I smiled and was pleased by a small but mighty sounding team doing boring but important things not far from where I live. Check out what the fiercely fun folks at Free The Sea are all about.
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.
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Cheers,
Shakey
Free The Sea: Small teams, big (boring) ideas.
Curated/Cuts: Might Apple + Lufthansa humour
Tech Broze: Oh, look, its Twitter! + Meta’s slap on the wrist
➕ · 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 · Christopher Drom
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.
Branwen S. Senior Producer for Apple at TBWA\Media Arts Lab
Saulo Rocha
· 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.
“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
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.
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.
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Till next week, go reduce some plastic or something.