Growth must be in multiple verticals. Flywheel, we like to say. Creators, celebs, media brands, cornershops, buskers? Everyone must have multiple lines of business and revenue and engagement. Relatedly, individuals must not have any hobbies anymore, everything ought to be a side hustle.

But I digress.

Jennifer Lawrence launched a haircare brand. A celeb conjuring another ‘revenue stream’? Not everyone enjoyed it.
I did though, very much enjoy a wonderfully textured spot from Senegal.

There are also vanishing exes, spiralling AI film costs, and some email zombies being slaughtered (or were they zombie emails?).

Slide in then, to our weekly collision of creativity, craft, tech and brands.

Enjoy,
Shakey

1. Curated/Cuts: Urban water & erasable exes

2. Celebrity Mess: JLaw’s passion for hair is real

3. Destroy The Unread: Email Zombies

4. AI vs 35mm? Cheap isn’t always inexpensive

5. ➕ · Creator events in India · Netflix’s AI discovery · GTA VI last of its kind? ·

1. Curated/Cuts

· It is Noon ·

Kirene, in Senegal

Loving the texture and energy in this spot from Senegal. Kirene is a brand of water, and 25 years in they want to reiterate their roots. While the ‘subtle’ brand integration is a bit on the nose occasionally, I still enjoyed being taken on the ride- it felt beautiful and human.

I will admit there might be some “outsider looking in” joy here; I can’t claim to be familiar with Senegalese culture and you could argue the distance brings disproportionate enjoyment? But I’d rather not dwell on that over analysis, and embrace the feel of something refreshing and real.

Production: Couro Prod · CMO: Nabil Sargi Mccann dakar CD Elysée Liali
Directed by: Kes-Tchaas Eccleston & Xavier Damase
Cinematographer: Sam Meyer · Music: Orchestra Baobab

· Begone, Exes·

Canva is helping us erase our exes. Its a cute spot, and I can see it drawing many smiles, even maybe making Canva feel more like a friend than a service. But the little wet blanket in the corner of my head must offer a word- toying with memories and twisting records of the past seems… off, to me. It’s the kind of thing that grimy characters in dystopian stories hark back to as the time ‘when it all began’ :)

Unfortunately, Canva released this in the same week they announced layoffs & restructuring impacting over 20% of their workforce. There’s an incongruous connection there, but I don’t want it.

2. A Celebrity’s Mes°

There is, arguably some fatigue around celebrity brands. By all accounts in the US, yes; but in general, having famous people who you might well relate to, given the amount of social / parasocial connections we seem to have with them; having them also deciding to sell you stuff, can be a bit of a letdown.

Jennifer Lawrence recently, and famously, joined Instagram. She has been off social media mostly, and came on board with a typically stripped down, quirky post about wanting a happy friendly place. “I’m giving it a shot, and if anyone says anything negative, even thinks anything mean, I’m gonna quit”, she declared. There was some joy in seeing this, as fans have come to expect ‘JLaw’ to always be real, cute, awkward, clumsy, genuine and unaffected.
It took all of four posts, though, for her to launch her new haircare brand, mes (pronounced mess and written mes°, for whatever reason).

I was drawn to what seemed to be an interesting video. It asks people to “just dance”, and is a fun piece, without ever elevating into an inspiring watch (though you feel like it could have). Somehow, the very ‘diverse’ profiles of people dancing didn’t quite leave me feeling like I had watched something actually, wildly varied and diverse.

‘Unbothered Beauty’ is its mantra, which fits well with the celebrity founder’s persona. But a scroll through the comments on IG— 5,000 and counting— shows people can be quite bothered indeed. While there are many enthusiastic fans pledging their love & loyalty– “Yeah, buying whatever you’re selling”, and ““ik you’re using me but it worked“– I was struck by the running vibe of scepticism and disillusionment.

Disappointment, that she had gone the same way as so many celebs.
Fatigue, that she too after all just wanted us to buy stuff.
Annoyance, at the perceived disconnect with the real world.
Cynicism, around how her arrival on Instagram was not so real after all, and merely timed to launch yet another celebrity brand.

A selection:
“Jen I love you babe but out here we’re sick of celebs selling us stuff, it would have been fun to just have you on ig”
“The world really needs better celebrities, we’re over this.”
“Wouldn’t it be cool if wealthy people used their money to help make the world a better place, rather than make more products for us to buy?”
”Every road leads to capitalism.”
“Why do you ‘celebrities’ feel the need to sell us stuff? When the world is facing economic recession, wars and crises. C’mon.”
“I thought you were just here to be a person online. Should’ve guessed promotion was the reason.“
Or maybe just the most simple- “thought you were different”

Lawrence might seem like the type of actor who would roll her eyes at the celebrity–to–beauty brand pipeline. She has an Oscar and a production company and just shot a Martin Scorsese movie alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Why spend time shilling a volume mist?

This piece looks for the answers to that question, and starts off with J Law saying, “There is an undeniable energetic thing that happens when you’re creating things, whether it’s a movie or a product”. And while it is quite an interesting read / profile, I don’t think the answer really goes much beyond that.

And that’s fine too. Celebrities are allowed to do things because they want to and have a passion that fans may not ‘get’. (Fans tend to think they ‘know’ their idols much more now than pre-social media fans, IMO).

But it remains an interesting little debate around what fans expect from their icons, and at what point a foray into a ‘business venture’ is viewed simply as a cynical money grab.

Ah, being a celebrity- it’s a tough life, eh?

3. The Unread

Die inbox madness, die!

Apparently there is research showing the average person has more than 1,000 unread emails. Never one for the mediocre, I reached out to my high-achieving friend who shared this screenshot of his inbox badge. Badge of Honour, I say.

All to say that the fun people at Uncommon Creative & Resn made a video game that manifests all those hundreds (thousands!) of unread spammy emails in your inbox as undead zombies. It’s called The Unread!

“Setting out to gamify one of modern life’s most disliked admin tasks, The Unread transforms unread emails into the undead, for users to blast out of all existence.”

“Everyone wants to make tedious jobs more efficient. But what if you just made them fun?”

That’s what Rik Campbell, CEO of Resn, has said. I like.

Play just for fun, or really mean it and annihilate your inbox- here.

