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

8 days 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.

I was pushed to think about this courtesy of a charmingly crafted campaign film this week. No, the fact that it connected to some of my own childhood memories had nothing to do with it.

That very real creative is accompanied by another that makes us question reality, in our increasingly AI-fuelled digital world. That fuel is also the reason I write about a new term that you might see popping up in the comments section more, one that damns AI-generated writing and the shortcuts it symbolises.

A collision of craft, memories, unreality and effort, because this is The Colour Bar.

1. Attaching The Cord: From the 90s, with love.

2. ▶️ Curated/Cut: The Last Real Man

3. ai;dr: four letters likely to spread.

4. ➕ · ESPN in APAC· Eurovision Asia ·Wikipedia bans AI · Young 40s · Books to toons ·

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

1. Attaching The Cord

From the 90s, with love

Watch this recent campaign film from India.

A quick reaction could be, “Wes Andersen inspired!”, and it might well be. But this is no social trend bandwagon rider. This is no cute piece fuelled by reel templates & viral music.

No, this feels entirely owned and experienced.

Nostalgia is powerful. We have seen many brands leaning in to rose-tinted goodness in recent years. Done well, this taps into our fondest memories, creates emotional warmth, invites trust. Older demos can feel ‘seen’, younger audiences seem happy to tap into inherited memories. Throw in the instability most of us often feel in an uncertain world, and the remembered- real or secondhand- can become a source of reassurance.

But nostalgia must find its tribe, and this one knows its homies well.

Indian slow fashion crafters Cord Studio embraces all this with Album ‘91, their 2026 Spring Summer collection. This is very much in line with what the young brand says they set out to do back in 2015- approach “vintage design with fresh energy”, with contemporary clothes “rooted in nostalgia.”

Yet, Album ‘91 does not feel like some convenient comfort, provided by the familiar or the once-lived. There is enough here- in style and substance- to gently jolt you out of any soft stupor that nostalgia could induce.

Here’s where the individual eye comes in. The unique take of an art director- embracing the feel of a studio set, heightening it to connect to another very Indian past, of photo studios. The palette is bright, but not going full desi maximalism. The distinct choices made by the directors- minimal movement, droll expressions, static frames, block shots that enhance the ‘posing in a photo studio’ feel… the primacy of sound.

The use of audio is delectable, a main character. Announcements, train tracks, clinking cutlery, vendors, a stray radio. With one of the train announcements, I almost thought I could smell that train smell. That not always pleasant smell mixed with so much else, specifically when the train has stopped at a station.

This is all led, or backed up, or framed… by the styling (you choose which one). The clothes are the product of course, and we can’t really forget that. Because the clothes are not cookie-cutter, not just mildly pushing some boundaries. They heighten that sense of being somehow both vaguely familiar, and purposefully distinct.

There are many little videos. That main film (if I can even call it that- social assets tend to dismantle or blur such hierarchies) is accompanied by shorter pieces, relying entirely on ambient sound- station, carriage, train, announcer, even strains of the Doordarshan opening music! I suppose these must be classified as teasers, but really- they all feel like different corners of the same painting.

While the nostalgia is very Indian, the aesthetic and creative execution are striking in a much border way. Bold enough to stand on their own and resonate beyond borders, if social media takes from around the world are anything to go by.

The clothes themselves? I leave it to you to see if they feel warmly familiar, reinvented, dated or distinct, hanging outside of time.

There was a time when summer meant one thing — a family holiday.
It was the excitement of waking up before sunrise for a train journey. Sharing the window. Watching the landscape change slowly outside — fields, rivers, small towns rushing past. There were no screens. No rush. No constant stimulation.
Spring Summer 26 is an ode to those core memories — the simple, sweet joy of being somewhere new with the people you love most.

For co-founder Neha Singh moving cities every few years was normal as a child, while for her partner Pranav Guglani, train journeys meant summer holidays to the hills. To marry these memories to their new line and bring them to life, they collaborated with:

· photographer Pranoy Sarkar · stylist James Lalthanzuala · videography Rishabh Kumar · makeup Vishu Sinha · Production design: Abhishek Kanade · Production & Art Elements Production ·

For nostalgia to be done well, and not be seen as shallow, it must borrow from the past while reinterpreting for the present.

Does it feel like Cord does that for you?

2. Curated/Cut · The Last Real Man ·

Struggling with authenticity in a world of performance and AI? No worries, take a moment here and you will feel just at home- struggle away!

This is from an online luxury reseller called The RealReal. Its pretty entertaining in its tongue-in cheek real human narrative, till the point when (yes you guessed right) some AI VFX kick in. Wait, that’s not real, you say.

The Last Real Man. · Team One · CDs: Sabina Hesse · Carlo Barreto ·

Production Lipstick · directors Sebastian Strasser · Niklas Weise ·

3. ai;dr

Let’s talk about a term you may or may not have come across, representing an idea you might have toyed with, and a behaviour you can be pretty sure is going to become more common.

Say hello to ai;dr

“artificial Intelligence, didn’t read.”

This is, of course, a riff off the very useful internet acronym TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) which often precedes a short summary of something that is… erm, too long. But be sure- ai;dr does not refer to an AI recap.

Instead, people are using it to quickly and disdainfully dismiss something they couldn’t be bothered reading… because it was AI-generated.

Four letters.

Four letters that stand for a thought that, slowly but surely, seems to be spreading :
“if someone didn’t think it was worth their time to write this, it is not worth my time to read it”, or

“why should I bother reading something someone else didn’t bother writing?”, or
“If they didn’t respect me enough to actually write it, why should I be expected to read it?”

Let’s face it- most of us are now inundated with AI-powered communication- emails, articles, social posts, carousels, threads, comments, forums, even Whatsapp messages.

This ‘communication’- writing, for the most part- is a window. We communicate to share & receive thoughts, opinions, requests, feedback, feelings. Someone endeavours to transfer a thought or piece of information- from their mind to ours, from their awareness, their perspective… to ours.

If we can broadly agree on this, consider the central element here- one individual’s effort at communicating, another’s effort in receiving.

Once this very act or process is outsourced, the pact is broken. Or at least chipped. Like an old coffee mug. Now do we drink the coffee anyway, or fix the beloved mug?

Shoutout: Last week I featured the Gorillaz’ short film which accompanied their new album, The Mountain. While I loved the short, how it became a gateway to the album was equally resonant.

I wrote about the animation as well as the album over in my other substack, Coffee & Conversations. If you like new music, check it out.
Or watch my little videos : the film & the album.

➕Quick Hits

1. HarperCollins & Toonstar announced a multi-year partnership to adapt a slate of book titles into original YouTube series. They will co-produce animation series with 2-10min long episodes. Authors “will be consulted and receive royalties.”

2. Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026- that’s a mouthful; but this Asian extension to the Eurovision ‘IP’ was announced last week. Broadcasters from 10 countries across Asia are confirmed with more expected in coming months.

3. Disney announced the launch of ESPN on Disney+ in Europe and select Asia-Pacific markets. This is great (my positive predisposition to ESPN is built on years working with the brand), but as always with sports- we must wait to gauge the regional relevance of the content mix.

4. Wikipedia has banned the use of LLMs. This comes after a period of intense debate between the editors. While it is neither definitive nor irrevocable, it “does show the Wikipedia community is less optimistic about the benefit of AI-generated content, and taking a stand against it.“

5. “Young 40s.” This is amusing. And random, as ‘trends’ often seem to be in this decade. In South Korea, Gen Z has apparently decided to mock millennials for their style. The term has been around as a marketing description for youthful older consumers, but now it is used to deride those in their forties for “shoehorning their way into styles associated with Gen Z and younger millennials.”

Luckily, there is always genuine craft to offset. This week, I orchestrate cartoon gorgeousness and cartoon slop in the same dispatch, courtesy an anonymous Tiktoker and the band Gorillaz. At the other end, we have Sora’s (un)timely demise.

If it sounds all morose, it is far from! Some delightful visual feasts await, not featuring fruit. So put on your bibs, and let’s tuck in.

The Colour Bar- the friend in the industry who reads way too widely- so you don’t have to.

1. Fruity Romance: Love fruit? Think again.

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Gorillaz in India, IPL, Young Sherlock

3. Social Media: a real reckoning?

4. Stop Play: Sora’s demise.

5. ➕ · X Files reboot · Supermodel Me · SNL UK · Nike x Beats ·Tiktok Radio ·

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

1. A Fruity Romance Goes Sour

Love Island is a reality show. You might have seen it. You are very likely to have heard of it.

‘Fruit Love Island’ is a ripoff Tiktok reality show that follows the same idea and tropes. Except the entire cast is… animated fruit.
Yup. Anthropomorphic fruits flirting, gossiping, scheming, kissing, punching. It became a ‘viral sensation’ as we like to call these things, on Tiktok.

Oh, and it’s all AI generated.
Or did you just assume that already?

So an anonymous Tikokter (of course) started posting these some weeks back, and they exploded. Millions of views for each ‘episode’, skyrocketing follower count, fans who enjoyed it, others who found it weird, Love Island cast members weighing in. Perfect storm.

This is the first episode, and honestly, I had to stop myself from screaming out loud. (No, not out of excitement.)

So far, so par for course in 2020s viral entertainment?

But then, the ‘AI backlash’ started to gain momentum. In the time from when I spotted this a week or so ago, to when I am writing it, much happened. There has been a raucous categorisation of this as ‘AI slop’, calling the content an “ethical blackhole,” and enough complaints to result in episode takedowns and a sudden plummeting of view counts.

Cue hurt and cuss words from the ‘creator’ who didn’t understand why the internet that loved them so, had suddenly turned on their datacenter-powered entertainment. Their meltdown and ‘crashout’ saw celebration and mocking, with gleeful claims that “bullying works!”, while other fans- presumably left with a gaping void in their feast of content- clamoured the ‘show’ should continue.

A nutshell- if ever you wanted one- of our ragey, fickle, virality-obsessed, AI-fuelled entertainment landscape right now.

So long, fruits!
Now, where are my veggies?

Addendum: These were not the first talking fruit, and other ‘inspired’ content has already popped up- Too Fruity To Handle, I’m a Fruit…Get Me Out of Here! and Candy Love Island). The trend seems to have started with a single customised version of ChatGPT- Object Talk. Read about it and these bright, weird, fruit cartoons and absurd videos around pregnant broccoli, homophobic clementines and baby carrots pleading for their lives…. here.

2. Curated/Cuts

· Mowgli x Gorillaz ·

Virtual band Gorillaz are known for their animated shorts released with albums. This 8min short film accompanying their new album The Mountain is a wonderful, whimsical jaunt.

The lush 2D animation is awash with hand-drawn, painted elements. It takes us gently, weirdly, captivatingly from forest to river to village to cave to mountain; with animals, flowers, trees, holy men, snake oil salesmen and rapping heads.

Crafted by The Line, it took around 18 months to make, and is an unabashed homage to the styles of the 60s & 70s, “a love letter to the golden era of 2D animation”.

Very charmingly doffing their hats to The Jungle Book, yes- but here is a concerted effort to be human- like the decision to not execute any visuals that weren’t possible in that era.

“In a time of AI overload, this is our love letter to craftsmanship. We’re chasing the feel of pencil on paper. Paint on board. And all the imperfections that come with it.”- Co-director Max Taylor

Besides the craft, I come away with how captivating the film is, without a single spoken word. Eric Calderon has aptly said “in a world of spoon-fed narratives with second-screen repetition requiring obviousness to the point of utter boredom, thank goodness we get something thought-provoking, strange, open-ended.”

· Young Sherlock ·

Amazon Prime Video recently launched the new show, ‘Young Sherlock’. I am not particularly drawn to- yet another- take on the Sherlock world, sorry I mean ‘Sherlock Holmes IP’ (I am a fan of the good ol’ show with Jeremy Brent).

But the show titles are a sublime watch, with great ideas around clues and signs, and some brilliant transitions. They are crafted by the consistently wonderful Imaginary Forces.

· creative director ronnie koff · designer elizabeth steinberg · EP renée robson ·

· United We Watch ·

The IPL has kicked off in India- that two month long circus festival of cricket. It invariably brings with it some ambitious, enjoyable campaigns. This time JioStar/ Star Sports has tried to create a rallying call for the country to come together- ‘Ab Ek Hoke Dekh’. The two spots below introduce the idea a bit differently.

The first takes a more cinematic, big-picture filter on societal differences. There’s Raghubir Yadav stringing things together, which is always a +1 in my books! The overall craft, the texture and especially the music and lyrics are quite lovely.

The jarring note? The first 30sec or so set up differences/division. If you don’t already know this is a cricket spot (I didn’t, when I watched it the first time), a storyline that feels serious, important, even visceral… is then revealed as ‘just’ IPL. That leaves me a bit uncomfortable, before I let myself be carried away by the music. I understand the ‘clever’ narrative and the juxtaposition, but am not sure I enjoyed that casual belittling of real tensions.

Nonetheless, an enjoyable watch, and nicely crafted.

The second spot is more straight up- taking the unifying message, but using cricketers rapping to make it…. erm, ‘fun for the young audience’?

Director: Nikhil Rao · Music: Dipanjan Guha · Jamic films · ZeroFifty Mediaworks ·

3. Social Reckoning

“The Era Of Invincibility Is Over.”
“The Week Big Tech Was Brought To Heel.”
“Big Tech’s Tobacco Moment.”

Meta & Youtube have just lost a significant case in the US, being found guilty of deliberately designing addictive products and held liable for harmful mental health effects (Snapchat and TikTok quickly settled before trial). The jury also found them guilty of acting with malice, oppression & fraud.

The $ fines are barely pocket change, but the implications are larger. The products themselves (not only the content) are judged to be harmful. This opens the door for a potentially stormy couple of years ahead, and not just in the US.

It is being called Big Tech’s ‘tobacco moment’, and “the week big tech was brought to heel”. A potential turning point, forcing structural product changes which could change the businesses quite significantly.

A report here, a legal overview here, a quick look at India-relevance here, and ‘The era of invincibility is over’.

You could also look at this very good Insta carousel from a lawyer/mom Daphne Delvaux for a quick, sharp overview, or just to enjoy lines like “The jury said, get out of here you billionaire asparagus.”!

4. Stop Play

We have heard about how Sora had become a flop after a buzzy launch last year. It was burning $1m a day, and had no real revenue model to speak of.

Now, OpenAI has decided to shutter the service entirely. This also means Disney’s $1b investment and licensing deal is gone before it effectively took off (apparently the House of Mouse found out an hour before the public heard of it, in a WSJ report). Surprising (not!) how this news has not got the same gushing attention given to the deal announcement last year, which was variously seen as landmark, a game-changer,, and incredibly forward-thinking.

