Buddies, Boxing, Bots & Branding.
· The Great Amazon Rebrand · Whatsapp & F1 · Bot Farms: Power & Poison · The Tariff Shadow ·
“You don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting demographic, you don’t need any measurement”
Is figuring out your advertising a chore? Is messaging more than an app? Did you feel media was being left out of the tariff party? Do you want to check your phone in a movie?
Between ubiquitous social-media, endless ‘content’, the looming prospect of an AI-generated flood, and faceless, influential bots… how many of us really know (or can shape) where our online existence is headed? Can we do anything about it? And are the gatekeepers shaping something better, or merely innovating on how best to keep their hold on the garden absolute?
Hello! Shakey here, and thanks for reading The Colour Bar. If you’re a new subscriber, welcome! If you aren’t yet, then get on with it- this newsletter brings you weekly curations in media, content, creativity, tech, brands & the human connection.
Today, a messaging app ushers in a documentary, Zuckerberg swats away advertising, the tremors of Hollywood tariffs shudder, a cinema mate is suggested, and the far-reaching power of bots is explored.
➕ There’s rapper Hanumankind getting a Fortnite emote, WAVES in India, AI etiquette, some underwhelming corporate branding and Ms. Blue Ivy Carter*.*
But let us start with some ▶️ Curated/Cuts, where you can meet AI in human form, chuckle at a boxing promotion and explore a massive global rebrand.
🎬 Curated/Cuts.
1. AI, joined at the Hip
Fiverr recently released its service FiverrGo, which allows creators to “train AI exclusively on their own body of work, maintaining complete control over their creative process and rights.” They’ve now launched a spot around this, personifying ‘AI’ as a slightly too eager lurker around the office. It cleverly skewers the bits of AI that tend to turn us off, while at the same time continuing to position it using the most favoured narrative going around for Gen-AI proponents- as ‘a collaborator’.
“The mashup of self-awareness and humour makes the impending robot takeover seem less terrifying — if only for a moment.”
Production Directed by Jonathan Zames · Adam Armesto · Production LEFT ·
for Fiverr · Ami Alush · Ronen Kornberg ·
2. Amazon, a rebrand.
We finally get a consolidated look at the rebrand that Amazon has been rolling out over the last 8 months or so. A massive project, this was an undertaking for a new Brand Architecture and Design system. Spanning global operations and brands, you can start to get a sense of the sheer scale of this.
“As Amazon scaled at extraordinary speed, the brand system sometimes struggled to deliver creative excellence at speed, fragmented across teams, regions, and experiences… (a new brand system) elevates Amazon’s most iconic assets: a warmer smile, a modernised logo, a flexible new typeface, a unified colour palette, and a global architecture designed to move at the pace of Amazon.”
For design studio Koto, it has been 18 months, 15 global markets, and over 50 sub-brands in the making, while Amazon has spent 2.5 years on the project, working also with SYLVAIN.
A pretty comprehensive case study on the Koto website, including some useful before/afters.
for Amazon · Jonathan Cohen · Jo Shoesmith · Christopher See ·
for Koto · James Greenfield · Alex Monger ·
3. Fatal Fury Times Square
A trailer for a boxing event that happened few days ago; apparently the first at Times Square, streamed on DAZN. Interestingly, while the fight was organised by The Ring magazine, the video game Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves seemed to be part of the title (though not officially a sponsor?). Fun, either way .
· Mathematic · Truffle Film · BigTime Creative Shop ·
Brought to you by Whatsapp
A new one-hour documentary called The Seat, has dropped this week on Netflix. Coming from the world of F1, it traces the search for a successor at the Mercedes team. This intense internal process came in the wake of superstar Lewis Hamilton’s departure after the last season.
Apparently, these discussions and debates— which resulted in Mercedes choosing young Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli— played out over… why, the messaging app WhatsApp, of course.
And that’s what brought this alive- Whatsapp is a producer. Not a sponsor or brand partner, nor has it paid its way through to product placement, or streaming visibility.
“We don’t believe we should be limited by ad formats. Storytelling allows us to occupy a unique position in the hearts of users and pushes beyond the functional role we play.”
These words from Whatsapp CMO Vivian Odior might sound like corporate speak to some, but I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment and continue to maintain that too many brands don’t embrace this philosophy. Many claim to like it, but too few walk the talk.
Buddies & Bots.
Between ubiquitous and all powerful social-media, endless ‘content’ and the trigger of AI-generated flood waiting to be pulled, who can say how useful or helpful or emotional our online existence really will be. Absolute dross or more unique voices? You might lean one way, but that question in various forms will continue to be important for some time yet. And the gatekeepers will do their best to keep their hold on the garden.
Who needs the advertising industry. Not Meta.