4. AI = 35mm?

“AI Could Make Filmmaking Costlier Than the 35mm Era”

Over the years, I have often found myself noting (and evangelising!) how pre-production is a commonly undervalued part of the production process. This gains a certain sharpness in the unscripted, factual and short form spaces, possibly because we ‘wing it’ more there; but having worked across all of those as well as commercials, I know how significant serious and meaningful pre-production can be.

So I found myself nodding sanguinely when I read some takes coming out of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest.

“Preproduction was meticulous when every take burned through film stock, then digital let crews shoot and cut freely without extra cost.

With AI, every re-render is paid for again.”

In a panel where two Korean studios shared their experiences making features and commercials with AI, one distinct take was that AI costs have the potential to skyrocket. Without detailed pre-prod and a feedback process that is streamlined & and disciplined, it was felt that costs with AI projects could still be volatile.

Naman Ramachandran has good overview of the conversations, more instructive than panel reports can often be!

➕Quick Hits

1. Ben Feder reckons GTA VI, coming next week, might well be the last pre-AI blockbuster game of its kind.

2. Creators and stand-up comics are driving India’s live events boom. An interesting look at the events scene in India, the headline is a bit misleading. Music actually remains the biggest driver, with comedy second. “Creators are a different story. They can pull a crowd for a fan meet or a panel, but they rarely sell tickets on their own”

3. Netflix is launching an ‘AI Discover’ tab in a limited rollout- early, experimental ways to find something to watch. Start with themes (a mood, who you’re watching with, or how much time you have), narrow it down, see why titles are suggested, and ask to stop recommending something.

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

Till next week, go find some water… and do your hair?

I have consciously tried to dial down the deluge of gen-AI stuff in my feed and radar. So much of the hype and giddy excitement is shallow and clickbaity. But even for the most hard-boiled gen AI cynic, there must be an acknowledgement that the strides the technology is taking are considerable, and will ripple a long way.

This week, I took a look at some of the more ‘premium’ or high profile examples in recent times, that go beyond demos.

But before that, there is some slower, more intentional, more considered (more fun?) filmmaking to enjoy, which include siestas and …erm, big ass things?

Let’s go then, on our weekly collision of creativity, craft, tech and brands. As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both.

Enjoy,
Shakey

1. Curated/Cuts: of Siestas & big asses bags

2. AI gods & futures: Two movies & some episodes

3. Gen Z vs AI: Listen to the scepticism

4. ➕ · Spotify’s AI remixer · 404 fun · scheduled Whatsapps ·

1. Curated/Cuts

· The Spanish Dream ·

What if slowing down were also a way to move forward?
Here’s a short that could slow you down, unwind those shoulders, and drop your eyelids just a tad.

Two women escape to the Spanish coast, drifting through sun-soaked drives, lazy afternoons and quiet moments by the sea…. [capturing] the freedom and intimacy of slowing down and simply enjoying the moment.

Siesta.co is a Spanish food company in LA. THis is their recent brand film directed by David Gaspar that suggests a mood, a way of living… with not a product in sight.

Said the director, “Siesta Co. was born in Los Angeles, founded by a Spanish couple. They and I share something very fundamental: all three of us grew up in the same Mediterranean town, Corinto, in Sagunto, Spain. We share very similar memories, a particular way of experiencing summer, food, family, and the pleasure of slowing down. In that sense, the essence of the brand feels very familiar to me.”

Director: David Gaspar DP: Alex Pizzigallo · Verano Films ·

· A Big Ass Bag ·

Last week’s Tiramisu Oat Cult spot was unhinged (i love the word, yes). So this week cannot matchup, but here’s a charming oddball effort from GUTS : a big ass bag for a big ass meal.

Chipotle! I will admit I do not know too much about it as a brand, though it is opening up in my sunny shores in early 2027. Here, they have gone with suave, well-heeled young people making their way to a picnic. Who knows why, but its kinda fun.

And oh- shot on 35mm film, “all real”.

GUT · Jose Ramirez · Rafael de Miranda ·
Chipotle · Stephanie Sotelo · Perdue Lily Badger ·

2. AI gods & futures

There have been some flashy moves around more premium, feature level AI generated content- a few widely released movies, a series on Prime. I took a deep breath and decided to have a gander at these, and the chatter around them.

One thing I’ll note off the bat- so many of the reports & commentary on these films (mine included), generally tend to have some sort of caveat or disclaimer. It’s usually something like “setting aside the countless concerns around AI-generated content”, which is our feeble attempt to remind everyone that provenance, copyrights and human effort should not be brushed aside.

Moving on.

No Godly Gift

Gods Don’t Give Gifts is the first fully AI-generated feature that is going to have a wide theatrical release in the US- it has received an ‘R’ MPA rating. This comes from Zack London’s Gossip Goblin stable, which I wrote about some months ago, and which has some consistently striking creations.

Cyberpunk worlds. Fungal-green sandwiches. Blood-spattered fairies. Fugitive androids. The world-building with Gossip Goblin has been lush, and its characters’ ruminations on humanity and technology want to aim for philosophical depth. You will have to check out the shorts on Youtube to see if you feel an emotional connection; but it’s that very same world that is being taken to the big screen. The film is an anthology of four stories, which I suppose retains its Youtube roots, but also is a handy way to manage a feature length narrative. Longer form storytelling with consistency and retention is probably the hardest challenge faced in this space.

Fable, the studio behind it, is more than a little ambitious- they are eyeing an Academy award bid, and are confident/swept up enough in its mythos to say, “it could be this generation’s Toy Story.” ^

Right.

Future Past

In China, the sci-fi thriller Sanxingdui: Future Past opened in over 10,000 screenings. That is no little test in a corner of the industry- Future Past is probably the first longform AI film to get a true wide release with reported box office numbers in a major territory (there have been few smaller releases in India, Malaysia etc). Some have chosen to mark it as the first real commercial test of the technology for feature-length projects.

It flopped.

As the CEO of the company behind it, BFG said, “We are the first to try it, the first to get a theatrical release permit and the first to be tested by the audience. I think that is not easy at all.”
This is actually a fair assessment and in the bigger picture a good way to look at it, though the internet has its knives out. The film cost $1.5m- but it also took two years and over a 100 people to make it. But then, this is a country where AI generated microdramas are crushing it, so there’s something to be said about appetites for just how much AI stuff people can consume in one sitting, and in what setting.

Crumbling Castle

In Europe, Prime Video released its first full AI-generated show, the Turkish historical/fantasy Castle Walls.