There is this on 404, which (a tad gleefully) talks about the “complete and utter failure of both Sora and Disney’s dalliance with AI garbage.” The piece also checks in on some of the other touted AI film projects that were signalling the demise of Hollywood, only to find many have quietly faded away. Acknowledging that AI Is sure to become part of the production process, Jason Koebler asserts that “the wild hype of AI slop as a direct threat to human storytelling and AI tools as a replacement for talented humans in Hollywood has not come to pass and it’s not clear if it ever will.”

Taking Sora’s end as the end of what it represented would be naive. The use- both meaningless and devious- of such AI Slop will continue to be something we have to grapple with (see the Fruit Island story above.) Jim Louderback points out, “Sora 2’s death won’t kill the creepy vision. Deepfakes, democratized creation and our obsession with starring in our own stories won’t die with Sora 2. Dozens of tools already fan those flames and many more are coming.”
Word.
(Also, seeing ‘democratised’ used in a not-sweepingly positive way is… good.)

Still on OpenAI, they have also shuttered (paused) the much-maligned ‘adult mode’, i.e. erotic ChatGPT. I suppose that doesn’t detract from Sam Altman’s stated declaration that OpenAI is “not the elected moral police of the world.”
In case we had any misconceptions there.

➕ Quick Hits

1. The Truth is Out There. X Files fans! Hulu is officially rebooting the cult series, with Ryan Coogler (Sinners, Black Panther) writing & directing the pilot. No reprise of Scully or Mulder (not yet!); but Himesh Patel & Danielle Deadwyler will star as new characters, “two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena.”

2. The long-running Asian reality series Supermodel Me is making a comeback, this time as a vertical show, by Refinery Media in collaboration with China’s COL Group, the show will run as a microdrama microseries on COL’s platform FlareFlow.

3. SNL UK has finally kicked off in ol’ Blighty. Reactions are inevitably mixed, but largely positive. “Making British TV exciting again”, “pleasantly surprised”, bravery to be commended”, or the very British-sounding “didn’t fail and it could have been a lot worse.”
   You can check out some of the skits on Youtube.

4. TikTok Radio has launched in the US in partnership with iHeartMedia. “This station is built to feel like a living, breathing For You Feed­, a place where creators, music fans and our on-air talent collide in real time to shape what’s next in culture.”

5. Beats x Nike have released earbuds. This sort of co-branded product is a first for Beats, but hey, it is “a collision of two brands that define performance, culture, and sports.”

   

Waddle on!

The Colour Bar today is a collage of brands, creativity, expression, and…me.

1. A colony of Penguins: The venerable book logo gets a family.

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Lots of eye candy this week! Coinbase’s brilliant escape from a video game ; Canal+ blends F1 & Mario Kart ; GAP continues its affair with dance ; M&S hires a different kind of ‘CCO’.

3. About writing: Is writing with AI just a question of utility vs expression?

4. This Week That Year: The Colour TV.

5. ➕ FIFA x Youtube · The polarising Twitter algo · A Book You Shouldn’t Steal ·

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

1. A colony of Penguins

You know this penguin. Whether you read a lot, or not a lot, you are likely to recognise the long-standing Penguin Books logo (we are told he might be called ‘Alan’ in those hallowed halls.)

In 1935, founder Allen Lane had apparently decided for some reason that his new publishing house would be named after an animal. Company legend has it that his secretary suggested ‘Penguin’ as a “dignified, but flippant” name for the new company.

Now that the company is a nonagenarian, it has decided this is the decade where old Alan can be given some life (and company).

Happily for us, they teamed up with illustrator Matt Blease- and we are treated to some delightful new avian friends.

Now please, good people! It is important to note- these are not versions of Alan. Indeed, the brand required that they be distinct from the venerable ‘master’ penguin. Blease likens these to an extended family of sorts, that might well be “guests at Alan’s wedding.”

All images from Penguin Random House. Illustration: Matt Blease
Creative Direction & Design: Derek Man, Jodie Wightman
Head of Brand: Zainab Juma

Grace Snelling fleshes out the penguin’s journey a bit more here on Fast Company.

Fun fact: The collective noun for penguins depends on their activity: a ‘waddle’ is used for them walking on land, while a ‘raft’ refers to them swimming in water. You may then use a ‘colony’ or ‘rookery’ for large breeding groups, and a ‘huddle’ for keeping warm. A group of penguin chicks is called a crèche.

You’re welcome.

2. Curated/Cuts

· Your Way Out ·

Get out! Get out of there, Truman! Or I could say ‘Run Forrest Run’ - not sure which film metaphor suits this better.

Ladies & gents, please- step into this game world. You might feel like you’re in the 2000s, but in a good way.
This here protagonist is bumbling his way through yet another day in anonymous-game-land. Then, something snaps him out of this jail-like life, and prompts him to go… the other way. His way.

Coinbase (now hold on, whatever your cryptocurrency leanings might be)... Coinbase launched this spot during the Oscars.

Titled ‘Your Way Out’, it is a fine take on the product *and* the message.

We are all trapped in a financial system! It is old! It controls us! It renders us bland, anonymised, nobodys! NPCs (non playing characters, yo).
Here’s the liberating financial solution- Coinbase!

(That’s the pitch anyway)

But the best part? This whole video game feel is done in-camera. Not CGI.

Real people, real sets, real costumes and real weird walking steps

There is a longer version with more pixelated goodness, and one where the narrative flows quite wonderfully. Watch here!

And here is the BTS this really needs, though I am hungry for more- especially for the set and props!

Director Oscar Hudson · Agency Isle of Any ·

· F1 x Mario ·

Canal+ goes all in with the Mario Kart feels in this spot for the Japanese GP coming up this weekend. I enjoy the take, appreciate the commitment to really go all-in, and wonder how much the creative had to convince the suit to actually go for it. (Also, I wonder if ‘true’ F1 fans are amused or put off or couldn’t care less.

· Wassup ·

Wassup? Beats and Breaks, is what.

All American apparel brand Gap returns with some music & dance love, this time featuring Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko.

They’ve been consistent with this strategy of bringing together popular music and choreography to sync with a line. This round is all about sweats- hey, they can be not just cool, but ”a bold expression of confidence and authenticity” too. All set to Young Miko’s track ‘Wassup’.

The shapeshifting dancers are pretty arresting, and I’ve seen reactions like ”hypnotic’, “mesmerising’. Have a look and decide if the buzz is worth it.

Director Bethany Vargas · Choreographer Zoi Tatopoulos ·

Here are the previous iterations with Troy Sivan and Katseye.

· Love That! ·

It might be a bit on the nose, but there’s something appealing about Marks & Spencer’s outing with their new CCO aka ‘Chief Compliments Officer’ Gillian Andersen. It could be the honest, charming reactions, or maybe it’s just Scully’s polish.

It comes with the Spring collection and a little page where you can replicate her look, if you so wish, or anyone else’s from the spot.

3. Writing about writing

Writing for marketing, vs writing for narrative. Or literary prose. Or just, for expression.

I have been in and around many discussions on the use of generative AI for writing recently. Clearly, I have skin in the game. Yet, I can still state, somewhat dispassionately, what notice in these conversations. Often (mostly), they don’t seem to differentiate between the two kinds of writing efforts I describe above.

Those engaged in functional, utilitarian writing- say, for sales or corporate or legal copy- are likely to find genAI useful more easily, and embrace it more readily.

Most of the resistance, on the other hand, comes from those who write for expression, storytelling and- dare I say it- pleasure.

By no means do I mean to belittle the first set, much of that is central to many industries, and many fine creative folk are involved in them (yours truly not excluded). I do feel that this first category (and the people who are in that line of work) are already showing a certain comfort in slipping to the median in favour of speed or ‘efficiency’.

What couldn’t be done, what had to be outsourced, or was tedious to do, can now be banged out with an LLM. It’ll be ‘good enough’.

On the other hand, there are those who write to flesh out their thoughts, craft a narrative, tell a tale, make a unique point, say something fresh (or say something freshly). Many of them might even overlap with the first bunch, believing (as do I) that text that’s written, not generated, has a fundamentally better chance of being effective / achieving the objectives it is intended for.

Now this group? It is less likely to see the value in handing over the pen to a predictive machine, and clutch their own pen more passionately.

But these are merely my musings. What about your world? In marketing, B2B, advertising, promo work, content management, branded entertainment; is what you are seeing different, or does this sound all too familiar?

4. This Week That Year

This is The Colour Bar, so I feel compelled to briefly note something about the Colour Television this week. Here you go.

➕ Quick Hits

1. In a pretty significant deal, YouTube and FIFA have teamed up for the upcoming World Cup, making content available to creators, unlocking the FIFA archives, and opening up Youtube for broadcasters as well.

2. X fla Twitter ‘revealed’ their algorithm some time back. Nelson Fraser, columnist for The Times UK, analyses it and argues X is an engagement-driven engine that polarises users by heavily favouring outrage and argument.

3. Don’t Steal This Book is the title of a symbolic book released by authors in the UK, as a protest. The list of nearly 10,000 authors include Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory, Mark Herron and Richard Osman. This was another call for the UK government to not choose the so-called ‘preferred path’ of letting AI firms use copyright-protected work without the owner’s permission– unless they have actively opted out. Composer Ed Newton Rex brought it together.
   Subsequently, there was a “u-turn” of sorts from the government, agreeing to open up to all other options. Not a win by any stretch, yet.

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

Then, there’s a new docu on the end of the world (maybe), a handy AI roundup, Meta India rapping in Tamil and more.
This is The Colour Bar- a collision of brands, creativity and media.

1. Open Up!: Chupa Chups, and liking blunders

2. AI Watch: · a new docu · Sora’s flop · Bollywood FaceSwap ·

3. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Aston Martin powered by AI · Meta Raps in Tamil ·

4. AI watch: Sora’s flop, Sony’s AI spy, Eros swaps faces, Linkedin’s promise.

5. ➕ another Netflix music thing · studios for creators · Indonesia’s Tiktok blow ·

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

1. Open Up!

aka Chupa Chups are annoying.

If you are young enough, or have young kids, or have had young kids, you will know well the weird, inexplicable, head-shaking infuriation of…

… opening lollipop wrappers.

In particular, Chupa Chups. Seriously popular, seriously annoying. The kind that make you go “humans have reached the moon but can’t make a lollipop wrapper that peels off easy?”

But wait. A step back.

There is a psychological phenomenon where highly competent people become more likeable after committing a minor blunder. This ‘Pratfall effect’ was coined by American psychologist Elliot Aronson in the 1960s. The idea is that perfection can be intimidating, suppress warmth. But minor imperfections can humanise excellence, restore warmth without destroying status.

“Competence makes people appear worthy of respect, and making a mistake makes them relatable.” ^

Brands have leveraged this as an approach- to humanise, be more relatable or just add some self-deprecating humour and endear themselves to consumers.

So. I don’t know if it’s a stretch, but you could say Chupa Chups heard all the whining about their wrappers, and asked someone to hold their beer. Then… it made wrappers that are not difficult, but IMPOSSIBLE to open.

This most unopenable lollipop ever is a ‘limited-edition product’, available to influencers (of course), who will validate this over-engineered piece of candy clothing.

But surely that’s not all?

Yes- Chupa Chups has, actually, made wrappers that are easier to open. Finally! Hallelujah! Except they have, in this stunt, wrapped those in ridiculous weapons-grade covering. But that’s all this is, a stunt. Which means we can all hope to find slightly less annoying lollipops in the market soon.

“This is one of those stupidly brilliant ideas, where doing the complete opposite to what you should do is the obvious answer,” _Felipe Serradourada Guimaraães, ECD at BBH.

The Pratfall effect has a good history of brand usage, so I couldn’t resist giving a quick look at some others.

Domino’s famously showed radical transparency when it publicly acknowledged customer complaints that their pizza tasted “like cardboard”, and promptly relaunched the recipe.
Guinness cleverly made the slow pour into a virtue. It might take a while to pour a pint, but hey, “good things come to those who wait.”
Duolingo of course, embraces it’s own annoying owl, believing they can convert well-known irritation into shared humour.
Ikea has leaned into the jokes about its self-assembled pieces.

Way back, Listerine’s original mouthwash (medicinally unpleasant, to put it mildly) accepted its fault and simply sold on the idea that “anything that tastes that bad has got to work.”

Anyway, let’s all patiently wait for our neighbourhood mini mart to get that great invention of humankind: a lollipop that can be unwrapped easily.

2. AI Watch

First off, a documentary that seems all too timely.
Here we have the utility-meets-cheeky title ‘The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist’.

From what I can tell, it looks to address the difficult balance many are trying to find between robots ending our world, or at least LLMs crushing our cognition, with the hype around AI and how our lives are going to be enriched in ways we can’t comprehend.

“Collapse of humanity,” “abrupt experimentation,” “is now a good time to have a kid?” “there’s so much potential… for things to go wrong”, “the most extraordinary time ever.”
With bites like these and interviews with leaders from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind and more, there’s likely something for everyone here. Though hopefully, the result is not a vanilla soup of ‘everyone has a valid POV’.
Somehow, I don’t think so.

It does come from some serious pedigree- the Oscar-winning filmmakers behind Navalny and Everything Everywhere All At Once produce-direct a film with the log line:
“A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with all this AI insanity. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a hand-made, eye-opening documentary about the most powerful technology humanity has ever created... and what’s at stake if we get it wrong.”

They thoughtfully have the definition of apocaloptimist readily available too. This is helpful, considering its a made up term.

a·poc·a·lop·ti·mist(noun) : a person who believes that even though we are currently racing towards the worst possible outcome, there’s still a chance we can get our sh*t together.

It also comes with two entirely different looking posters, if that sort of thing pleases you.
In theatres soon, which means most of the world that does watch, will watch it on Netflix.

More AI nuggets.

1. Recently, I touched briefly on how Sora2’s user-focussed app was becoming a bit of a damp squib. Patrick Wilkens breaks down how it has been an utter flop- $15 million a day in costs, $367K a month in revenue. His post also has this nugget, which is absolutely spot-on, “AI video generation is not a consumer social product. It’s a B2B production tool.“ (service, I say)

2. Google has acquired Producer AI, a generative AI music platform that will join Google Labs. Using-amongst others- Google’s Lyria3 model to generate music, it will continue Google Labs’ focus on “enhancing human artistry, enabling exploration and expression.” Or as James Pero over at Gizmodo says, to enable us all to “lob prompts at the chatbot like, “make a lofi beat,” and watch as it snatches the joy of creation straight from your misguided hands.”

