folks at the climate campaign group Serious People (he’s a co-founder) bring a brilliant ability to take satire and make it believable in a consistently clever way.

This time, they pick on active wear brand lululemon and its fossil fuel practices. But if that sounds boring, they are not. Here we have a ‘dupe-brand’, openly ripping off lululemon, to showcase how they can build a similar product and line with much greener practices.

This is no theory, Serious People always uses serious ways. So we have mumumelon products and a real, brick & mortar store.

“We are violating copyright, but we aren’t violating the planet.”

And somehow, its all not merely amusing. It’s making a point, making it well and making us smile. And yes, they are “ready to be sue-sued”
This is many kinds of good.

Also, I don’t own any lulus, but would pick mumus over them.
Though I do like lemons. And (water) melons.

Here is their story, and call to (gentle) arms.

You might have seen Oli’s previous effort- Oilwell, a faux-wellness app that could help you quiet all the noise of climate science while you march on to profits and prosperity, to “help you find inner peace while the world burns”. If you haven’t- I wrote about it here last May.

There’s many other sharp ideas they have brought to life. Like the big French Bank campaign, for the bank that said it would stop funding coal, but instead underwrote a $409 million a bond to the world’s largest private coal company through one of their subsidiaries. Or like an illustrated children’s book titled “Why Daddy’s Law Firm Works With Nice Oil Men”, delivered to law firms around London.

The mumumelon campaign is run by Action Speaks Louder, a non-profit organisation that holds “companies accountable for their climate change promises.”

2. Curated/Cuts

· A Shape of Dreams ·

Surreal storytelling? Abstract visuals? Choreographed oddity? Plus Zendaya & Spike Jonze?

I’m in! Surely you should be too.

‘Shape of Dreams’ is a Spike Jonze-directed short, introducing Zendaya’s collab line with sportswear brand On. It’s a wonderful exercise in whimsy, inviting us to her “Dream Lab”- and it sure feels like one.

Zendaya’s “hmm, what should I do here?/ what could I do here?” vibe is a charming mood for the narrative. I love how it moves from curiosity to delight to a growing confidence in what she is playing with in this near seamless, abstract white space.

And the craft just carries us along on this little jaunt of joy.
Stop-motion(or the feel of it), scale distortions, practical effects, the choreography, physical transitions- all strung with a perky rhythm, occasionally reminiscent of silent films.

This line is a collaboration with her long-time stylist Law Roach, who makes an appearance late in the film, almost like a guide/older partner who tweaks her little flights of fancy. Nice touch.

The clothes look cool too.

On Alex Griffin · Thiago Cruz ·
MJZ · David Zander · Kristina Thoegersen · DOP: Jasper Wolf · Editor: Jeff Buchanan · Production Design Francesca di Mottola · Sound Squeak E. Clean ·

· Amazonia ·

Here is a new, first time brand for something that has existed for eons- the Amazon region in Brazil.
Nine states in the ‘Brazilian Legal Amazon’ have come together to create an “ecosystem brand” for the region, promoting it to Brazilians and the world. This is Amazonia, and its brand identity is wonderfully woven into the real world space it represents.

How?

The entire brand design system- typography, motion and more- is derived from the great river itself. Satellite imagery of the Amazon and the curves in its 25,000km of waterways give shape to the logo and the letters.

There is no geometry, no serif or san serif debate, no graphs of motion design. This feels organic, natural and human. More so because of the collaboration with artists from across the nine states in the territory.

As the video grandly but warmly declares, “generating a design system by the greatest creator of all- Nature”

Visit the website or go play with the type system here, and generate stuff (hat tip to Adriano Reis for sharing!)

· By Future Brands ·

3. Concept or cop out?

You are highly likely to have heard of Justin Bieber’s Coachella act, yes?
Let’s just say it was minimal, meta, and not a little strange.

Bieber performed some of his recent hits, but a sort of low-fi- there was no big set, no choreography, no pyro. Stripped down, but not in an MTV Unplugged way. More like a casual, low key way.

And then he kinda settled in at a table with this laptop, and fired up Youtube.

Yup.

For around 30mins, he went on to play some of his old hits via YouTube videos. Sometimes he sang along karaoke-style, other times he just watched them with the crowd. He also played viral videos of himself, chuckling with the fans. All very nostalgic, indulgent, a bit random, a bit cute… could have felt intimate.

But, being a headliner at one of the biggest festivals, with a reported $10 million payday for the two-weekend gig, this was never going to go down as merely “cute”.

Some have loved it, calling it a masterclass in engagement, creativity, authenticity and the internet generation at large. Others railed against it- saying it was lazy, cringe, underwhelming, undercooked, even disrespectful.

I will say this. Having one of the earliest made-by-Youtube pop stars trawl through his YT history sounds like a certain kind of intimate and cool. It’s also the kind of thing that we might not see much of or relate to less with other celebs, because ‘making it on Youtube’ is not what it was for his generation of stars.

Just not sure if it’s what all those peeps in the audience paid for.

Samir Chaudhry has an interesting take, calling Bieber “The Last Honest Internet Sensation.”

4. Fallout

I would like to take a moment or three to doff my dusty, dystopian hat to Fallout- the series- and its wonderful choice to have a custom opening title and end credits for every single episode.

Season 2 of this video game adaptation wrapped some time back on Prime Video. I was very pleased to see it continued the show’s S1 tradition of highly stylised opening title cards and end-credit sequences. They evoke that post-apocalyptic, retro-futuristic aesthetic of the video games, which also permeates the show but is still topped by these animations.

The custom title cards are variations of the Fallout logo, usually connecting to the narrative or episode theme. There’s rusty cola caps, glowing green monitors, Vegas neon signs, rivets, fire, ice, dust, blood. Short, subtle and with just that perfect nudge into the episode.

The end credits are long ‘single shots’ within a very game environment feel, with the setting and details full of nods to the storyline, lore, easter eggs, locations, and potential clues to the plot. All end credits here:

Opening title cards by Eddy Herringson & Laura Heath and Antibody

If you’re really feeling this, go revisit all the S1 end credits here.

➕ Quick Hits

1. So creators on Youtube can now like comments on their videos in bulk. Yes, that means they can engage meaningfully with their viewers and followers by using an automated function that will like all comments it deems positive. Authentic and real indeed. Or, “draining the humanity out of online interactions for the sake of engagement.”

2. The FIFA World Cup is not far away. Besides the ticket pricing chaos for those attending, closer to Asia one of the biggest (numerical) markets still doesn’t have a broadcast deal. Venkat Ananth takes a look at how India will end up watching the greatest show in the world.

3. Spotify’s ‘Prompted Playlist’ feature rolled out in beta earlier this year; it lets you describe what you want (prompt), then generates a playlist “informed by your listening history and what’s happening in music right now.” This has now expanded to include podcasts. Arguably, it could be even more useful.