On the evidence of the trailer (and this review), this feels ‘very AI’, and not differentiated from much of the amateur efforts in sci fi & fantasy we have seen on Youtube. In that sense, it remains a bit puzzling why this “Vaseline-smeared mess” has found its way onto Amazon’s premium streaming service.

That comment on X bring us to Homer. Because I suppose one must also provide a dishonourable mention here to a 7 minute clip from Grok, which is the first episode in a telling of Odyssey. Yes, this output was touted to be Elon’s answer to Christopher Nolan (who “desecrated” the Odyssey, according to the world’s richest man). If this was the answer, I’m not sure what the question was anymore.

One reviewer memorably called it “so unsettling you can feel your eyeballs twitch at its sloppy gruesomeness”. ^

Ahead

The likes of Gossip Goblin might be a distance from what we’d classify as ‘slop’, but it is often hard to look past the relatively hollow emotional connect and stunted storytelling in many of these. Frank Landymore at Futurism calls it, “serving up empty calories.”

As more such projects start to appear, the gap both narrows and becomes more particular. Tell-tale hallucinations, errors, poor renders, stilted movement- these will be brushed aside in time. Other elements, like the storytelling, pacing, narrative flow, might well take much longer, and likely only when experienced writers and directors decide to climb this choo-choo train.

In that sense, these early outputs finding their way onto premium streaming or cinemas will have to bear the brunt of the current state of the ecosystem as well the viewers’ cynicism. As Luke Buckmaster says, they are “among the first out of the gates, and therefore prone to snarky commentary.”

I think the reality is that all of these get some headlines and attention (I plead guilty), but moviegoers are unlikely at any point to head the the cinema merely *because a film is AI generated. The real transformation will be slower and under the hood, and is happening in studios everywhere as they explore what the tech can do to genuinely enhance their filmmaking. Moviegoers will, assuredly, be watching a feature that has large chunks of it touched and shaped by AI, and they won’t be told and won’t be able to tell.
That’s where this is headed, but till then it is inevitable (and admittedly a little fun) to look at how the initial attempts are faring.

3. Gen Z vs AI

Going all-in on AI is seen in some circles as a necessity, or a virtue, or an inevitability, or all of those. AI-maxxing in corporate and brand cannot be seen as a simple good. Its nuance comes with an increasingly complex world younger people live in.

But being an AI-embracing brand may not be the universal flex some might think see it as. Many young people view it sceptically. I myself have heard “that’s so AI” a few times in recent months, referring to something of poor or dodgy quality.

Kian Bakhtiari looked at this recently in Forbes, with a smattering of telling data points (US/UK mostly). For brands he says, “AI-maxxing risks eroding trust built over decades, if not centuries”, as he outlines the possible reasons for Gen Z’s AI scepticism.

Historically, young people are the first and fastest to adopt new technologies—think video games, texting and social media—by normalizing them before they reach the mainstream. When a new generation pushes back on adopting new technology, leaders should pay attention.

The other question I often ask is, if entry level and ‘intern’ roles are all taken by AI, how are organisations expecting to grow skills for mid-tier talent they will need in a few years? Unless, of course, we convince ourselves that making AI work for us *is* the only skill we need.

➕Quick Hits

1. Spotify reportedly has plans to launch its AI-powered covers/ remixes tool in early 2027. For an additional fee, the tool will enable subscribers to use AI and make their own versions of songs by artists who have opted in. Sigh.

2. 404 fun found!. Apple used the iPod’s 25th anniversary to make a cool broken page, with a fully working first generation iPod, music included. Click click boom.

3. WhatsApp is testing scheduled messages. Perfect for those already using WA as their preferred platform for work? Also, for those pesky good morning messages on that large and joyous family group.

If you enjoy 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.

Till next week, let’s all find some naps.

What is the ungodly & irresistible collision of creativity, craft & madness?
Why– The Colour Bar, of course.

I like how things stray into this space, sometimes unbidden, sometimes sought out. I love when they come together in weird ways that make you go “huh?”, before a thread appears in the chaos.

This is one of those weeks, and I give thanks for having me in your feed, or your inbox, or both.

Hope you enjoy it,
Shakey

1. Crafty Apple: love & care for the brand

2. Curated/Cuts: tiramisu horror

3. Prime 360: cut-scene sports

4. Insta Features: IG goes longform

5. ➕ · Thank you, Rest Of World · Elon in Skydance · Daft Punk blocks ·

1. Crafty Apple

Apple’s gone and done it again.

Apple Music has got a new logo. From the pink on white note, to a black & white one. As with everything Apple, the change itself will not feel overly dramatic. They have also added music to it, working with the artist ‘Fred Again…’. That audio mnemonic feels just so… Apple.*

But that’s just the start of it. It’s the logo animation that has caused ripples– quite literally. Specifically, how it’s been made.

Based on the idea “made by sound”, they did the music first– before the visual– then found a way of turning sound waves into motion in liquid- in a shallow bath of mineral oils, to be precise. The brand music plays, the liquid ripples, the logo shapes.

The music was broken down and played through a transducer (a device which turns audio into vibrations). The resulting ripples and waves were filmed to form the new look. “The process took months of experimentation to get right. Fast Company reports that they had to tune the sound and image together because too many notes or notes pitched too high made the oil move so much that the image became unreadable.” ^

Like their Apple TV logo work last year, the teams at Apple and TBWA are keen to showcase the manual process, the handmade creative, the physical craft.

The perfect sound wave? Or a mere ripple in the ether? Take your pick.

- · -

Naysayers might scoff– is it effective, is it just creative fluff, is it pretentious. But in our times, it’s not just the product , or the end result… the story around it adds a halo, carries its own message and branding.

This is a recurring theme with brands and their creative work these days, but for Apple it feels par for course. In fact, their recent efforts have been striking, enjoyable, and proudly hand made.

There was the great piece for the Mac Mini, muscle man energy with claymation, and the BTS video was as entertaining. Again, part of the message.

Last month , we saw the Apple Games spot from Blinkink, using physical hand-built rocket models, mechanical rigs, real stop-motion captured in-camera, then integrated with 3D backgrounds. The rocket shape shifts across different handcrafted textures and themed worlds– fantasy, pixelated,neon-lit and erm, Uno cards.