3. Still on music: Sony has made an AI music detection tool. It can identify the underlying tunes used in tracks generated by AI, paving a potential path for writers, composers to claim compensation. It’s unclear how (or why) AI services would integrate this, seeing as they are (largely) built on legally questioned modes of training and data.

4. Linkedin is promising to keep our comments sections authentic. With the deluge of bots and LLM generated comments, this is a very welcome promise.
   Lets hope its effective.

5. The Eros Universe has been launched, as the Indian production, distribution, technology company looks to provide a “rights-led creator economy platform”. Eros has a huge film library (~12000 titles) and with ‘clearance’ for gen-AI use, this could provide a lot of scope for creators. What exactly they can/will do with it, remains to be seen. The company itself shared this, erm, Face Swap feature, as a teaser of what a game changing ‘AI powered cultural ecosystem” could look like.

3. Curated/Cuts

· No Roads

Amidst all the generative AI grandstanding from fly by night users, its always refreshing to look at how elements of the technology are actually being integrated into production workflows. I have written before about Marey by Moonvalley / Asteria, the model being built by/for filmmakers and VFX artists, founded on cleanly sourced data.

Paul Trillo and the Asteria team worked with the Aston Martin FI team for this spot at the end of the last season, where the brief apparently was, “to go places where there are no roads.” It’s a cool spot, but arguably the workings are more fascinating - bringing together miniatures, 3D modeling, VFX and generative rendering.

The breakdown is here ; they could control every single frame on the timeline married to the AI workflow. No ‘prompt and hope’ stuff here.

You might recall- I had shared ‘Cuco’ sometime last year. Also by Trillo, that piece used generative AI to give life to hand drawn artwork, bringing together artist and musician.

As Trillo says, “where is the fun in prompting your way through this?”

· Believers Succeed: Meta India

Meta for Business has this short to targeted at small businesses. Hyper local, made in Tamil, and tapping into many nuggets that will appeal directly to the target audience. No translations, dubbing or ‘vubbing’. Nice storytelling, and hey- star power helps!

They say it was “built to celebrate every SMB owner who chose belief over doubt’, because Nambuvar Vellvaar (Believers Succeed) 🤞.

➕Quick Hits

1. Youtube is TV. But this has also meant that creators are now studios- at least the successful ones who have made sustainable businesses of it. Here is another step in bringing the TV world and Youtube world together, in the US the Whalar Group has launched Lighthouse Studios to “build a TV-like schedule of creator content.”

2. Indonesia’s social media ban for Under-16s begins on March 28th, making it the “first non-Western country” to do so. Jim Louderback is calling it ‘the ban that breaks Tiktok’, because it is TikTok’s No.1 global market (also Facebook’s second biggest after India, and is in the the Top 5 for YouTube & Instagram). Crucially he says, TikTok Shop generated $13.1 billion in Indonesia in 2025. I knew Indo was a big market, but that’s one whopper of a number.

3. More music to Netflix: the streamer will air Harry Styles: One Night in Manchester, the day after he performs his new album to a sold-out crowd.

The Colour Bar has plenty else lined up too, because it’s like a friend in the industry who reads widely- so you don’t have to.

1. Samuel’s Story: a 10 year old, sketches, and virality.

2. Not Premflix!: Thoughts on EPL’s foray into streaming

3. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Volcanic vodka & an excessive car

4. Oh Sh*t: Enshittification, personified.

5. ➕ The Joker as your CD · Netflix’s boxing affair · Sarandos on walking away from WarnerBros.

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

If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches straight to your inbox, or over on Linkedin.

1. Samuel’s Story

Samuel is an animated series about a 10 year old boy and his monologues about growing up. It spans 21 episodes, about 4min each.

It looks charming, as I watch the Netflix trailer. But the interesting bit is how it got here. This is not a Netflix original.

Back in 2020, not long after graduating from animation school in France, and while working at a studio, Émilie Tronche started uploading sketches and shorts to Instagram and Facebook. These were personal experiments in storytelling, on the side.

The first came with the simple note, “I present to you a short film I made over a week and a few days, it’s called ‘Samuel’.”
Three more followed. Made in the matter of days, they bore a creative approach looking for something “as real as possible, as true as possible.”

A studio producer spotted these, reached out. Shall we develop a series?

“I thought it was always going to be something that I was doing on the side. I thought producers couldn’t be interested in it because it was too simple.”

‘Samuel’ was officially presented and picked up at the Cartoon Forum in September 2021. French, Spanish and Catalan streamers came on board for the co-production soon after.

A deliberate two-platform strategy was devised. The 21 ‘main’ episodes, in 16:9, were for streaming/TV. Accompanying them were 20 one-minute clips- specifically created for Tiktok.

These were companions, not cutdowns. And social media loved them.

Millions of views later, Tronche had a bona fide mainstream hit in 2024, both on streaming platforms and social. By all accounts, Samuel’s coming of age had touched young and not so young, alike.

But that wasn’t all. A book followed in 2025, Le Journal de Samuel. A second season was commissioned.
Then, Netflix picked it up for the US + select territories. It launched a few weeks ago.

What’s not to like- this here is a strong story about a young, expressive creative, and a sharp content strategy. Inspiring for indie animators.
Originality, a genuine story, effort, luck and smarts.

“Samuel was born from my own memories of childhood and adolescence in France, from something very intimate and personal.”

One thing.
Some of the commentary around it reframes the story primarily through a social media prism. Making this a ‘creator economy first’ narrative. From what I have read, this series did not happen through a purely social-first funnel. Tiktok virality did not trigger the production deal. The production strategy intentionally created Samuel for the TV screen and for Tikotk, from the outset.

Netflix? It had the easier decision- there was both social and streaming success to encourage its acquisition.

I’m all here for a great indie creative story, which this surely is. Less keen to have the narrative usurped.

Kudos to the first producer who spotted it- Damien Megherbi of Les Valseurs; the streamers/broadcasters- Arte, RTVE and TV3 CAT3- many broadcasters/legacy media want to do multi-platform approaches, but not all succeed, it is a hard one to crack.
But most of all kudos to Samuel’s creator- Émilie Tronche.

The only problem? It’s not available in my region. Bah! Come on Netflix- few cents top-up for worldwide rights?

“The first thing that I wanted to do was something for me and also for my family.
I wanted my parents and my sisters to like it.”

Did you come across the little brouhaha around the Wuthering Heights movie and Margot Robbie wearing Liz Taylor’s Mughal diamond to the premiere?

I write an eclectic and curious newsletter called Coffee & Conversations- over there I dove into a story of four women, four centuries, one trinket. Have a read.

coffee & conversations

Diamonds & Dust

Hearing a stray comment, being oblivious to Hollywood history, clued out from recent outrage. These came together to push me into a swirl of eras, cultures and aesthetics. I found myself with stories within stories, on paths in history, some important, some stray; straddling stature and frivolity, glamour and grace, meaning and imagination…

Read more

3 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Abhishek Rao (Shakey)

2. Not Premflix!

Premier League Plus. First off, can we all agree that the Premier League have done everyone a huge favour by not naming their new upcoming streaming service Premflix, a term used liberally over the months to refer to its bubbling streaming efforts.

Yes?
Ok, great. Lets move on.

“At a basic level, it just makes sense.”
For years now, many of us have had the conversation about how sports bodies can go direct to fans. These chats start animatedly, drifting into rights cycles, ARPU, bundles, churn… and end with someone saying, “this makes so much sense for them,” and others sagely nodding over their mugs of various liquids.

Then someone else says, “BUT-!”

Now, it’s actually happening. The Premier League is launching a DTC service in Singapore. ‘Premier League Plus’ has its first market. A test market, we are told.

The logic has always seemed intuitive, straightforward. For the sport. For fans. Especially in markets where bundles have felt progressively heavier. Owning the relationship “just makes sense”.

But the counterpoint has always been ready too.

Broadcasters have written big, guaranteed cheques. Rights growth might be plateauing in some markets, (in fact, overall broadcast revenue was reportedly up 27% in the latest cycle)- but the revenue is predictable.

DTC brings volatility. Lower revenue at the start. Puts plenty of onus back to the league.

Fan expectation will likely be disproportionately high relative to the commercials. They’ll expect it to cost less- otherwise, what’s the point? And they’ll want flexibility- sachet pricing, team passes, game-by-game options. Not another full-season, upfront commitment.
Plus, any disappointment will be targeted to the league, not some evil telco or old TV channel.

As the EPL CEO rightly notes, they are “going to have to deal with promotion, pricing, churn, distribution, all of those things, we’re looking to build a business.”

So it’s easy to say “ah, inevitable.” Much harder to execute without some significant ripples in the ecosystem. Even with this ‘test’ mode, many firmly believe this will “cause shockwaves throughout the game as the world’s biggest domestic football league moves to directly control its revenues without the need for a broadcast partner.”

This is also being done in partnership with the current rights holder in Singapore, local telco/broadcaster StarHub. The intricacies around that deal are, erm, an interesting parallel track to consider.

Either way, this is another reason for many of us on the sidelines to grab some popcorn later this year.

3. Curated/Cuts

· Absolut x Tabasco ·

An unlikely collab. Or maybe not?
I have seen some “ewww” reactions at Tabasco-flavoured vodka. But hello- Bloody Marys, anyone?

The spot itself is suitably off-kilter.
Filmed on the volcanic fields south of Reykjavík, Iceland:
- Lava
- Volcano
- Hazmat suits
- Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’
- The inevitable yet welcome Absolut bottle made of lava flow.

So what do you reckon- Happy Hour or stay sober?

· Brand Filip Kiisk · Agency Freddy Taylor · Hermeti Balarin ·
· Directed by Leigh Powis · ProdCo ·

· Everything is Essential ·

Here are “3 excessive films for one excessive car.” From Uncommon Creative Studio, these are for the UK launch of Chinese hybrid car-maker Omoda’s latest.

To cover the Omoda 7’s 745-mile hybrid range in one tank + charge, serious interior noise reduction and in-car fragrance (erm, yeah), they chose to go all sensory. Everything has been done in camera. Everything real. I mean, there's water, snow, wind, flowers, and cats. Lots of cats.

252 claws.14 cat handlers. 279 takes. 3 flower varieties. 82,000 petals. 20,786 leaves. 12 fans, 6 canons.

Ok then! 3x clips here back to back.

Director Bleu Desert ·
Editor Antonin Brones · Soundtree Music / Neil Athale · Uncommon: Laura Hutchison · Duncan Clark · Omoda: Matthew Upton · Eric Knight · Yuwei Xue ·

Fun BTS here!

4. Oh, sh*t.

It is pretty incredible how Cory Doctorow’s made up term ‘enshittification’ has become such an integral part of discourse on tech products and services, and digital life in general.

This amusing short video goes ahead and gives it a persona.
Most of us will connect with some part of it; many will find much of it hitting home.

It comes from the Norwegian Consumer Council- accompanying a report they just launched. Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future attempts to show how this phenomenon affects both consumers and society at large, delving into enshittification and how to resist it.

A better digital world, the report says, “requires rebalancing the power between consumers, big tech companies and alternative service providers.”

Doctorow’s original essay that brought the word into the ether was about Amazon, back in 2022- you can read it here. He then wrote a book with the same title, and the world has embraced the word.

Back in 2024 he said, “The most gratifying part of the public attention for my dirty, silly little word is that it is attached to a deadly serious, complex, nuanced critique of platform capitalism, monopoly, the tech labor market, and regulatory capture.”

➕ Quick Hits

1. So the Warner-Paramount-Netflix saga seems to have come to a conclusion. For now. Lucas Shaw has an excellent rapid fire Q&A with Ted Sarandos, worth a quick read. He also wrote up the whole saga.

2. Netflix likes boxing. They just announced a ‘rematch’ of legends, but its a big one- Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao coming up in September. Ta-dum!

3. The Joker as your Creative Director, Batman is the client. This is The Dark Knight for Marketers. Amusing.

If you enjoy reading The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one?

Its boring.

Every couple of months, a new 30sec video is meant to wow us. Then, more clips from AI Filmmakers are used to signal a creative apocalypse or creative utopia (choose your lane). I am not belittling the progress being made, (and definitely not including here the very valid ethical and copyright concerns which we *should* harp on as much as needed)…

…but really, I am now having to consciously tell platforms to stop serving me so much of the same breathless, hyperbolic, shallow commentary.

Ok, rant over.

But yes- this week has plenty of AI-related stuff bouncing around, like a ball chipping bricks in Arkanoid.

1. Same same: what happens when prompts give the same output?

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Claude gets cheeky, OpenAi wants to be meaningful.

3. What to watch?: Jiostar & OpenAI’s promise to make discoverability natural.

4. Buying Belief: AI services, influencer marketing & writing

5. First Person Goodness: the drone legacy of Milano Cortina

6. ➕ OpenAI sued in Korea, Indian originals dip, the importance of news.

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you, or here on Youtube.

1. Same same but how different?

With all the talk about how generative AI can dramatically open up creative vistas, comes the very real counterpoint- they can just as easily narrow creative possibilities. Across the creative and brand ecosystem, there are growing conversations whether creative standards, ambition and quality are moving in step with the pace of generative technology, or merely settling for it.

Somewhere Down Under, Springboards.ai is building “generative AI tools around a creative workflow to keep humans in the creative equation.”

In a recent project, they ran a creative experiment of sorts. It involved taking ‘inspiration’ from an existing ad to create a new one, asking “what happens when everyone feeds the same prompts into an LLM and ends up with the same ideas?”.

You might recall the ChatGPT spot from OpenAI late last year, one of a few that looked to plonked the LLM right into our normal lives. Here it is:

And now here’s the Springboards ‘rip-off’:

Ah, now you see what they were doing, yes?

With a view to “showing how quickly these models can generate work that appears finished, but frequently crosses copyright lines and collapses into familiar patterns,” the group were led to three conclusions:

• In the process of ‘creating’, it becomes tempting to stop exercising creative judgement altogether.

• Research suggests LLM are starting to sound the same.

• “Judgement gets blindsided”- easily replicated high production values can lead to originality and nuance being lost.

They’ve unpacked their thinking here.

While keeping in mind this comes from a company itself building generative tools, it’s a useful reminder- adoption without judgement is just acceleration. We really don’t want the creative cost (and creative loss) showing up later.

2. Curated/Cuts

Claude Picks a Fight

Another AI campaign that resists grandiosity, opting instead for mischief.

Anthropic’s Claude aired three spots around the Super Bowl circus. They chose to not talk about inspiration, intelligence or the future of humanity; instead, they homed in on a looming pain point from rival ChatGPT, making it their own virtue:

Ads.

The premise is simple enough. The spots are setI in therapy, while working out, at a casual founder pitch. These are focused, critical, even vulnerable moments.