The Apple TV logo refreshed last year, with audio composed by Finneas, was cut from the same cloth. Done practically, intentionally, lovingly, expensively. As I said back then, its all part of the brand ethos, and part of the marketing schtick, to do it with humans and then gently show-off about it. The official line from back then rings through across these projects, “ a nod to Apple’s belief that craft should be felt, not faked.”

And a recurring theme in all of these from all collaborators? “No AI”.
Make of that what you will.

• This is some way off from the brand’s 2024 misstep, in which a whole garage of creative instruments and tools were crushed to suggest the iPad held all their collective power.

• I was also reminded of ‘Start Up’, a track made from 45 years of Mac/Apple startup sounds.

Both the recent spots come from TBWA\Media Arts Lab and a whole lot of talented people.

The Apple Music piece: Sabine Dowek · Lara Juriansz (TBWA) · Optical Arts · Time Based Arts · Plau · TRAFIK · Epilogue Inc ·

The Apple Games spot from Blinkink and Bart Yates · Directed by Stevie Gee & Essy May · DOP: Toby Howell ·

* The first ellipse is how his name is written- yes, ‘Fred Again…’. The second ellipse is mine.

2. Curated/Cuts : Tiramisu vomit

Un. Hinged.

Here’s a spot from- well just watch it, because there’s little point introducing it.

“Overnight oats, without the sacrifice. We spent all our money making this so the least you can do is give it a watch and pretend to love it.“

I mean, a breakfast cereal brand just showed us a deranged story from Roman times, with tiramisu flavoured stuff spewing out of a “butt hole in the ground”.

So yeah, Oat Cult. It makes overnight oats. I don’t like oats. I might be less hatey about the overnight variety. But all of that is irrelevant in the face of this inexplicable and inexplicably bonkers spot… that still entertains.

Black comedy? Art film? Horror?
I don’t know if any of brand, agency or production team care, or even know. I don’t know what to make of it, but it feels bloody brilliant.

Oh, but it might well keep me off tiramisu for a while.

Aside: someone in Korea watched it and said “They should be in front of a parliamentary hearing doing the full kneeling apology.”

3. Prime 360

“Think of it like a video game camera.”

Prime Video in the US has introduced a new bells & whistle in their basketball coverage. ‘Prime 360’ is a proprietary, AI-powered technology working off an array of cameras around the court to stitch cinematic highlights, the kind that you can’t really get using only existing camera angles.

The cameras are calibrated and synchronized, and their footage is sent to the AWS cloud, where each play is reconstructed as a 3D scene — opening up possibilities beyond a normal replay.

“You could actually fly the camera through the play,” said Wade Wakashige, a director of product.

Its all quite video-gamey and pretty cool.

4. IG Features

Instagram now has long form videos (up to 90min, yes 1.5 hours). This new feature, which might feature feature-length videos, is called Features.

Inevitably, Adam Mosseri (Instagram’s chief) created a long form video about this– a chat with a VP of product who apparently has championed long form for some time… while Adam had resisted.

This here is a short form or preview video aka REEL ; the linking to the full piece is pretty seamless, whether at the end of the reel or the ability to click through at any point during.

Early quibbles include not picking up where you left off when you come back to a video, no chapters or ways to navigate, etc… And I’m sure there are many more which will be worked on (the ability to have PiP and scroll IG while watching a longform seems inevitable but also a widely fragmented experience), but!
Easily the biggest question around this is monetisation. Creators don’t get paid on IG the way Youtube has a rev-share, and that certainly is going to form a challenge in coaxing long form creators to come to the platform in droves and provide content besides the likes of “a dog bit my butt”.

Of course, this is also about the TV. Long videos are the best way for IG to meaningfully compete on connected TVs, and lure/retain users who are habituated with Youtube. That habituation is key, because there is a general sense that Youtube has far more loyalty wired into it and its creators, while IG is more widely entertaining and serendipitous.

“Connecting friends is an adjacent thing to short form video.
Short form video is an adjacent thing to long form video.
But long form video and connecting friends is not adjacent.
The reason I am not interested in pursuing long form video in a meaningful way is because I don’t want to erode our core reason to exist.” (emphasis mine).

This was, in fact, Mosseri himself speaking last year on the Colin & Samir show. In their new chat a couple of days ago, they challenged him on it, curious as to what had transformed in the landscape enough for IG to now roll out the feature. He stands by that thinking, but says much has changed. It’s a decent listen on the show, they do touch upon monetisation too… though don’t expect any revelations.

Relatedly- a new analysis of short form video shows that Tiktok- the great leader of the short form revolution- now rewards longer clips (>3min), more than Instagram which rewards 90sec and under the best.
(Features might change that, especially in the short term where we can expect the platform to boost longform considerably).

➕Quick Hits

1. Daft Punk are back! They’re going to “reunite in LEGO form” as part of an official collab in 2027. So yes, back…. kinda.

2. Disappointing news about Rest Of World shutting down in Jan 2027. This is the news publication that consistently gave us quality reporting in tech & digital from around the non-Western world (you know, where that vast majority of internet users live.

3. THR has a less than rosy view on Elon Musk’s $1B investment into Skydance.

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

Till next week, go find some breakfast cereal.

In an always-on world, assaulted by the pressure to be perpetually productive and an endless elevation of efficiency, whither intent? Intentionality has been a virtue for long, but in the 2020s, the context can be quite particular.

I was taken-by a series of trivial stumbles and thoughts- back to a wonderful little spot from 2013 which eloquently and gently urges us to take a moment. It is a good brand lesson, but a very relevant individual one too, I humbly submit.

This dispatch also sees fancy fingers, musically morose Nordic winters, a blurb on bankruptcies and an apparent affliction of alliteration.

Come- conjoin in this collision of creativity, craft & characters.

Cheers,
Shakey

Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and have me read this to you.

1. For intention: eloquence for doing with meaning

2. Curated/Cuts: get your fingers in, but definitely don’t visit Oslo

3. Gettying it done: a tale of two bankruptcies

4. ➕ · Netflix & FIFA · Clipping in India · Video-first Facebook ·

As always, thanks for inviting The Colour Bar into your feed, or your inbox, or both. If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches, or get it over on Linkedin if that’s your thing for some reason. :)

1. Intentionality

As consumers, we (I) bemoan much these days- about how products are made and innovations engineered to solve problems no one has. Creating stuff no one asked for. Because, growth. Because, consumption. Or just ‘because’.

And then there’s this age we live in, one we’re slowly getting subsumed by. The attention economy. Generative AI. The deification of efficiency. Infinite content.