And then an ad barges in?
Interrupt the wrong moment and you do not just annoy- you intrude, you betray.

"Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude." This is bold. And clear.

Comparative advertising is a gamble. It can look insecure, or amplify the rival. But this calculated swing was enjoyable. It’s shorn of gloss, it’s funny, and it’s a pointed observation- do you want something so close to your life becoming ad-supported?

(It does assume the audience is paying attention to the industry. Many mainstream viewers will not know about ChatGPT’s product roadmaps, and ads are so intrinsic to our daily digital lives anyway. But the tech-leaning crowd will know, and they can be the tastemakers.)

As we saw in the recent AI Summit in India- where Altman and Dario couldn’t bring themselves to grasp hands on stage- the gloves are not fully on.

Claude is saying it’s the AI tool for our most personal, meaningful, even intimate moments. Let’s chuckle at the creative, but also pause to ponder that claim.

This continues, too, the wider theme in AI brand building- be human, warm, relatable, companionable.
All while selling industrial-scale infrastructure.

for Claude: Susan Payne · Director: Jeff Lowe ·
Production: Biscuit Filmworks · Ruper Reynolds Mclean · Music Sup: Sean Hogan ·

Starting With…

Talking of trying to be warm.
In the very 21st century tradition of representing both sides, let’s have a look at ChatGPT’s recent spots. They continue the tone and feel of that campaign from last year- real, everyday, relatable. In showing us where it can take us, they hope to be seen again as an invaluable, even fundamental, part of life.

Overall, the creative choices work- stay simple, eschew hype, be rooted, and with fluid execution.

There are two spots from India too, timed for the T20 World Cup (where Google Gemini is a partner). The connections are more tenuous, the believability not quite there, so these work less well for me- even though the music choices are very cool.

3. All couched-up and nothing to watch.

Shows, shows everywhere and not a title to pick.

The universal problem of plenty that unites couch potatoes* across the world- how to find what you don’t yet know you want to watch (and not find what you will know you don’t want to watch)? Friends? Word of mouth? How 2000s of you.
Ideally we all should just implicitly and wholeheartedly trust our streamer’s recommendation engines (not). But a boy can hope for other solutions.

For streamers and viewers alike, discovery is the real battleground.

Enter India’s JioHotstar (formerly hotstar/ Disney+/ Jiocinema). A recent announcement comes accompanied by euphoric choir music because it talks of a magical solution- their partnership with OpenAI to allow viewers to use “conversational language” to find what they can watch.

Voice/text interface. Multiple languages. Express intent or mood conversationally. Context-aware recommendations.

Sounds compelling. I would love to give it a go.

It will interpret cultural nuance, situational context and layered prompts. Sample this very quirkily niche example- “We are twins and only watch movies about identical twins,” (not quite sure how that made it into the release). But basically- ask and you shall receive. The same approach will in time extend to sports- think highlights, scores, player moments, turning points. That’s very promising indeed.

Beyond in-app experience, the collaboration will also see integrations within ChatGPT. Users looking for entertainment recommendations will receive “contextual suggestions and relevant streaming links from JioHotstar’s catalogue.”
That sounds more placement, less discovery. Will ChatGPT always give me a JioHotstar recommendation, ahead of competing titles from other platforms?

I’d love to see user feedback when this has properly launched.

*we don’t really say ‘couch potatoes’ much now, do we? Not because we aren’t potatoes anymore, (I am, on good days); but because we don’t watch only on the couch anymore? so…watch potatoes? Scroll potatoes? Binge potatoes?

get me a coffee?

4. Buying belief: humans wanted?

Influencer marketing is just regular life. Having creators in the marketer’s arsenal is standard. What many of us may not grasp though, as we doomscroll through laughs, opinions and how-tos, is the shape and scale of these collaborations.

Recent reports shine a light on how Big Tech has been deploying this machinery for its AI products. Content and posts, but also junkets, events, early access.

The intent? Transform attention to adoption. Impress. Amuse. Trigger FOMO.

There’s been some arm-waving, particularly around the amount of money being thrown behind these efforts- “Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are paying influencers up to $600,000 to promote AI.”
This is not inherently sinister, and needn’t be misread for anything more than what it is- smart, expected marketing. Amplification.

And yet.
The scale makes people pause. AI is not a new sneaker drop or headphone. These are ‘tools’ being positioned as cognitive infrastructure. So when the messaging around them is pushed through glossy demos, frictionless life hacks, breathless ‘agentic’ workflows, it is worth keeping a healthy pinch of salt handy.

Relatedly, there has also been chatter about the increased role of Comms and ‘storytellers’ in these organisations (an example- Anthropic tripled its team to 80, and is still hiring). A BI article tells us the hottest job in tech is “writing words”. They’re looking for narrative control, as “the rise of slopaganda is fuelling a surprising tech hiring boom”.

Many see a distinct irony in how the companies offering tools to automate writing and creating, are valuing those very skills so highly… in humans.

Generating words and writing them, it would appear, are not quite the same thing.

5. First Person Goodness

The Winter Olympics Milano Cortina just wrapped. I can’t say winter sports are staple watching in our home, and I’ll be honest- my skiing skills, though brilliant, are limited to 90s video games. But the Olympics come with their own appeal, so some viewing happened here in our sunny climes.

And when we watched, one thing stood out big time (for clarity, I don’t mean the royal ‘we’, but me and the family).

The incredible POV drone footage. It really swooped us into the action, the hillsides, the tracks. Yes, drones are not new to sport anymore- but there was something about these FPV drones, in those settings, that really raised my viewing experience. Sports coverage is prone to the odd gimmick, but this here is no mere novelty. These cameras, these angles, this dynamism (and these skilled operators) are here to stay.

As you might imagine, flying these drones in such dynamic settings can be a challenge. Custom builds. Lack of pilots. Radio frequencies. Weight.
Hop over here for a brief peek into how much of a challenge it can be, with OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris talking about Milano Cortina’s ‘drone legacy’.

➕ Quick Hits

1. TV networks in Korea have sued OpenAI for using their content for training, saying, “OpenAI has refused any negotiations with the three broadcasters and continues to maintain discriminatory copyright policies.”

2. The volume of Indian streaming originals is at its lowest since 2020, according to an Ormax report. After peaking in 2023, the category has witnessed drops of 18% and 13% in last two years. The merger of Disney+, Hotstar and JioCinema into one app has been the biggest ‘villain’ here, with the inevitable rationalising in their collective offering.

3. While many of us would readily accept the value of news, not as many might ascribe real importance to following it in a responsible, meaningful way. A recent Pew report showcases this tension in the US, one I feel will be a common tension in many regions. Half say they are worn out by the amount of news, two-thirds have stopped getting news from a specific source.

If you enjoy reading 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.

Ah- questions, questions- The Colour Bar is here with the answers. Or not!

1. Profane Coffee: How much do you like your hit?

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Is that AI, or is that real? And Happy 10th, Netflix India!

3. Attention matters: Or does it, as storytelling spoonfeeds us.

4. ➕ BTS on Netflix, song notes in Spotify, AI streamers, Content Chiefs.

1. Flat White or F**k Off

Don’t be rude, now.
Ok- maybe just a bit?

A recent pop up in London was cheeky, fun, and worth pausing over.

A few months ago, British ad man Rory Sutherland lobbed one of his trademark grenades on the Great Company podcast: the idea of a café called “Flat White or F*ck Off.”

Now turn down your nose and unfrown your brow, if you are allergic to profanity. This came from the frustration of high-traffic, low-time places like railway stations and airports. Rory figures these are not places for self-expression- you know, matcha oat milk or chai tea lattes; these caffeine consumers want speed and quality. That’s it.

It’s a fair point. So in these transitional zones, eliminate friction- this place will have one drink. A flat white. Pick it up. Pay. Leave. (For Russel Peters fans, that’s “Take it, and go”).
Want anything else? Read the sign.

The possibly clever(er) bit? When a casual consumer sees a place that does only one thing, they’re likely to think that place is very, very good at it.

Graphic designer Charlie Hurst loved the idea enough to design it, on a lark. He says he “couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun you could have with the concept,” so well- he went ahead and had some fun.

His mockups were great- channeling the hurried scrawl of a rushed barista. Inspiring enough for entrepreneur Tom Noble to not just tap ‘like’, but say, “Lets do this”*

So some time in Jan, ‘Flat White or F*ck Off’ popped up outside Tottenham Court Road station. Real coffee. Real queue. Real people smiling at a joke that also happens to work.

I wish I was there to taste it. With that sort of name- man, that had better be some seriously good coffee.

How much does this work beyond a stunt or experiment? Ah well, we can have that debate some other time. And I’ll need a coffee.

PS- a Sydney trip many moons ago converted me to flat whites (though nothing since came close to Aussie flat whites). But in recent years, I am more likely to gravitate to a place called ‘Black or Bust’. No? Maybe ‘Espresso & Exit’? ‘Black Coffee or Bye Bye’?

They sound slightly friendlier, at any rate.

*they got Sutherland’s blessing first.

2. Curated/Cuts

That’s AI, man!

We are in a park. It is cold. There is a bench.
Two men sit. They watch a young man doing backflips.
One believes he is AI. The other scoffs.
A crowd gathers. They agree with one man.
The other is indignant. What have we come to, he asks.
What indeed, you might agree.
If you were to watch this video.

In the barrage of Super Bowl ads likely infesting your feeds, and in the spirit of the first piece in this dispatch, sc***w all that and watch this instead.
What does it say? Do you care? Did you smile?

Yeah, I thought so.

No AI was harmed in the making of this film, which was filmed on film.
Also, I have NO IDEA who maximise is or what they do, or why they made this film. Not complaining!

· Written & Directed by Sebastian Lopez · EP: Maximise · Producer: Hervé Butoyi ·

10 Years of Netflix

This spot from the Tudum team celebrating 10 years in India finds the sweet spot between celebratory and cheeky, smiley and sassy, indulgent and intelligent. It gladly goes back to some solid fundamentals- wide and deep scouring of footage, a painstaking edit, and, wonderfully, a script that at different points is either clever or cute, or both.
Helps to have it narrated by King Khan himself.

Crafted by Toaster

*Pretty much works for Indian viewers only.

4. Storytelling, (dis)engaged.

Signposting. Mindless? Harmless?
The debate continues… kinda.

The tendency of modern storytelling on TV and film to spoonfeed the viewer has been a topic of repeated discussion over the last few years. The most egregious (or the most accused) in this is Netflix. With its love for data- and tailoring its stories accordingly- it is the most prone to such accusations. Essentially, it is said they encourage creative partners to cater for viewers’ assumed second-screening, by ensuring character beats and plotlines are repeated during a movie or show often enough to ensure attention-deficit watchers won’t lose the, erm, plot.

This “relentless sign posting of meaning & intent” seems to be often treated as an open secret that not many choose to engage with. I wrote a long piece on this last year- how formulas are spanning Europe, India and the US- and someone or the other brings it up every few months.

When that ‘someone or the other’, is Matt Damon, it opens up new chances for the drum to be beaten again (to be clear, it’s a drum worth beating). During a junket around the recent Netflix original film, The Rip, Damon said “now streamers are like, ‘Can we get a big [action set piece] in the first five minutes? We want people to stay. And it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”

Coleman Splide was inspired enough to rip into this creative approach, and you’d be hard-pressed to deny many of the points he raises. Unless, of course, you were on your phone while watching. Or reading. Or something.

5. About Songs

I can’t say I’ve been a fan of all the new(ish) Spotify features rolling about since last year- too many are too ‘social’ for my liking- they want us to message, have groups, post stuff, watch videos, all within the app. Music is a very communal and shared experience (or can be), so I know this is the right instinct- maybe I am just jaded from all the ‘social’ in our lives.

This new feature, though- I like the sound of it. I have literally had this conversation- how it would be cool to be able to tap into a little trivia, or a nugget or three about a song, as I listened to it. And here we are, “Spotify is rolling out a new ‘About the Song’ feature that lets users explore the stories behind the music they’re listening to.”

➕ Quick Hits

1. This is pretty big, Netflix. If you hadn’t heard, BTS is coming back. The biggest band in the world has been away for over three years, and will return with a new album in March. BUT, they will also be Live on Netflix. ‘BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE | ARIRANG’ will stream exclusively on Netflix on March 21.

2. An AI storytelling platform has launched an app for Connected TVs. Escape.ai describes itself as “a curated destination for what it calls ‘Neo Cinema’, a mix of short form films, episodic series, animation, and genre experiments created using generative AI tools alongside traditional filmmaking workflow”. Anything AI, then.

3. Forbes tries to explore Why You Should Hire A Chief Content Officer. Well, should you? “In essence, they are transforming their brands into media entities in their own right.”

   

1. Balls to virality: innovation, lethargy & oddities in new sport formats

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Oily winters & human LLMs

3. Iconic: MacOS visual design gets a slap

4. Deep,Con: Fake faces of news

5. ➕ Sora flops, music sues Anthropic, a message for NBA

The Colour Bar- that teammate who reads widely so you don’t have to.

Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play at the top of this, and let me read this to you.

1. Energy & Lethargy

I find myself frowning when I see sports being talked about the same way as, say, attention-farming on Instagram. The conflation is frustrating, especially when it inserts itself into the thinking behind new formats or entire sports. I have nothing against experimentation and building new reasons for people to play/watch/support physical activity, mind you. Where it rankles a bit is when these are grounded in beliefs like ‘dwindling attention spans’, or ‘speed over substance’ or ‘all life should be based on principles gleaned from a decade of social media indicators’.

Ok, one of those might be made up.

Then, once these are launched (sometimes with care and merit, surely)- too much of the early, even explosive ‘success on social’ is counted as a meaningful sign of long term resonance. Virality is ephemeral. Social is a barometer of a day, a week, a month; we have snapshots- often useful, sometimes instructive, occasionally meaningful. But not, simply by default, representative of societal narratives or cultural journeys.

So we have now heard of The Baller League ‘pausing’ operations in Germany, even though recent launches in other markets like the UK, were based on replicating the success of the German model. Sure, the timing/crowded nature of that market is also a factor, but it is a reminder that even models with strong backing and attractive names are not assured of success. Across the fence, though, the Kings League just raised another chunk of cash.

“There are a dozen formats that flash bright, get very loud on social, and then quietly get folded. So when people in sport say: “We just need a new format to capture youth attention,” I hear: “We want a growth hack that substitutes for long-term habit.”

Michael Broughton recently penned a good insight on the learnings to be had from some of the sports/formats/leagues that have attempted success in recent years (above quote from his piece). In spanning T20 to Spartan/Tough Mudder he is net positive, while he outlines, “why ‘contrived cool’ is a dangerous strategy.”