In all this, I think a core theme across the next decade for all of us– especially for those entering the workforce, growing their muscle for life– will be to value the process, the doing, the intention.

We could all do with more intention.

Say what you will about Apple- have some products lost their sheen, has a core spirit diluted, has the brand itself lost its way…

But the ethos delivered in this video from their 2013 WWDC, remains a wonderful, clear and clear-headed expression of what drives their design.

And it is worth spending a moment or three with, irrespective of your take on Apple.

If everyone
is busy making everything
how can anyone perfect anything?
we start to confuse convenience
with joy
abundance with choice.

Designing something requires
focus
the first thing we ask is
what do we want people to feel?

Delight
Surprise
Love
Connection

then we begin to craft around our intention
it takes time.

There are a thousand no’s
for every yes.
we simplify
we perfect
we start over
until every thing we touch
enhances each life
it touches.
only then do we sign our work:

‘Designed by Apple in California.’

This premiered as the WWDC 2013 Intro- here is some story around it from the CD at the time, Simon Cassels.

Writing Rob Goldberg · Zane Miller · Eric Grunbaum ·
Creative Danny Duran · Buck ·

{ Apple also had a consumer spot around the same theme, which you can see here. It’s a fine spot, though I find it interesting to think that the piece crafted for the Developer conference resonates across the years at least as much, probably much more. }

2. Curated/Cuts

· (don’t) Visit Oslo, again ·

Remember Halfdan? Our old deadpan acquaintance from 2024, with a cynical worldview and morose take on his city, somehow still lives in Oslo.

But Hafldan likes to share his moansome thoughts, so he is back to tell us he hates winters in the city, showing us how dreary it is… but somehow, against his wishes and his fundamental character, still manages to conjure a musical about it all.

Here you can find Halfdan’s first sharing of why he wouldn’t visit Oslo except he had to live in it.
Production: NewsLab · Director: August Jorfald ·

· Hands On ·

“A very big cinematic film just at a very small scale”

Oura gets its hands dirty (and wet, and pretty, and much more), as they craft a spot giving life to fingers.

For ‘Wear Your Best Life’ from the smart-ring brand, the production team built a miniature city, populated by walking, running, sleeping, dancing, loving hands. Some BTS here

In what is becoming a familiar and not unwelcome trend, they made it a point to share that they “shunned AI in favour of handmade sets and practical effects”. Its been done all in-camera, with sets and miniatures and working trains… and a famous finger choreographer, Lilach Chen.

Directed by Sam Walker · Nice & Frank · Superprime Films ·
Full credits

3. Bankrupt Bros

· Gettying It Done ·

Getty Images is filing for bankruptcy. Which is kinda wild for so many of us who have always had it in our work lives as the behemoth. This is a major reset after its planned merger with ​rival Shutterstock fell through.

Except- as with so much in consuming headlines or blurbs or tweets– there’s a bit more nuance. Getty went public in 2022. Since then, shares have lost about 99% of their value. But this bankruptcy is not intended to materially change the way it works, its operations, or its clients & vendors. With heavy debt and– of course– growing competition from AI-generated ​imagery, Getty plans to go private again in 2027, and double down its focus on its editorial and news imagery. This makes sense given it revealed that its iStock e-comm business has suffered from “declining agency demand and disruption”. One can only presume this is due in no small part due to clients/users lured by AI services and their ease of quick stock images, provenance notwithstanding.

In fact, “Getty projects growth in its core editorial image unit, forecasting that the division that’s powered by news images (i.e., real photos of actual events that have occurred)”. It’s telling that THR has to clarify what ‘news images’ implies here!

· Character Test ·

Talking of AI and bankruptcy, on the flip side of this spectrum, we had the news that Character.AI was also filing for bankruptcy. There might be less nuance needed here- here is a company that made AI bots & avatars for people to talk to, got many young people to interact with them, garnered some great numbers, only to be followed by great costs and then be plagued by a slew of legal issues.

One must wonder how much of the initial rush to use Character.ai– which was very significant– was the sheer novelty of it all, back in 2022-23. We have seen such explosions of users to newly launched consumer-AI products (hello Sora), followed by a cool-off.

Tech crunch has a good overview, with this to finish, “It also shows that consumer-facing AI products are really hard to scale and monetize. Character.AI was one of the top apps in terms of time spent... But high engagement can be a double-edged sword; AI costs rise the more people use the app, which consequently also increases the pressure to monetize users.”

Oh, and a curious side bit. One of those legal cases was from Disney, who accused the company of infringing on its IP. Character.AI’s recently exited CEO Karandeep Anand is now Disney’s first CTO, and a majority of the employees are likely being taken aboard Disney amidst this restructure. Its interesting how this has played out, given the number of legal battles around both safety and infringement. Wired says, “Disney Asked Character.AI to Go Bankrupt for a Get-Out-of-Lawsuits Card… [it] hopes to get trust and safety tech, among other IP, from a startup whose chatbots dozens of states allege encouraged minors to self-harm and kill their parents.”

➕Quick Hits

1. Facebook has launched a reels-first feed in some countries like India. Yeah, so it goes straight to video. For everyone wondering what happened to Facebook… wonder a lot more.

2. YouTube’s 1 October announcement that it would reduce the reach of videos re-uploaded without significant changes or added value has raised questions about whether India’s nascent clipping business can scale further.

3. Netflix will air all 104 matches of the 2030 World Cup in Spain, as it scooped semi-exclusive rights- Spain games and the semis/finals will air on FTA. Sports continues to hover over every strategy.

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

Till next week, go find something worth being intentional about?

It is refreshing to see takes on real, human culture- the kind that belongs to lands and communities. I look at a a new series that looks to do just that, with the prism of dance. But dance married to geography and cinematography in bold new ways. It may not appeal to all, but it’s a real, assured take. Have a look if it’s up your alley.

I also share my thoughts spurred by a day at APOS Sports Edge, the full day Sports conclave that happened in Singapore.

There’s also boybands cooking chicken (?!), state-enabled dating, AI companies firing people for using AI, and a cool shot from the F1 Singapore coverage.

Slide into this week’s swirl of creativity, sports, content and hot takes.

Cheers,
Shakey

Shakey

1. Curated/Cuts: Maori, Kendrick, chicken tenders

2. Sports Edge: Notes from the APOS conference

3. Seamless: A cool shot in the Singapore GP coverage

4. ➕ · state enabled dating · dismissed for AI use · are brands patrons? ·

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

If you have not already, please subscribe for these weekly dispatches, or get it over on Linkedin if that’s your thing for some reason. :)

1. Curated/Cuts

· Maori x Kendrick ·

Born From Culture Aotearoa: Maori says it is “a tribute to the strength, pride, and identity of Māori culture”, and it sure feels strong and powerful.

There’s a short 5min documentary, but what really grabs you by the shoulders is the ‘music video’ cut to Kendrick Lamar’s N95. Watch that first, and you might well want to watch anything else they made with it.

The use of a commercial track like this one for a video showcasing a region’s culture and dance is a bold choice, and one bound to bring opinions. The Kendrick track, in my humble opinion, works brilliantly here, its rawness and the attitude of hip hop both adding and drawing upon the great visuals. In other examples by the same creators, say when Bohemian Rhapsody is used for a Bolivia video, the flow and the cut feel less intuitive. But, as every director-editor knows from countless client meetings, “ music is subjective”.

So what is this? ‘Born From Culture’ is a new series launched by one James Fenwick and his creative team at Level Six, exploring cultures via choreography and community. There’s not much to say about who they are (yet), but the work is starting to speak for itself-the series has also done Georgia, Bolivia, Samoa and Armenia, always using “dance as our way in”. But it is more than that- dance is married to geography and cinematography in bold, provocative, assured new ways. It’s all very new, very cool, very real, and very watchable.

(Also, I can see how these are likely being forwarded in Tourism Authority teams everywhere. If not, they should be. The Maori one has some collaboration with Tourism New Zealand , though I don’t think any of the previous ones do). Check out their case study here.

I’d love to know if you enjoyed this, and if you think it connects in a way that does justice to the peoples its made with?

· Boybanding ·

KFC in Australia christened their “bespoke” process ‘boybanding’. That’s right, the “gentle oohing, ohwoahing and aahing of a boyband” is really how they make their chicken tenders, tender. Say hello to their ‘More Tender Than Ever’ campaign with a fictitious boy band.

Special Australia · Julian Schreiber · CDs Gabe Woodmansey & Jono Aidney · Director Leilani Croucher

2. Sports Edge

Do you feel the need to be in touch with your favourite game all the time? EVen in the off season? Is there too much or too little of your sport or team in your life?

One of the recurring themes at APOS Sports Edge in Singapore, just ahead of the F1 race, was how to engage a fan across 365 days. This is, in a real sense, something I find meaningfully different from a decade and more ago. Borne of the belief that an “always-on” consumer must be serviced with an always-on sport, this is essentially a by-product of the attention economy, as is so much we do.

It is different from the POV of a federation and a broadcaster, but in all camps, the ebb & flow of seasons, and event/calendar driven fandom seems to just… not be enough. And we see this- palpably- as sports fans of any kind. We are now exposed to (and asked to give attention to) multiple sports and events through the year. (Even if spotting a Roland Garros social media post talking about the US Open is not quite intuitive).

In its second year, Media Partners Asia’s APOS Sports Edge was a packed one day conference that was, as one punter delightfully put it, quite the “endurance race” for delegates. In a good way, because there was a lot covered and a lot to engage with.

Freebies

The ampd research touched on a few fan behaviours, revealing that in every market surveyed, the majority of fans got their sports fix for free (sports fix, not necessarily Live sports- I think this is a notable nuance).

Relatedly, the Indian Super League (top tier football) announced all 163 matches will stream live and free on YouTube. Sony has the TV rights, but it’s very clear “the league just wants to be seen.” The likely meaty numbers from Youtube could provide the commercial impetus the beleaguered league needs.

Another recurring theme was around how a sport does not ‘belong’ to a federation or broadcaster. Sure, that’s a truism, but the thrust here was that it now belongs to many stakeholders, with creators and superfans rising in prominence. Making the economics work will need efforts across all those parts of the ecosystem. This spread of ownership was probably best articulated by Barney Francis towards the evening, but the theme had been alive all day.

It’s not a new idea of course, purists will heartily agree that a sport belongs to its fans not to its commercial interests. But the lens here was very much commercial. To eat from the buffet of attention, fandom, interest and revenue, you must come hungry, ready to pay and play across many counters, and prepared to sit at the table for a long time. No platters served up with a bow. “Monetisation challenges are not being discussed at all,” said Uday Shankar.

You could argue it never was- and indeed many mutterings highlighted the fact that that rights fees have hit some sort of a ceiling, especially in Asia, and the economics need to start working- better and differently. “Rights growth has to be earned”, MPA warns.

A Good Sport

I was struck also by the fact that questions about the sports themselves were not touched on as much as you might think. Discussions on the commerce of a sport seemed to outweigh the quality of any specific sport. For some sports, maybe this comes from the confidence that the quality of the game is in a good place. Or maybe it comes from the reality that the economics are challenging, and they demand more attention. Of course, the two are and always have been inextricably linked, but the attention given on the day says something.

Lastly, AI came up, but only gently. This surprised some, and I will not be surprised if we see more show & tell in the next edition. We glimpsed live language dubbing of commentary from Guy Piekarz’s Panjaya, its the kind of thing that will have all sorts of impact on the space, (and opinions!). An aside- having a panel with two guys named Guy, and both guys named both Guy P, was both entertaining and challenging!

The biggest tussles remain the same as I have seen in the business over the years. Persistent, self-perpetuating, simple and evergreen, if you will.

One- the push & pull between what’s good for the game and its fans, and what is deemed commercially viable. The venn diagram for the two is smaller than many like to believe.

Two- the tussle between the rights holders and those who acquire the rights continues to sit at the heart of so many conversations. And also at the heart of both the good and the challenging aspects for the world of sports and sports media.

There was plenty else covered on the day, but these were the narratives it spurred most in me.

3. F1 seamless shot

There was a cool replay shot somewhere in the F1 SIngapore GP broadcast this Sunday. I rarely watch these races live, but I was watching this one and my brain paused to notice ‘something’, i.e. a seemingly impossible, seamless shot. The kind which would usually be a camera ‘hand off’ in some one creative shoot.