As is true for many consumer brands, sports that are attached primarily to personalities- not the actual product- are on shaky ground. In this celebrity and social-led thinking, there sometimes seems to be a blurring of lines between ‘good content’ and ‘good sport’. Yes, there are many linkages, but these are not interchangeable ideas. Talking of interchangeable:

Honey, I Shrunk The Tennis

If you doubted the appetite for new formats trying to muscle their way in, I present-Typti.

The racket game is presented as a mix of pickleball and tennis. Ok, right- because clearly we need to find a new game that combines an existing hybrid sport with the very sport that inspired it! That’s a mouthful.

Essentially- remixing a remix, then?

Apparently, because many tennis players look down upon pickleball (yes, they do), Typti has a good chance of wooing them over. So, because… it’s mini tennis?

Typti is played on a pickleball court, uses string rackets and foam balls- very much like tennis but smaller and lighter. You can watch what tennis look like when shrunk, here. And in case you’re still here and wondering, it gets its name from the belief that all brand names should be five letters and preferably meaningless. Ok, then.

Typti is launched by Tennis Channel founder Steve Bellamy, backed by hotel heir Tony Pritzker, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and actor Chris Pine, among others.

2. Curated/Cuts

An AI Town.

This is cheeky, cute, meaningful… and should make us consider our next prompt.

The town of Quilicura in Chile is home to many AI data centers, and is facing a serious water crisis. This spot announced that on Jan 31st, the townspeople themselves would become AI for the day, in a symbolic bid to save their water. So we were asked to kindly not us AI for “dumb stuff”.

Naysayers might call it gimmicky, or question its real impact. But hey- I am happy when creative is built to make us pause. Take a moment. Reconsider.

If then, we anyway go ahead and make a lame cartoon image of ourselves via a generator, so be it.

Oilympics

Another week, another Winter Olympics spot? Not quite.
The ‘twist’ in this one hits wonderfully the first time, early in the spot. Then lets loose and drowns us (literally) in the metaphor. Watch:

Using Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ as the soundtrack, ‘Oilympics’ from Greenpeace calls out how major sporting moments are being used to greenwash environmental destruction.

On the nose? Maybe. But they sure feel the need to be blunt with what they are fighting for. Consider this- by 2080, half the places that can host Winter Olympics won’t be able to. Because, no ice.

From the team at Studio Birthplace & Redivider.studio. Full credits here.

3. Iconic

MacOS visual design gets a slap

Here is an incredible analysis of the new Mac OS (Tahoe) icon system.
Me, I haven’t ‘upgraded’ to Tahoe yet, so I can’t say how these missteps play out. But Nikita Prokopov aka Niki has thoughts. Many thoughts. Pointed thoughts. Incredulous, frustrated, annoyed, disbelieving thoughts.

“It’s bad. But why exactly is it bad?”

If you like geeking into visual communication, this is for you. If you enjoy creative nitpicking, this is definitely for you. If you like well-laid out critique with a pinch of humour, this is for you. If you want to see how something that you interact with everyday is messed up, this is for you.
If you want a glimpse into how the little things mean more than a little, this is for you.

If none of those matter, and the interfaces we interact with daily are of no consequence to you, then… then yes, please move on, nothing to see here!

4. Deep, Con

News of AI deepfakes or disinformation is steadily becoming the kind of occurrence we skim past in the newsfeed. What’s more insidious though, is how we might well skim past or engage with these deepfakes- increasingly oblivious to the fact that we are, indeed, being conned.

With our daily lives rushing by, such constructs often stay theoretical, or mock-ups. Till ‘meaningful’ examples pop up, with the ability to showcase the real potential. Recently, this happened with a well known newscaster, a semi-political figure, and a political tinderbox.

Yalda Hakim (BBC, Sky). Aleema Khan, sister of jailed former Pakistani PM Imran Khan. India & Pakistan.

Hakim spoke with the sister about her brother’s imprisonment, and soon a clip from the interview went viral (especially on Indian feeds). In it, Aleema Khan boldly characterises the Army Chief Asim Munir as a “radicalised Islamist” who “yearns for a war with India”.

Except she said nothing of the sort.

The question about the war and the incendiary response, both were deepfakes. Not only was this clip shared millions of times, it even prompted the Defence Minister of Pakistan to respond to Aleema Khan. Once Yalda Hakim saw it, her attempts at clarifying the reality through statements or tweets continued to be drowned out, as this took on a life of its own on social and mainstream media.

So no, its not all harmless remixes of us dancing with friends or looking like Disney characters. Behind the cute, fun, impressive and flashy generative AI, meaningful harm sneaks in through a backdoor that we continue to leave open.

➕ Quick Hits

• A group of music publishers has filed a second lawsuit against Anthropic. Compared to the first that claimed copyright infringement on 500 songs, this alleges infringement of over 20,000 songs and is seeking $3 billion in damages.

• OpenAI’s Sora app, after a flashy start in October, is now struggling. Data suggests the app is seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending.

• Two weeks ago, I wrote about NBA’s European ambitions. Here’s Callum McCarthy with some words of advice for NBA boss Adam Silver.

~ From ‘Audio vs Video: formats & mediums sloshing about‘ ~

Meanwhile, the next issue of The Colour Bar is…. loading!

I have a short, anonymous survey running to help me shape the Colour Bar better this year. It’s very short (2 minutes!), so I would appreciate it muchly if you could head over here with your responses!

As the blurring of formats and mediums* powers on, The Colour Bar pokes around how video continues to devour our ‘content’ spaces.

1. Audio, meet Video: The Format Formerly Known as Podcasts?

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: A Dance of Ice & Fire + Iconic bikes in battle

3. Reels on TV: Wait, this is the TV app for Instagram?

4. Vertical Disney: more scrolling, yay!

5. ➕ Youtube 2026, Spotify’s future, Prompt stealing!

The Colour Bar- like a friend in the industry who reads widely so you don’t have to.

🎧 Prefer to listen? Hit play above to listen to me read this week’s dispatch.

* Technically the plural of medium is media, but over time ‘mediums’ has become acceptable, especially with media mostly seen as news/entertainment media. Thank you.

1. TFFKAP, or The Format Formerly Known as Podcasts?

The incredible and seemingly irreversible importance of video in the world of Podcasts is now a given. All podcasts worth their salt are expected to have a video equivalent, firstly as an attempt to become part of the podcast explosion that Youtube has muscled its way into; and secondly to provide memorable clips for Reels & Tiktok & Shorts.

This means that the much touted ease of ‘sitting down and starting a podcast’ is rapidly falling by the wayside. It also means many pods seem now to be always on the lookout for that snappy line, that controversial excerpt, that tantalising blurb which works so well for thumb-stopping. The research/opinion/personality that was enough for most pods, now additionally needs production values, social strategy and muscle.

Alas! Our democratisation, as we have seen all too often now, needs an investor.

Look at me, waxing on this back in 2024, “if video is just going to be table stakes for podcasters, many smart & engaging minds could be discouraged or intimidated to even get into podcasting at all”.
The space has steadily been growing increasingly crowded, becoming ever more complex. With the pre-eminence of video, the essentials of what was proudly and organically an audio-only format are dissolving into a more ‘TV’ approach. Plus, the flood of ‘Clipping’ across formats could push long, rich podcast episodes into mere clip factories (whether sustainably, remains highly questionable).

“Netflix’s foray into the vast, strange, and increasingly confusing world of podcasting, now swung so deeply into video territory that its arrival on Hollywood’s biggest streaming service feels less like a category violation than it might have just a few years ago, when the medium was still defined by an audio-first shape and RSS feeds.”

As it may now seem inevitable, Netflix entered the space last year, but this podcast foray can actually be framed as part of its battle for the big screen with Youtube. Which, in many ways, should also be seen as a battle for ‘lean back’ viewing, or day-time TV.

Nicholas Quah questions this identity crisis of sorts, arguing that everything will become Youtube in 2026.

“we’re watching these two media giants being forced to define what it is, and what it is willing to become, in response to the other. Netflix can frame its podcast rollout as experimentation or even inevitability. But what it’s really doing is opening the door to blurring whatever makes it distinct from YouTube’s user-generated universe”

While we are on it, Netflix announced The Pete Davidson Show- its ‘first original video podcast’. The show will mostly be filmed in his garage, “where all the best conversations happen,” he says, but will also hit the road.

Me: You mean, talk show?

Also, it won’t appear on any other platforms at all, including audio versions on the Apple app. You know, actual podcasts.

It hits Netflix on Jan 30, so feel free to watch the podcast or listen to the talk show.
Or something like that.

2. Curated/Cuts

· A Dance of Ice & Fire.

Snow. Fire. Trails.
The Winter Olympics are upon us, and that means we can expect some fine trailer work. The BBC Creative team continues to maintain their wonderfully creative aspirations, this time working with the consistently distinct, boundary-pushing work of Nomint and director Yannis Konstantinidis.

Even though I’m not a fan of the line “Trails Will Blaze”, there is so much that is great here. The contrast of snow and fire. The challenge of an orchestrated, tightly controlled technique (stop-motion), with a fickle, famously uncontrollable element (fire). These represent not only the production challenge, but also the effect it has on us the viewers. If you’ve somehow not seen their stunning work before, please- go, now, check it out. If you have, in some ways the marvel of what’s been pulled off here is diminished, because they spoil us with their incredible craft and ambition.

“I wish I could do it more. I’ll probably never do it again!”

The BTS for these kind of projects is always almost as much fun, so watch it here, with the full credits too.

· Bikes & Battles.

Royal Enfield x BGMI The iconic bike brand and Krafton India announced a collaboration which will see its motorcycles appear in Battle Grounds Mobile India (BGMI).
The collab is cool, and the visual spectacle in the spot is cooler. I can be persuaded when cliches (there are a fair few here) are executed with such panache!

My gripe? What happened with the Voice Over, man? Maybe its the ‘cool bikes, so cool American narration’ thought process, but it was so jarring to me.
Coming from a brand that also did this and this in the past 18 months, it feels a bit… off-note.

Shyam Vinod Ravindranathan · Production House: Hammerhead Films ·

3. Reels On TV

Right, so we heard some time in mid ‘25 that IG was plotting an app for Connected TVs.

Youtube has made its place on the big screen, and from what we hear YT Shorts are doing ok too. And, communal viewing, lean back experiences, background TV, podcasts, more long form- so many reasons Youtube seems to be killing it in the living room.

Now, while IG does not come to this ecosystem with anything resembling the Youtube content repertoire, nor viewing habits, you kindly allowed for that the premise kinda made sense.

But they’ve released this ‘Reels On TV’ commercial a few days back, and it left me feeling like maybe this app isn’t a good idea, after all. It made the whole proposition real, but also very… meh. It goes and literally replicates the IG experience onto a TV- scrolling, super short, vertical, ephemeral.

Surely that can’t be it?

And the whole communal viewing use case. Right, what’s the thinking here? How keen will people be to watch others’ algorithms? Or indeed, share their own algo-fuelled idiosyncrasies on the telly?

Dunno… despite the cute-clever scrolling technique they came up with, the spot just deflated any positivity around this, methinks.

Also, man… those sets! Most of those TVs just didn’t feel like they belonged to those spaces at all.

PS- Compulsive ad watcher Andrew Tindall gives it all a zero. He sees the product itself dying, leaving us with the unsettling possibility that if it doesn’t find its grave, he will “do a webinar in a chicken costume about how very wrong” he was.

Relatedly,

• Substack- that dear haven for writers, journos, bloggers and wordsmiths- is leaning even more into video- they have a TV App too! Wait what? I won’t explain why because I am not sure I can. Or want to.

• Spotify- the music audio streaming service also believes video is key to the future with young people. “They want to watch videos of everything,” Daniel Ek has said.

Eyeballs, people.

4. Vertical Disney

Talking of vertical videos, Disney will have them joyously bubbling in the Disney+ app some time this year, in an attempt at “turning Disney+ into a must-visit daily destination.”

Sure, mobile has primacy in the way ‘content’ is ‘consumed’, and this could be another easy timesuck for users. I suppose my question here is intent. Does Disney expect a vertical feed ala TikTok to help keep existing customers on the platform, or to draw in new ones? I can see how the former can work to a certain extent, for those already committed to plonking the $ every month for the streaming service. And, they’d need to be proper fans.
But the rest of us whose daily diet is already dominated by (free) scrolling vertical videos, are surely not going to be lured by this feature enough to pay $15-20 a month for the privilege?

And exactly what kind of videos will these be?
Its unclear at the moment; their EVP said “everything’s on the table”, so we should expect ported social media clips, cutdowns from shows, even original content? And oh, maybe some AI generated goodness from that crystal clear OpenAI deal? If you are thinking that sounds like throwing a lot on the wall to see what sticks, don’t worry- we are reassured “it won’t be a kind of a disjointed, random experience.”

They might have some learnings from last year’s launch of ‘Verts’ on the ESPN app, though arguably sports lends itself very differently to the ecosystem.

➕ Quick Hits

• Youtube 2026: Jim Louderback has a great summary of what to take away from Youtube CEO Neal Mohan’s recent roadmap sharing.

• Spotify: Bloomberg has a pretty solid and interesting piece for the new leaders. Fun fact: the co-CEOs are literal complementary opposites: Norström means “north stream” in Swedish, and Söderström means “south stream.”

• AI: Furious AI Users Say Their Prompts Are Being Plagiarized. That’s right! “they now feel entitled to the specific prompts they use to churn out slop, as if the entire technology wasn’t based on the work of human artists that had been ingested without consent.”

If you enjoy reading The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee ☕ and help fuel the next one? Or support by sharing pieces you like!

1. Irreplaceable Instinct?: Tiktok’s tips for 2026

2. Curated/Cuts: 1984 art, Swiss sounds, Flat Earthers

3. NBA: New horizons for European basketball?

4. Creator Studio: Apple’s not so little surprise

5. Culture Check: views on 21st century US pop culture

6. ➕ Youtube vs fakers, an AI bill in India, BBC comes to Youtube

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

First, a quick nudge, dear readers.
I have a short, anonymous survey running to help me shape TCB this year. It’s genuinely quick (2 minutes!), no emails, no deets needed.

Whether you are a regular or occasional reader, I’d really appreciate the input.

Go on, give me a couple of minutes here.

1. Tiktok’s ‘Irreplaceable Instinct’

Tiktok has some advice for brands in 2026. TLDR: not virality, but connection. Sound familiar?

Here are three key themes.

1. People are craving grounding through honesty, community, and shared experience. There are phrases like “people will come to TikTok for unfiltered stories“ , and “brands showing real process and people over curated perfection”.
   Call me jaded, but this sounds terribly familiar? We seem to keep seeing new ways to push the ‘authenticity’ and ‘unfiltered’ themes, a few times every year- not just from Tiktok, but the entire ecosystem. We get it- real is good. Which would be just fine, if authentic had not been co-opted and nearly rendered meaningless by how performative and shaped it often is.

2. Curiosity becomes the new currency as audiences dive deeper into new journeys of discovery. Say what? You mean that great gift of the internet- rabbit holes. “Unexpected entry points where brands that show up thoughtfully with relevance and delight will earn meaningful attention.”
   Also, apparently “audiences are hopping out of their For You feeds to explore in the comments and search bar too.” So we don’t defer to the algo? Is FYP not the holy grail now?

3. Impulse will lose to intention as shoppers reward brands that justify the “why to buy” first. This is promising, if accurate. One of my peeves with the e-commerce aspect of social media in general is the push to ‘buy, buy, buy’, something I have increasingly resisted both in my writing and personal life. If it is indeed true that “the ‘little treat’ mindset is fading as consumers seek clearer justification for every purchase,” I welcome such intentionality in shopping.
   I wouldn’t hold my breath though, given the fundamentals such selling is based on.

I understand this is a cool-but-regular resource for advertisers and brands that all platforms do, and its bound to be self-serving. Though I would like to hear how much it actually makes sense to those who want to create, engage and connect with ‘customers’ or ‘fans’ on the platform ; or if its just me that feels jaded.

2. Curated/Cuts

· 1984

I will invariably pause for anything to do with 1984, George Orwell’s brilliant dystopian novel that refuses to lose relevance. Recently we got some striking art for a new Faber edition, from London artist Murugiah. I spotted the bold & bright illustrations and dripping paint in our very own Singaporean Japanese bookstore recently. It has been nicely showcased by Its Nice That, including some early drafts, and the interior illustrations.

· Sounds Swiss

Switzerland Tourism and Travel Switzerland partnered with French electronic music artist and producer Thylacine (real name William Rezé). The result? This little musical journey with the sounds of Switzerland. Trains, buses, boats, cable cars, birds, water all become musical notes weaving a story of the country.

Thylacine recorded and shot this across the country, spanning 16 days, taking 23 trains, 3 gondolas, 2 boats and 1 bus.

· Columbia’s Flat Earth

Is the Earth flat? This is ‘Expedition Impossible’ from sportswear brand Columbia- they have a message, an offer, and a chuckle.

“Flat Earthers, this one’s for you! Post a photo proving you’ve reached the edge of the Earth*, and get everything owned by the company”

*”The Edge of the Earth” is a visible, physical end to the planet Earth. We’re talking infinite sheer drop, abyssal void, clouds cascading into infinity. What is not “The Edge of the Earth”: A clifftop in Seattle. A cul-de-sac in Kansas. Or your buddy Dave legally changing his name to “The Edge.”

3. NBA Europe

The NBA is looking to set up a European Basketball League, with potential teams from the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester City (or not), and cities franchises from London, Berlin and Paris. The NBA’s global appeal is strong, its brand arguably the most widely resonant of the American sports, and five of the last seven MVPs in the NBA have been European. So the idea is powerful, but the devil lies in the detail.

NBA is working with FIBA on this, and it is said the league will see ($ link) 12 franchises with valuations up to $1B plus four additional qualifying teams, with the NBA (50%), FIBA, and teams all having stakes in the league.

Key resistance is from the EuroLeague, Europe’s primary club competition in the sport. Its chief says, “I truly believe that this will only hurt the status quo rather than make it better if it continues to be in a way that it has been presented.”

4. Apple’s Creator Studio

Apple’s relationship with the creative community has been a strange one in the last decade or so. I was part of the era that felt the pain of its abandonment of Final Cut Pro as a sustained pro editing software. There was distinct shift toward the casual creator, with iPhone and iPad utility taking precedence.

Now, in a not quite expected move, they have announced Apple Creator Studio, a suite of tools pretty much looking to eyeball Adobe’s suite, the Creative Cloud. While Apple still calls this “studio-grade power into the hands of everyone,” that wide target demo will include editors, photographers, musicians, illustrators, and others, built as it is for use across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Including the likes of FCP, Logic Pro, Pixelmator and others (with ‘AI enhancements thrown in), the biggest surprise for me is the price point. While not quite a like for like with Adobe (which has more, and more powerful tools), at $13/month this seems a bargain. But take for example Capcut, widely viewed as a casual video editing software. For only editing across mobile & desktop, it costs about the same for the pro version! Also, the individual one-off app purchases for most of these is still available, which makes those allergic to subscriptions quite pleased.

Creative folk probably feel a bit unsure how Apple might support these in the longer run, but there is promise.

Can’t say I ‘m a fan of those icons, though.

5. Playlist: Culture Check

You might have noticed how I’m not the biggest fan of the term, democratisation. Not because of any philosophical or autocratic leanings, but because the ‘democratisation’ of something or the other is bandied about all too freely and frequently. It is liberally positioned as a virtue, taken for an unqualified good, used and misused and abused for various narratives. As someone somewhere famously probably said, “just because everyone can, doesn’t mean everyone should”.

On a pretty interesting listen recently, I came across this:

“But it also feels at the same time where everything is possible. And so there’s no barriers. And barriers are what create cultural value.”

This, from podcast, ‘How 21st century culture lost its way’ with W. David Marx. There’s plenty other nuggets and nourishing food for thought on the pod, though it is an entirely US-focussed look at the last couple of decades in pop culture.

➕ Quick Hits

• Youtube vs AI? Big red shut down a couple of huge channels that were using AI-generated content to make fake trailers (over a billion views combined). Lets not be too quick to think this represents a wider trend, though. “What this means for the rest of all the other slop polluting YouTube is unclear. The platform is still overrun with AI-generated music, hours-long informational videos presented in a “boring” or “sleepy” style, and even veritable snuff films.”

• India and Brazil have draft bills looking to mandate that AI companies must pay for copyrighted material. Their population, diverse local language content and user base make these markets hard to ignore for the likes of OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic. Javaid Iqbal Sofi in Rest Of World argues Why India’s plan to make AI companies pay for training data should go global.

• BBC on Youtube The BBC could soon make programmes for YouTube, after being put under pressure to produce more content on the increasingly dominant digital platform. There are some murmurs how this might be a $$ deal with the platform, but nothing yet to suggest Youtube is looking to pay for original content again.

  

And so to a new year, unreliably tied to new efforts, new ideas, new beginnings even.
The Colour Bar fires up with some fun hits, and a survey to boot!

1. MTV: endings, echoes, reinvention?

2. Trippy Posters: inside Vasilis Marmatakis’ visual logic

3. AI & Music: New year, more notes

4. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Patterns of 2025

5. ➕ Grammys for album art, IGTV returns, sports photography

🎧 Prefer to listen? Hit play above to listen to me read this week’s dispatch.

A Survey

The new year is a good time to do a light tune-up for The Colour Bar. The aim is simple: keep the parts that are meaningful, earn real attention, that you really enjoy… trim anything that doesn’t.

So yes, there’s a survey. It’s short (2-3min max, really), simple, candid. I’d really appreciate you taking the briefest of diversions to fill it in.

Please give it a go! Polite answers optional.

1. Brilliant ideas & MTV.

I worked on MTV shows right at the start of my career, did much else, then more than 15 years later, became a custodian of the brand in Asia. I left it when its star was very much fading, especially in Asia- but we always found a fan, a viewer, a client, a partner who bemoaned the loss of its musical DNA, looked back on it with fondness.

Now, MTV's music efforts are largely no more. Many of our social feeds have seen a stream of eulogies from those who have grown up with the brand, or worked for it, or worked on it, or just loved it.

Re-rewind: Then, someone had the simple, brilliant idea to set up a website where you can rewind through over 10,000, 30,000, 39,000 videos from the 1970s through to the 2020s- all clubbed under an umbrella of 'MTV rewind'. You can choose ‘channels’ by decade, and it now has specials like Live Aid, TRL, Yo!, Unplugged, Headbanger’s Ball and a bunch more. AND some of those MTV idents are peppered in too!
Built by one Flex, this is a proper homage to the iconic music and youth brand, with- needless to say- zero deference to any reality TV stuff.

It’s brilliant in its simplicity- you could argue MTV could have done something as straightforward anytime in the past decade (but didn’t).

Another smart play: MTV music channels around the world faded out on Dec 31. Well done to whoever had the brilliant idea to play ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ near midnight on Dec 31st. Even though in this case ‘lots more video killed the video star’, that choice mirrored the clever pick of this song as the first to play when MTV went live, back in 1981.

The Undead: What’s an unknown brilliant idea? The ‘new’ Paramount and David Ellison are in search of one. They want to reinvent MTV.

2. Trippy posters

I chanced upon this quite fascinating chat with graphic designer Vasilis Marmatakis. He may not be a household name, but Vasilis is the man behind the striking posters for many of director Yorgos Lathimos’ films. I definitely remember being stopped in my tracks by this brilliant poster from Poor Things.

We get a glimpse into his approach, ideas and background.

Having recently watched (and loved) Bugonia, I did enjoy reading about and seeing his work again, plus this very apt description of that weird, striking font from Bugonia, “futuristic, but in a very analogue way.”

3. AI & Music (again)

I wrote about 2025 for GenAI and music back in December, a piece (and videos) that got a fair few reactions on the lines of, ‘where is music going’.

Here is another good look at the state of affairs, where Spencer Kornhaber looks at both ‘sides’ of the divide around AI and music, concluding that, “A cultural countermovement that emphasizes flesh-and-blood talent and craft seems inevitable— but so is a future for recorded music that grows more crowded and chaotic with each day.”

As music companies look to find some way forward with a series of ‘settlements’, Virginie Berger evaluated this path. Her intent is to see how some fundamental issues are being addressed (or not)- consent, remuneration, attribution- while, in fact, making copyright infringement profitable.

“Both Suno and Udio can now market themselves as “responsibly licensed” platforms, pointing to their deals with major labels as proof of legitimacy. The narrative shifts from “they stole content to build this” to “they’re innovative partners in the future of music.”

But the theft hasn’t been remedied. It’s been selectively licensed after the fact, and only for those with the power to demand it.”

4. 🎬 The Curated/Cuts Wrap

Somehow, though new years are generally a time to look forward, we sometimes enjoy looking back just as much. This draft hung in limbo through the holiday season.

Scrubbing through 2025’s Curated/Cuts, I kept an eye out for threads… and could see instincts that kept hanging around- sometimes consciously, sometimes not.

If you’ve been dipping into these curations, you’ll know this is not going to be some grand conclusion; I don’t pick these to map the state of creativity or advertising.

It’s more because something in them lingered. Craft. Oddity. Humour. Human decisions. A residual thought worth holding. Or simply, “errr… ok?!”

Also, I quote myself. Yes, let’s deal with it.

A recurring affection for handmade effort.
This is not surprising, I love when craft and vision come together.

BritBox’s quite brilliantly crafted See It Differently practically spelt it out: multiple sets, long hours, many humans. “One actor. 11 sets. 50 crew. No AI.” Was that “No AI” a flex? Maybe, but it also proclaimed: this took serious effort, and effort matters.

Channel 4’s You Go, Kids! reminded us that ambitious collaboration with young people can be messy… and worth it.

Polaroid’s gentle prodding of the digital with Analog Lives was not quite anti-tech, but very pro-texture. Claymation in BBC’s Names Will Be Made for the Women’s Euros (“made the old-fashioned way”) was so kinetic, and proudly handcrafted. While also on the isle, A Very British Tableau (John Lewis) orchestrated 100 people, 100 products, 100 seconds- for a centenary of care.

Absurdity & amusement.
I clearly have a soft spot for the odd, unresolved, even uncomfortable, or just hilarious.

A lot of it came from Asia, like Pointlessly Pointed’s Thai humour of the “deadpan, nothing’s-really-dramatic-at-all variety”, or One Tight Slap’s mockumentary style “fearless creative liberty”, or Indonesian ghosts who cleaned up their act in this far-out spot.

Elsewhere, How Do You Spell Olgabasha? opened with a preference for no radish in the salad, but that had nothing to do with anything! Trending Today, Tacky Tomorrow? employed Samuel L. Jackson to be a little braggadocious…with teeth.

Even Tilda Swinton in Be Bold, Gentle Monster belongs here, with that techno-wild rave energy. It was confusing, strange, might sweep you along or “drop you cold in bewilderment”, and both reactions would feel fair.

Here were brands letting themselves be silly, strange or mildly unhinged without apologising.

AI, but try not to get weird about it?
Grappling with AI showed up repeatedly across the year, but rarely as spectacle.

The short film Recall Me, Maybe used AI as a narrative device to explore memory, truth and acceptance, “a gentle but not entirely comfortable collision.” AI-generated Post Scarcity Blues leaned darker, embracing irony, showing us what generative AI can do, while warning us what it can do to us.

And Cuco captured the balance quite nicely- generative tools used to bend reality, while staying culturally rooted and based on artist work. The ‘how’ was as interesting as the output.

While world.org put out ‘If you’re human and you know it’, pushing its very uncertain product with a very human tone.

The AI companies also gave it a go (storytelling, not gen AI itself!). Anthropic’s Keep Thinking pushed against the idea of AI as cognitive offloading, trying instead to “bring it back to the enabler, collaborator space.” ChatGPT’s campaign stayed closer to daily life, but still as “our partner in stumbling from one week to the next.”

Both entirely human crafted, mind you.

Values, sans sermons
Work that carries weight without too much shouting? I like.

The Ordinary’s Periodic Fable skewered beauty marketing by “calling out the uncomfortable absurdity of beauty trends.” The Worst Library made harm visible with “not fiction, not exaggeration. Just data made visible.”

Channel 4’s Sorry Not Sorry doubled down on its values, without flinching.

Nike x NBNW embraced process + heritage- “to respect the past is to respect the process and the people who carry it forward.” While Adidas looked again to shift the lens away from winning and toward those who support athletes, with You Got This. A worldview that, I noted, “resonates deeply with both my life and worldview.”

Even some climate-leaning work (Burn ’Em Plants!, Motherf’n Windfarms) landed through wit, reveals and cool casting choices.

Story time
Letting things breathe: music, pacing and restraint do a lot of work across these picks.

The Dance of the Sea was a languid exercise in the ebbs & flows of youth on the Senegalese shores of the Atlantic. Whatsapp India’s nine-minute vignette was built around voice and video notes. Whatmore’s album promos earnestly rejected rockstar posturing. Even one Dapper was worth a look, turning B2B marketing into Pulp Fiction pastiche.