Apparently this uses some generative AI to fill or bridge the two shots, and if so, it’s pretty cool, and has worked pretty well here. You can immediately think of many ways this could work across various sports. But I haven’t found a definitive explanation of this (and it isn’t the first time either I think), but if looking is your thing, you could do worse than this reddit thread :)

liked it but also noted the distortion on the helmet/ logos, and wondered, “I am frankly surprised this went to air. RedBull owns the team and this is they prize emblem getting melted.”

I don’t think in other environments and contexts (commercials, drama) it could quite replace the beauty of ‘oners’. As for the distortions, I am often a stickler but surprisingly find myself ok with this I think because it was too quick and too little be meaningfully noticed (social media nothwithstanding); and probably worth the ‘live’ experiment?

➕Quick Hits

1. Should Brands Be Patrons of Art and Culture? A good piece in Vogue, though I found adding Substack sponsorships and Nothing’s dabbles in music to a ‘patronage’ context a bit of a stretch.

2. ”​People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI”. 404 Media reported how contractors were fired for using AI to help them do their work, by a company telling the whole world to use AI to help them do their work. Ah, the irony.

3. Singapore decided to launch a govt dating app. That’s right, an app for public servants to to find other single public officers interested in hooking up, er, sorry- contributing to nation building. :) This is as good a take as any.

   zx

Before that, take a seat at a tiny establishment in Melbourne and get into a mood with Sonos. That mood may not prepare you for the impending documentary about Musk which- after making waves at festivals and with its trailer drop- this week was again brought into the buzz because our dear media platforms declined to run an ad campaign for it. Streisand Effect FTW!

There’s more joyfuy tech billionaire stuff too, as we see the Mozilla foundation rip the gloves off in its latest campaign about building tech for real humans and real needs, and I enjoy a piece about how campaigns feed the machine (and maybe that’s the point).

Its all here in this week’s swirl of creativity, tech, content and hot takes.

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

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Curated/Cuts: Tiny Bars & Mood systems

2. Tech Billonaires: Mozilla lets it rip

3. Musk Movie: never a dull moment around Elon

4. ➕ · GTA VI collectible · Youtube microseries · Disney ads? ·

1. Curated/Cuts

· A Tiny Bar In Melbourne ·

This video made me want to be at a bar having conversations with friends. Talking about interesting, odd, random, debatable, curious things.

And having a drink.

I enjoy seeing quality videos from small businesses, the ethos of the creator scene and social media and all that is good and creative and empowering and entertaining about it all.

I hope to be in Melbourne some day, and I will look to visit this Tiny Bar.

· Directed by Tai Scott ·

· Sonos ·

Sonos has rolled out a ‘mood system’.
Now I’ll admit I don’t know what that means, entirely. But apparently “Love the Sound. Feel the System”, is the new global brand campaign and creative direction for the audio brand. Led by what seems like an almost entirely new creative team, they say it is “a company repositioning first and a brand refresh by extension.”

There is something nice and self-aware about this spot.

I like how it leaves me feeling, and that’s in no small part because of the last few seconds. A simple true message - “love the sound” but also feel the system… and the indulgent flourish, “puncture your calloused soul”.

Sure I can nitpick - it’s a bit hurried overall; pause and let me feel, please! And why is the burrito microwaved not lovingly wrapped? But hey, nice feeling spot. And I guess feeling & mood are the point here.

Sonos · Kendra Eash · Rinee Shah ·
Animation Unlimited Time Only · Travis Barron · Cady Buche ·

2. Jeff & Mark & Elon

The guys at Mozilla Foundation are sure not holding anything back here. The people with lines like “Make Good Things Together” and “Stand Up For A Better Internet”, are a non-profit who look to support open source projects like Firefox.

Their latest campaign feels like it’s taking the gloves off. To promote their own ‘Fellows’ programme and the individuals in it, Mozilla aims straight at the tech billionaires it feels are forcing their own version of a tech future down our collective throats. Instead, we are asked to consider other worthy individuals,, building tech the way ‘real people need’.

Ziyaad Bhorat, a vice president at Mozilla, has said they wish to “poke a hole in the mythology that tech innovation happens in one particular way,”

We keep being told the future of tech is inevitable. But while billionaires dabble in space tourism and sell us on surveillance tech being sexy, Mozilla Fellows are building tech alternatives real people actually want and need.
If you come across our Fellows on the streets of NYC take it as an invitation to imagine a future built by people like Rudy, lara and Rose. The future is still ours to build.

While I am unsure how much the posters actually do for Mozilla’s fellows programme, the campaign is eye-catching, is going to piss people off, has its kernels of truth that some will shake off, others might hold briefly in their minds upon seeing these.

“We know that this campaign will be a little bit provocative, and we’re hoping that then leads to more people sharing it and getting the message out,” said their CMO.

Ok that’s done, then!

3. Musk, the Film

Talking of tech billionaires and sharing their achievements, you might have heard of the new Musk documentary titled, erm, MUSK, promising an ‘unflinching look at Earth’s most unchecked man.’

The trailer makes it clear dear Elon will not be enjoying this film. Directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, it’s already been called, “a lacerating portrait,” “the most comprehensive dismantling of Elon Musk’s mythos”, and an “enrapturing evisceration”. Musk himself called it a “hit job”...before it was even made!

When the makers decided to run a paid campaign for this, most of the social media platforms rejected it. Indignation and consternation ensued- what happened to free speech, the internetatti asked. Since, YouTube and Meta have allowed the campaign, their rejection couched in vague reasons. TikTok and X still won’t run it, nor comment.

Relatedly, while Musk has received almost universally positive reviews, and has a 100% fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Universal has apparently developed cold feet around releasing the film that it had acquired for millions for dollars… before the political scenario became what it did.

Also, I am tired of writing the word ‘Musk’. But the other terms I have seen social punters latch onto excitedly in this little story, is the Streisand Effect. There is a gleeful expectation that this kind of attempted suppression is exactly what will help the trailer get more buzz.

4. Who Is The Audience?

How much of what we will write, create, produce and publish be for humans, and how much, more practically, for AI?

Not as in our AI overlords (different idea, different day!), but simply, the nature of the beast.

I wrote and spoke recently about a brand’s recently announced Youtube show, where the intent was to ensure LLMs had enough reason to pick up responses around the show and use that info in its recommendations. But this can be perceived in different ways.

And does just that when she reframes the Sydney Sweeney controversy. (Which one, you ask? Well, the latest one). Sweeney’s ad for a gambling platform- sorry, prediction market- has invited furious taken around many things. Her decision to promote gambling, the exploitation of women in sport, overly sexualised approaches in sports, good publicity vs bad vs any publicity, etc.