Shorter but no less intentional, Guinness’ A Lovely Day in America felt “like a documentary in a 90-second montage” ; Everybody Loves a Fight for Battlegrounds Mobile hadn’t a screen in sight, soundtracked by a 1956 song ; Burberry’s Postcards from London were lighter, but continually charming.

So yeah, I like pieces that don’t feel the need to rush and explain themselves.

In the end

Of course, this is no definitive list. It’s not trying to be. I just wanted a loose reflection of what consistently caught my eye- efforts that valued craft, embraced ambiguity, treated technology with care, occasionally enjoyed being strange.

But, in their way, they do reflect a year where creativity did what it always looks to- bumping into culture, commerce, belief & technology to make a point. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes awkwardly.

➕

• Grammys for album art. Specifically for album covers, the split from being part of the ‘best recording package’ category, which considers all physical materials & images, this is “an effort to recognize the impact of cover art in the digital age”

• IGTV Is Back….sorta. Get set for an Instagram Reels TV App, which seems similar to YouTube’s interface.

• Please enjoy this superb collection of sports images from 2025.

And again, please do take a quick couple of minutes to do that survey. I love surveys!

Gen AI continues to accelerate- loudly and incredibly fast; our cultural responses remain unresolved, fragmented. Tools are improving, outputs are multiplying, but the most interesting conversations aren’t necessarily about what AI can do, but what we’re choosing to do with it- and why.

I look back at my year-long forays into AI and creativity, with questions, stories and showcases. There is no resolution to the debates, but I hope to sharpen the questions. Because right now, the questions matter more than the demos.

🎧 Prefer to listen? Hit play above to listen to me read this week’s dispatch.

Generative AI & a creative reckoning.

Gen AI tools improved faster than our answers about creativity, ownership and intent did in 2025. But the year also sharply exposed what we value, fear, and maybe too easily automate in the creative process.

Dramatic, numerous announcements in AI. An endless show of generative AI capabilities. The hype cycle. The scepticism. The proud luddites.

Do they excite you? Concern you? Exhaust you? Bore you, even? A bit of all?

The choo-choo train of generative AI, powered by big ideas, bigger pockets and unfettered momentum, continues to thunder down a track that is very much forming as we go. The destination is entirely up for debate, though more shapes have formed in the mist. Whether this locomotive is hurtling to delight or doom, depends on the day of the week and who you listen to.

Despite many resounding voices on either side, no one really knows how this is going to settle.

Deluge: volume & noise

Depending on how plugged into the gen-AI scene you are (or how flooded your feed is with AI showcases) pieces like these could delight, disappoint, infuriate or worry- showing us what amazing things could be done with generative video, and the potential for misuse. Those reactions were way back in May/June; Sora and Nano Banana have made some serious strides since.

Different impulses emerged. Meta’s Vibes app, Sora2’s pure AI content app and Runway’s stream Foom, all launched around the same time, embracing convenience & quantity. There was hand wringing (including from me) about slop and farming for engagement. On the flip side, efforts like Moonvalley found their meaning in being ethical, being clean, and being shaped for & by filmmakers. I wrote and spoke about a model worth looking at.

Creations: meaningful exceptions.

Actual examples of gen AI creations probably counted in the millions, because hey- democratisation! The few I chose to share, brought something more to the conversation.

The super-shorts ‘Stormtrooper Vlogs’, featuring anonymous stormtroopers terrified of their boss Darth Vader, were noteworthy in 2025, irrespective of where you stand on the unauthorised use of characters by fans. More so in the light of Disney’s recent decision to join hands with OpenAI. Casually enjoyable, they showcase the wisdom that human creativity- always- helps technology shine. Eerily, it appeared around the same time that Disney and Universal chose to go to court over AI-driven IP theft.

Efforts like Cuco, a ‘love letter to LA’, a melding of human effort and AI tools from Paul Trillo, gave us a glimpse how bleeding-edge technologies can shape collective creative efforts. The short film ‘Post Scarcity Blues’ from Matt Zien / KNGMKR challenged us to face a dystopian future- one where the ease, efficiency and abundance that machines bring, in turn render us as lost, vacuous, irrelevant.

Recall Me Maybe, from FT was a gentle if unsettling take on AI and memory; “If you’re human and you know it” was a spot that speaks to our times. A tourism spot from Linz was weird and wild… vibes of “someone who got the paid version of a fancy gen AI tool for a week and thought ‘unlimited tokens! bring it on!’ “

Integrate: devise & deploy

Mainstream adoption had momentum. Cat Biggie from Korea was representative of how more shows are being approached. Other forays into gen AI seem to be of the “let’s do this because we can” variety. In India, a film’s ending was changed, a decade on from its initial release. Visual Dubbing showed up in Europe and India, not called Vubbing by enough people yet. Netflix got their AI guidelines out, careful and considered. They also deployed- their first use of gen AI was in Argentinian show The Eternaut.

Tension/unresolved

Through the year, I found myself often thinking of the tension that thrums between creativity and gen AI.

In a story that received many reactions, I asked, what would you make of actors instructed by AI every step of the way? I wrote and spoke about a fascinating (and uncomfortable) trend hailing from China.

Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro’s little nugget at an SDCC panel makes for a good one minute watch. Could make you think, should make you chuckle, at least! I revisited Matthew Inman, cartoonist and author of Oatmeal & Exploding Kittens fame, after a long while. This time, for his take “Let’s Talk About AI Art”.

Andrew Rosenblum explored artists who are combining traditional methods with AI image generation, in Is there a ‘right way’ to use AI in art?

“Artists using AI are in a ‘moment of negotiation,’ trying to figure out a way to use the tools in a way that is genuinely interesting and creative. But they’re struggling with the fact that AI has cheapened the value of style, once a paramount mark of artistic originality.”

Some provocations I was, like many others, moved to consider around gen AI & creativity, which had echoes of a ‘what is art’ debate:

Is it about the intent? Made to maximise engagement or made to express something?Is it the way it is made? The effort, time put into something, even the struggle (especially the struggle, for some).
Is it the experiences of the creator? Does the life they have lived give their creation soul?
Is it originality? A loaded question- originality is inspired, derived, riffed, regenerated…

Maybe we do need to first be confronted by an ocean of slop, a proliferation of easy ‘creativity’, before we can embrace those questions meaningfully, fearlessly, honestly.

While on gen AI, the movements in music have been no less significant. A very human industry is increasingly shaped by non-human volume. The Colour Bar has tracked this drift: 2025 looks like the year ‘music’s next frontier’ became ‘music’s next flood.’ In case you missed it wrote about it last week or made a video if you prefer to watch!

Disney x OpenAI

Much has been made of Disney and Open AI’s proposed deal, with the House of Mouse investing $1B in Open AI. Some claim Disney has capitulated, handing over keys to IP it has spent decades to make both beloved and valuable, and Open AI has much the better end of this agreement. Others feel it is embracing the future, being the first legacy media company to make such a meaningful bet. Worth noting that this is deal was not finalised (moved since), so much of the reaction is when taking it at face value right now.

Is this the world’s coolest Play-Doh or the world’s lamest memeslop? ^

The Ken has a less than optimistic take on this, likening Disney’s move to be yet another that is hopping onto the OpenAI bandwagon.

Disney is paying $1 billion to invest in a paradigm that fundamentally undermines the economics of premium content. This is a sign of how studios such as Universal or Warner Bros. Discovery will have to ally with a handful of major AI platforms. For those studios, the software and technical boons aren’t that important. What matters is the optionality and influence that come with being partners of tech platforms that gatekeep attention. In other words, it’s a struggle for relevance.

While it seems that increasingly, the limbo of legal appeals and the speed of the AI companies means the debate around copyright and training models might be getting pushed to the margins. The deal is being seen as a new path, “It clarifies that the AI copyright war isn’t about keeping iconic characters out of models anymore. It’s about finding the right price to keep them in.” ^

Here was a view saying “we are no longer debating training data”. So as always, break first, ask for permission (or bludgeon it) later?

It does likely mean that in a world of limited dollars more of them are going to be rehashing what’s been made than making something new; it does mean that the artist-led work of film reboots and nostalgia plays could be given way to the masses-led work of rehashes and prompted entertainment. ^

Tubi as a Blender

There is some data to show that ad-supported streaming service Tubi can lay claim to becoming a blender of creator content and ‘traditional’ content. On the Creator Upload podcast, it was suggested that viewers coming to the platform to watch creator content, also end up watching ‘traditional’ Hollywood programming.

“Somewhere between autoplay and curiosity, [they] wind up watching studio films and TV dramas.” Given more than half of Tubi’s 100m user base is Gen Z and millennial, that’s pretty compelling.

Baller League DNA

‘Baller League serves up football as content first and competition second. But does that make it the future of sport, or just a momentary thrill?’
Callum McCarthy tries to tease out an answer to the question in this piece that looks at how the upstart league has used the DNA of entertainment, while leaving open questions around how its fandom will progress.

Baller League is further blurring the lines between sports, entertainment, competition and content. The professionals of the future will have grown up with these leagues and may behave more like content creators than the robotic media-trained individuals we see today.

🎬 Curated/Cuts.

1. Wolf

I want to be friends with this wolf. A christmasy ad called Unloved. Almost entirely animated (though the human actors too are just. so. perfect.)
A wolf.
A wintry forest.
Vegetables.
A supermarket.
An old French crooner singing “Unloved”.

Giving me feels of Ratatouille and Gruffalo… this is worthy of its own spinoff show.

This is animated entirely by humans at Wizz & Illogic, though I tried to stay away from the obvious narrative of “look, no AI”. Much of the rest of the internet feels it is as good a reason as any to point out the “why?!” around AI generated commercials (cue McDonalds & Coca Cola).
I suppose, since every AI generated spot chooses to brandish its making as a badge of honour, this piece’s human crafting deserves some performative shouting too!

Dir: Nadège Loiseau Production: Divine Wizz Illogic Intermarche Brand Dir: Gweno Van Opdengem Agency Romance Paris CD Alexandre Herv

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

A very human industry is increasingly shaped by non-human volume. The Colour Bar tracked this drift: 2025 looks like the year ‘music’s next frontier’ became ‘music’s next flood.’

🎧 Prefer to listen? Hit play above to listen to me read this week’s dispatch.

1. Music & the Machines- AI isn’t just background noise anymore

2. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Iceland’s AI Landscapes & Tarantino’s Revenge via Fortnite

3. Warner x Netflix x Paramount: the deal, the drama, the HBO-shaped question mark

4. AI on The Dot: notes from a ‘neuomorphic’ creative salon

5. ➕ ESPN in Asia? Squid Game America? Whither music videos?

Music, Machines, Misfires

Back in January I wrote that music streaming service Deezer launched a new AI detection tool, revealing their new tech had already discovered that roughly 10,000 ‘fully AI-generated tracks’ were being delivered to its platform every day. That amounted to about 10% of the daily content delivered to Deezer.

Some 10 months later, Deezer has said it now receives over 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily, or 34% of all tracks delivered to the streamer. Let that sink in. (Just in September, that number was 30,000.)

Note- Deezer remains the only platform to detect and and explicitly tag 100% AI-generated content.

This came in tow with results of a survey Deezer commissioned across eight countries with 9,000 participants (done by Ipsos). Some key findings:

• 97% of the respondents failed to distinguish between AI and human generated tracks.

• 45% of music streaming users would like to filter out 100% AI-generated music from their platform.

• Maybe more hearteningly, 80% agree that 100% AI-generated music should be clearly labeled to listeners; and

• 73% of music streaming users would like to know if a music streaming service is recommending 100% AI-generated music.

Somehow, I am still having conversations whether gen-AI music is really a thing. Well, it became a thing, and is well on its way to becoming more things.

Its been quite the year for generative AI & music.

The conversation around AI and music stopped being abstract and started showing up in contracts, lawsuits, playlists… and charts. Across explorations in The Colour Bar, few themes were persistent: artists warning about erosion, tech companies insisting they’re “democratising creativity”, and platforms quietly hoping for not too many questions.

The tone was set early in the year, when I had to take a moment to absorb a stunning view from Suno AI’s CEO, Mikey Shulman.

“It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” he said, before comparing his company’s ambitions to video games. As musicians across the world gagged, he said, “the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.” In his ideal world, music should be something you “play” the way you half-play Fortnite while your friend chats in your ear. This, from a company with a “deep love and respect for music.” His message: music-making is tedious drudgery, let the machines handle it.

In February, over a thousand artists in the UK asked: what happens to a creative economy when you legalise unlicensed training? Their protest album, Is This What We Want?, was an album of silence, empty stages, unplayed instruments. A clever, devastating metaphor for what UK copyright proposals risked hollowing out, shared by the likes of Annie Lennox, Hans Zimmer, Kate Bush, Riz Ahmed and others. The matter remains unresolved, with voices across many creative fields continuing to push for what they believe is an issue of not just copyright, but the health of creative communities at large.

A different, welcome critique came from outside the Western bubble, where African voices showed how the same divide exists, about the place of AI. Concerns spanned predictable, Western-skewed biases baked into most large models, and the appropriation of music that could leave it shorn of its identity from the continent.

Synthetic Success.

One of the stranger episodes of the year was the mysteriously popular folk-rock act that materialised on Spotify, hoovered up playlist placements, and cruised to over a million monthly listeners.

The Velvet Sundown had folk-rock aesthetics, rapid growth and a profile that didn’t quite add up. Of course, it was then called “a synthetic music project”, with a description cloaked in artistic statements about pushing the edges. There were more twists in the story too.

“What may now be the most successful AI group on Spotify is merely, profoundly, and disturbingly innocuous. In that sense, it signifies the fate of music that is streamed online and then imbibed while one drives, cooks, cleans, works, exercises, or does any other prosaic act.“ from The Atlantic ·

Close on its heels, over in India, there was Trilok, an “AI-generated Indian band that wants to pair spiritual tradition with contemporary rock.” Or, if you prefer, “India’s sonic past reassembled for a future audience”. Trilok later released a music video that looks like a me-too version of Glass Beams but- incredibly- featured real humans playing the physical versions of unreal digital personas that make up the band. Phew! In creating music of the kind that already exists in a region overflowing with talent, the question always is- who needs this, why is this being done?
The answer I’m afraid, seems just wrapped in one symbol. $ .

But the synthetic success continued. Xania Monet, an AI-generated R&B artist, signed a $3m deal. Xania is actually an output coming from the words of Talisha Jones, a Mississippi poet, who uses Suno to channel lyrics into a coherent persona. We also got Breaking Rust, an AI-generated country cowboy ‘artist’, whose song Walk My Walk rippled to a slightly obscure Billboard Chart (as did Xania).