Julia asks us to pause, because the real question might just be,
“What if the real audience was never the outraged, or the amused, or anyone scrolling with any opinion at all? What if the audience was AI?”

What the whole brouhaha really is about, in her view, is how the internet has now irrevocably linked Sydney Sweeney, gambling (Novig), and women’s sports. And the machines will learn these as a fundamental association. No value judgements.

This is a fine take, and one worth pondering for many of us- as consumers, marketers, PR people, creatives, writers, and yes- internetizens of any kind, really.

Someone has to produce the material that gets fed into these systems. The problem is producing enough of it. The solution is to make people angry enough to produce it for you.

➕Quick Hits

1. YouTube has announced Microseries in their Shorts. These will enable creators “to structure their Shorts into seasons and episodes, a structure that suits living room viewing.“ Microdramas in the living room- yay, we can scroll without thumbs.

2. Premium paid plans with ads? Disney+ seems to have allowed itself to serve ads across all its subscription tiers, but clarified vaguely that things had not changed much.

3. GTA announced a collectors’ box ahead of the GTA VI release in Nov. It costs a cool $399 and it doesn’t include the actual game. That’s right, go figure.
   Anyway, we know it will still sell out, right?

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

3. Podwatch: with that guy from The Atlantic.

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

1. Curated/Cuts

· Find That Feeling ·

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

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

Full Playlist here

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

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

Director: Steve Ayson · Mischief @ No Fixed Address ·

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

· Make The Circle Bigger ·

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

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

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

2. Gen AI goodness

· Make AI Mediocre Again ·

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

Or is it still the same?

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

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

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

The Dead Internet awaits.

· No, Norwood ·

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

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

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

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

Everyone should be sorry to disappoint.

· Suno’s new legal joy ·

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

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

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

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

· Meta Luma ·

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

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

3. Thompson x Kafka

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

I like it.

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

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

Few things that stuck out for me:

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Primavera: Lip sync goodness

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

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

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

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

1. Primavera, not Pasta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts

· Past Life ·

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

Watch his heart-warming story here.

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

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

· MIA with the simple things ·

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

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

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

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

3. Gift List for LLMs

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

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

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

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

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

4. Fake Tech

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

2. Curated/Cuts: Might Apple + Lufthansa humour

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

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

1. Free The Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts

· Mighty Mini ·

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

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

· Airborne Etiquette ·

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

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

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

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

3. Tech broze

· Cheep cheep ·

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

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

· Oh, Meta ·

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

Till next week, go reduce some plastic or something.

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

3. Rothko Tok: Modern art, modern trends?

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

1. No Phones Please, I’m Indie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I know that appeals to me.

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

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

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

Freedom from the devices that freed us.

2. Curated/Cuts

· Attack of the Endorphin ·

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

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

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

· Attack of The Tumblehair ·

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

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

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

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

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

3. Rothko Tok

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

Or at least, attempting to.

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Creator chaos: A roundup.

2. Curated/Cuts: Apocalypse, now

3. Fanta’s Horror: Really, coca cola?

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

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

1. Creator Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts: Amusing Apocalypse

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

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

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

3. Fanta’s Horror

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rant over.

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

4. 2001: a 2026 odyssey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

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

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

1. Bought but not owned

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

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

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

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

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

Come on, surely, how is this acceptable?

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts

· VHS-Tok ·

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

Charmingly nostalgic?
Not quite.

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

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

· Fun With Jeans ·

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

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

3. MTV Roots

“Ladies and gentlemen, rock & roll.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can’t top that!

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Chat TJB: Something someone to talk to.

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

1. Fly Away

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

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

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

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

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

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

You/your brand look and feel interchangeable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talking of people pushing back—

2. A Bus Stop Scrawl in SG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lets keep the human in human interaction.

3. Speak Up

No AI please, we’re singing & speaking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Chat TJB

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

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

Some interesting nuggets about this effort here and here.

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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And please support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it.

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

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

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

1. Off Camera: The Future Is for Everyone.

Even David Bowie?

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

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

Say, what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erm, but David?

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

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

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

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

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

Make of that what you will.

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

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

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

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

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

2. On Camera: Charlie XCX

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

This one is fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. In Camera: Jamiroquai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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If you enjoy reading The Colour Bar, maybe get me a coffee & help fuel the next one?
And do support by sharing pieces you like, or forwarding to others who might enjoy it. You can also follow me on Linkedin and Instagram here and here.

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

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

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

1. Danse Macabre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Bose: another brand does content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Curated/Cuts

· Suede Forever ·

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

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

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

Cute ending, too!

· Chaos at Hotel Armoure ·

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

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

White Lotus in 30sec, much?

Agency Mox

· An Economist 2-for-1 ·

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

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

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

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

How does that work for you?

3. take: Peacock on YouTube

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

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

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

1. Netflix Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts

What Has the BBC Ever Done For Me?

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

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

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

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

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

Full credits here.

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

Reserved for Fans

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

“Every single frame is drawn by hand”

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

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

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

End Montage FTW

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

3. Youtube in Japan

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers,
Shakey

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

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

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

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

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

1. The eloquence of prediction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cut - Staring

Stop. Stare. Watch this.

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

But what is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can read more about the line here.

3. Takes

Enhancing what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indie darling to the dark side?

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,
Shakey

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

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

3. A Poisoned Chalice: Refusing AI for journalism?

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

1. Goblins & Humans

Where AI is taking cinematic storytelling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Curated/Cuts

Animated goodness.

· Loewe ·

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

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

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

· FIFA World Cup branding ·

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

3. A Poisoned Chalice

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

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

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

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

Thanks,
Shakey

1. If Serif: On serifs & AI.

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

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

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

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

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

1. If Serif

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Giant Missteps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Curated/Cuts- Clingers

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

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

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

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

4. Objectively Objecting

You can have the truth, please pay here.

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

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

Hear it from them:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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

Don’t be a lurker.

Thanks,
Shakey

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

2. The Horror: May movie musings.

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

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

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

1. Sacred cows, mate.

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

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

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

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

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

2. Oh, the Horror!

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

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

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

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

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

More here & here.

3. Eat your words

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Fake it, don’t break it

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

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

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

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

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

➕Quick Hits

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

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

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