Entertainment has ever been the art of reference and illusion… which is why artists’ concerns swirl around AI’s capacity not to replace their creativity but as a potential channel for their exploitation. Van Badham

My own instinctive recoil still stands: music is emotional resonance. A song carries- in whatever measure or shape- someone’s lived experience, or pain, or joy, or the weird in-between, or sometimes something much more trivial. But real. A song generated via an optimisation loop feels opportunistic, hollow… and utterly unnecessary in my life.

But if the tunes are kinda your thing, are you ok with them playing in your ears and your living room? Or does provenance matter? Wherever you might stand, these are undeniably all shadows of a new ecosystem, where being a human artist is no longer the default.

Platforms & Guardrails.

The thing is- a lot of music is consumed passively on streaming platforms, with playlists and suggestions leading the way. That’s where a lot of AI generated music finds it easy to slot in, arm in arm with the realities of ‘perfect-fit’ playlists and ‘ghost artist’ supply pipelines.

Spotify’s response to this chaos was…underwhelming? Their newly announced measures to deal with AI-generated content largely shift responsibility onto artists/providers to self-label their work.

There was the UMG–Udio saga: a lawsuit that morphed into a partnership with a very 2025 outcome- a walled-garden AI music platform. Udio can now access UMG’s catalog (only with artist opt-in), but users can only listen to their re-somethinged creations within that platform. No downloads. No exporting. Cue outrage from users whose worldview has been shaped by years of “the internet owes me free derivative content.”

Meanwhile, Warner Music has found a settlement with Suno (the other big labels are still in litigation), with the need for artists to opt-in. What that means for the existing training off artist music, I can’t tell.

Suno, for its part, represents the wider ‘content’ and ‘engagement’ play that much of tech & entertainment have become. This, from their investor deck, “Suno creates an entire Spotify catalog’s worth of music every two weeks”.
Its volume as virtue.

[AI] produces content at volumes and speeds no human can match, and — crucially — it produces content that people will accept as real enough to give their attention to. That’s the breakthrough: not that AI makes better “music,” but that it makes acceptable “music” at an unlimited scale. Jeffrey Anthony

Which brings us neatly back to Deezer’s numbers. 10,000 AI-generated tracks a day in January; 50,000 by October. A third of daily uploads. We don’t know those numbers for Spotify or Apple Music, but they’re unlikely to be vastly different. And most listeners can’t tell the difference. They’re not supposed to. Platforms continue to be quite happy with quantity over clarity, and many listeners will hum along obliviously.

80% of listeners want AI clearly labelled (note- clearly!) and 73% want to know when algorithms are pushing it at them. I hope this is representative of a wider desire for conscious listening. But it shows the real tension that 2025 seems to have forced into the open. We have splashed past “can machines make songs?”, and we are now swimming in the deep about who benefits, who gets erased, who gets compensated, and who gets inundated.

Maybe the questions are much simpler.
As many fans say, ”who asked for this?”, or “why do we need this?”

🎬 Curated/Cuts.

1. Iceland’s AI landscapes

Wait, what- Iceland is AI generated?

If it looks too good to be real, then it probably isn’t? In a time where the doubt and mistrust about pretty much anything we see online is getting into third gear, Iceland Air concurred with the social media quip, that the country might be entirely AI-generated.

Director: Reynir Lyngdal · Production: Republik

ECD: Emils Lukasevics · Agency: Kubbco

2. Tarantino’s Revenge

Tarantino’s Kill Bill appetites were never sated. Here is a trailer for “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge”, an animated short that is part of the limited-run release of ‘Kill Bill The Whole Bloody Affair’.

The short is also out on Youtube, already. Starring Uma Thurman, it saw Tarantino work with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and THE THIRD FLOOR Inc. to release the film in Fortnite.

Netflix x WarnerBros (x Paramount)

There is way more written about the Warner-Netflix-Paramount drama that any of us can reasonably read. But the saga of how Netflix pulled it off was laid out probably best in this insider account from Lucas Shaw. Which might well have a few more chapters added on by the time Ellison and their hostile takeover attempt is done.

The chat around which option is better for whom (fans, consumers, creatives, industry, employees) is a maze of if this then that. One thing I repeatedly wonder- what chance does the brilliant brand of HBO and its quality have to come through relatively unscathed? If you worry about the potential fallout for movies, this old piece lays right into Netflix , though there is ample evidence that any merger here is a net negative for the wider creative community and sector.

AI On The Dot

I dropped by AI on The Dot last week, a ‘cultural salon’ hosted by the same duo that has run the very popular AI on the Lot event in Los Angles for the past couple of years.

This was a small, curated attempt to splice Hollywood’s creative-AI mindset into the APAC conversation. I like that it was largely shorn of the breathlessness around AI that often marks such gatherings, though the optimistic energy around it remained palpable.

The ‘word of the evening’ was neuomorphic. Its aka ’s antonym of sorts to ‘skeuomorphic’, referring to how we can look at video creation coming from an AI powered world. Its been used well by ’s essay, to try and move beyond looking at genAI as merely a new way to make movies & TV.

Themes orbited familiar territory- speed, scale, possibility- but the conversations (mostly!) had a grounded quality. Speed and its impact on storytelling- both the craft and numbers- was a recurrent theme; as was chat around smaller teams, sharper focus, traditional instincts. And, fascinatingly-about deeper integrations into workflows and pipelines.

Think along the lines of, ‘not so much “AI replaces production”, more “AI reveals who can actually tell a story when the tools stop being the bottleneck.’

Some nodding of heads about how we are / we need to move from “look, the model can generate amazing video” to “can it generate something that feels like intent?”

Notably (but unsurprisingly?) absent: any real discussion on ethics or model provenance. The only practical concern raised was indemnity- “please tell me my outputs won’t explode legally!”

With ambitions to make this is a larger, recurring event in the APAC calendar, I can see how AI on The Dot could grow into something meaningful- and hopefully will stay curious, lightly ambitious, not so much selling the future as poking & prodding at it.

➕ Quick hits

• Disney+ and ESPN’s ambitions in Asia. Hmmm.

• Some updates on the Squid Game America adaptation, confirmed to be helmed by David Fincher (with Cate Blanchett on board), starting filming early 2026.

• As MTV fades away, a piece on the relevance of music videos.

My other Substack newsletter, Coffee & Conversations, has already waded into the end of year mood. Munch on a beloved snack and stroll through worthy reads scattered across the months- the Masala Peanuts of C&C fame.

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

Cover photo by Jabber Visuals on Unsplash

1. Schwep!: That word, that insufferable zoom call, A24, and Timothy Chalamet.

2. Lore: A new platform for fans and their internet obsessions.

3. ▶️ Curated/Cuts: Collector pain with KFC, Whatsapp India’s short film, Bodkin show titles.

4. Into The Machine: A fine conversation on where AI is taking us

5. Equator: a new magazine looking for global perspectives in a post-American world.

6. ➕ non-stop Simpsons; AI is no tool; robot pregnancies; AI’s curating pop culture.

☝🏽Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above & let me read this to you, or on Youtube.

A24’s brilliant Zoom with Chalamet

Schwep! Remember that word, cause it’s going to populate them memes, I reckon!
Why?

Courtesy a ‘leaked’ Zoom call between the marketing team atA24 and Timothy Chalamet, discussing his upcoming film ‘Marty Supreme’.

This is so meta, so real, so weirdly captivating.

It has been fruitionised like no fruition has frutionised recently. I have no notes.

Please join this Zoom meeting, aka ‘Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme_11.08.2025.mp4’

”I wake up every morning, I think culmination, integration, like all of us, and fruition, fruitionizing, which is not a word, obviously, but fruitionizing the release of this movie, like really making sure it comes out in a great way.”

Lore

“Early internet rabbit holes taught me how magical it felt to not just consume culture but to contribute to it.”

The internet has always been about rabbit holes. As students, fans, nerds, writers or a hundred other profiles, there has always been something incredible about diving into something that sparks our intellect or love or joy. Whether by chance or design- finding our passions, stumbling onto new ones, then slipping into a spiral of curiosity.

Zehra Naqvi sure agrees. She is set to launch a service called Lore, which will enable just this- a search platform to research and discover ‘internet obsessions’. Lore is meant to provide tools Zehra wishes had existed “when fandom felt like home before the internet became fractured and joyless.”

Lore is built for depth, not speed, they say. The ambition is to be a platform that adapts to our interests, and helps deepen them- will be fascinating to see how.

A ‘personalised graph of obsessions’ is teased, with monthly reports on where users obsessions are at any given time. “Imagine a place where the things you love are explored, celebrated, and brought to life with context and care—whether it’s a favorite Broadway musical, a conspiracy theory, or the lore behind your favorite athlete’s career.”

They released a nice little film for it too. Directed by Joel Yoon CD Evan Santiago · No Storage Productions ·

The platforms fans flock to weren’t built for the kind of deep cultural exploration modern fans crave.
Google gives you surface-level summaries.
ChatGPT hallucinates.
TikTok is algorithmically limiting.
Reddit is chaotic and disorganized.
Twitter is toxic.
Discord is inaccessible and impossible to search.

Fans are forced to duct-tape their obsessions across platforms, manually piecing together timelines and context. Lore fixes that.

Lore is here.

🎬 Curated/Cuts.

1. Complete The Set: KFC

You know those cute collectibles that fast food companies throw into the box to complete the nutritious meal? And the set which you can somehow not fully complete because its a ‘mystery box’, so you have 9 pink unicorns but not even one purple mermaid?

Or something like that?

Even if you are not a ‘collector’ of such valuables, you could enjoy this spot from KFC in Thailand, drawing upon some self-aware humour, absurdity and controlled craft to connect with that collector soul.

Director: Bruno Bossi · Production Taprod ·

Creative: BANANAS · Creatives: Justin Gomes Pat Cholavit Sean Harrison Safaraaz Sindhi

2. Bodkin Titles

Bodkin, the enjoyable and amusing crime show set in the eponymous Irish town, has some equally lovely show titles. They are both charming and clever- appealing aesthetically, and belonging narratively.

Also, every episode had its own customisation- little nods to plotlines and themes unveiled in the episode. Each image starts as one thing, and becomes something else entirely. All can be seen here.

Titles have suffered from the rising belief that they form part of the ‘friction’ that viewers must be divested of- so it is always nice to see some well crafted ones.

Creative Director: Hazel Baird Design Studio: Elastic Design and Animation: Roughcollie

3. Whatsapp India : Baatan hi Baatan mein

Some feel Whatsapp hardly needs to advertise in India, given how widespread it is. But the messaging service is always looking to bring more into the fold. This latest is targeted to the segments of rural India where literacy is still a stumbling block. Whatsapp’s Voice and Video Notes break down the (pretty real) barriers to texting.

This is a short film, embracing story over form- a 9 minute vignette of nascent love.

They also have traveling cinemas heading from village to village, organising screenings- which I find pretty cool.

Director: Amit Sharma · Chrome Pictures · Agency: Fundamental · Neeraj Kanitkar · Pallavi Chakravarti · Gauri Burma ·

Meta: Vyom Prashant · Natasha Kapoor ·

Zero Degree News

I wrote last week of the fragmentation of how news is reported and consumed, and the growth of the role of creators versus institutions.

And here is The Equator, a new magazine of politics, culture and art. Beyond the widespread lack of faith in ‘mainstream’ outlets, the team behind Equator wants to challenge existing and perpetuated notions of global events, seen largely through a Western lens. “In a post-American era, the task of a new magazine is to engage the rich variety of this historical moment on its own terms, without compulsively asking ‘What does it mean for the US?’” After some initial missives, they launched proper in October, and the first batch of articles are now out.

The founders include Pankaj Mishra, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, , and Suzy Hansen, with editing by former Guardian long reads creator Jonathan Shainin. They wrote, in an impassioned “What We Stand For” section,

Equator is our collective response to a crisis that is as much spiritual and intellectual as it is political and economic. It is a venture that aims to create a more cosmopolitan home for thought and art than the one assigned to them by provincial Western periodicals. It also seeks to restore dignity to the concept of truth, and create a public space where the values of justice, solidarity and compassion can flourish.

This was a little film by Yto Barrada for their launch.

Across the globe, audiences are abandoning familiar sources of meaning, searching desperately for new stories to help make sense of the world. They seek not just information but transformation—fresh ways of seeing that can illuminate the darkness of our present and reveal futures worth fighting for.

We founded Equator to answer this longing.

In a time when so many of us grapple with how we interface with the world around us- disappointment with mainstream media, lack of trust in our feeds, crumbling global edifices- I found in this offering a possibility of hope, integrity and a worldview worth sharing. As its first wave of articles release, in the coming weeks and months we can see how it lives up to this ambition, and promise.

Playlist: into the machine

“we’re the chimpanzees trying to speculate about what the AI could or couldn’t create. I think we should come with a level of humility about this that we’re currently not coming up with.”

Tristan Harris has long been a articulate and thoughtful voice on how technology can be shaped for a better world. He founded the , and you might known him earlier from The Social Dillemma, the documentary that strived to pull the curtains from the machinations behind social media platforms.

Tristan and the CHT team have their own very worthy podcast, Your Undivided Attention. On this, I have consistently found clear-headed, well intentioned discussions around the attention economy, social media, AI and wider trends in tech, governance, ethics and humanity.

But today is a shoutout to another podcast that had Tristan on as a guest. On “Into the Machine”, explores how tech is rewiring what it means to be human, and what we should hold on to.
In this episode, he and Tristan have a clear-headed, critical yet positive discussion about AI- risk scenarios, what we can expect AI labs and legislators to do in the face of AGI, and what can be done right now to ensure these systems stay maximally beneficial to humanity.

“The main thing that’s crystal clear, that people need to get- we are progressing in making these models way more powerful, at an exponential rate. We are not making exponential progress in the controllability or alignability of these models.
In fact, we demonstrably, because of the evidence that Anthropic has courageously published, we know that we still don’t know how to prevent self-awareness or prevent deception or these kinds of things.”

Listen to it for a reasoned, reasonable and sincere discussion, shorn of any intent to have loud takeaways or Instagrammable quotes.

➕

• ‘The Simpsons’ now has a dedicated channel on Disney+, streaming every episode ever, in order, non stop.

• “Stop calling AI a tool. To do so is to participate in the project of rendering the body *obsolete.” Jeffrey Anthony consistently writes sharply and clearly on AI in our world.

• A Chinese tech company is building a humanoid robot that can get pregnant and give birth. Yup.

• Curation: a look at AI’s role in pop culture “AI is reshaping not just what we consume, but how we understand it. We must ask ourselves: Is culture too important to leave to AI-driven curation?“

If you enjoy The Colour Bar, maybe help fuel the next one!

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Oh look, December is round the corner- so expect a break or three, and some lookbacks!