In a recent interview with Ben Thompson (Stratechery), the Zuck touched on how advertising could work in a AI- powered Meta universe. He laid out an entire ecosystem without the need for… an ecosystem. Essentially, doing everything for a business that wants to advertise and sell on Meta platforms. In this world, Meta could and should own the entire process for any business to sell their product or service. The smaller businesses (presumably), which form a large part of Meta’s client base, are expected to hand-off the entire lift to Meta, from ideation to deliverable.
“In general, we’re going to get to a point where you’re a business, you come to us, you tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account, you don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting demographic, you don’t need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out.”
It’s staggering , actually, the way it has been articulated. Needless to say, not everyone is a fan.
“No clients will trust what they spit out as they are basically checking their own homework.”
“The full cycle towards their customers, from moderate condescension to active antagonism to ‘we’ll fucking kill you.’”
These are expected - but the articulation around upending the entire system remains pretty immense.
Movie Mate.
So someone believes that the best way to make movie going more fun and get more people in front of the big screen, is to push them to look at their small screen while they’re supposed to be watching the big screen.
Riggghht.
Once again? Meta has a chatbot, which it has reportedly claimed will “get audiences back in theatres”. ‘Movie Mate’ works by sending moviegoers trivia, quips, and questions about the movie, per the New York Times. With a not-at-all ironic nod to movie lovers, all of this happens while the film plays in front of them.
They trialed it in partnership with Blumhouse, with a screening of scary flick M3GAN. The biggest horror for me is not the creepy titular robot, but a the glow of a hundred tiny screens as I watch my movie.
Bot Farms.
You may or may not have heard of bot farms and how they can manipulate internet traffic and social movement. These are not new, nor unknown. Either way you could do with this piece from Eric Schwartzman, which took six months of investigative reporting to put together. He shows us how powerfully bot farms can- and do- work across areas as disparate as markets, conflict, geopolitics and celebrities. He claims they have silently taken over social media, fabricating popular sentiment through massive networks of mobile devices programmed to simulate engagement
Today, much of what we assume is “going viral” is actually being engineered — not by people, but by racks and racks of thousands of mobile phones with SIM cards, mobile proxies, IP geolocation spoofing, and device fingerprinting.
Its a good read for anyone circling the worlds of policy, media, marketing, sociology and online behaviours.
“It’s not just the bots that are gaming the algorithms through mass amplification. It’s also the algorithms that are gaming us. We’re being subtly manipulated by social media.”
🎬 ...aaand, Cut! Or, retake !
Tariffs come to Tinseltown, but not really.
The celebrity leader of Hollywood’s country— in typical social media fashion— announced a 100% tariff on all “foreign-made” films and TV. He also called international production a “national security threat”, but I won’t quite go there.
Needless to say, no policy details— but this was a big swing that baffled and concerned many. Not long after, and no surprises- a statement followed that no final decisions had been taken on this yet (presumably because most didn’t know what exactly ‘this’ was meant to be!).
Some thoughts:
Most American content is not exclusively made in America. Studios produce across continents, largely due to tax breaks, better costs, and niche talent. It is not really ‘outsourcing’.
Leading streamers rely heavily on international productions to fuel their libraries.
The world is Hollywood’s playground, it releases/licenses and benefits from being a cultural behmoth.
What does this look like- how do you define the details here, is it foreign produced films, or American films produced elsewhere, or partially shot somewhere or partially post produced elsewhere? Do you tax the shoot or the production or the profits or the distribution?
What might happen? Who knows, but:
Budgets could explode. Across studios, genres, scales.
Foreign-language films might well be priced away from U.S. screens.
U.S. streamers could have reduced/challenged access to global content.
Retaliatory tariffs, anyone? It has happened, with other sectors; here it could threaten a multi-billion dollar production economy (dominated by the US).
Protection or isloation? That is now a familiar question in 2025, with answers either elusive or obfuscated behind rhetoric.
Can more films be filmed on US soil? Definitely. But for that, they’ll need to be incentive structures in place that rival those available on other continents.
One has always seen part of USA’s power coming from its global entertainment heft and cultural clout. Hard to see how this does not stand to dilute that.
New: A leaked draft document from Jon Voight (‘ambassador’) now reveals some discussion points, most notably a federal incentive, but crucially also a suggestion that broadcasters/streamers be restricted from owning their programming. Expect pushback.
➕Quickies
“While most 13-year-olds were spending their Monday evening stressing over homework or awkward school crushes, Blue Ivy Carter was performing in front of a crowd of 70,000 people alongside her mother Beyoncé on the opening night of her Cowboy Carter tour.” This piece asks ‘Nepo Babies or future superstars?’, a question I think need not have a an either/or answer!
WAVES ; the World Audio-Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025was a big event in India- ……. Vanita Kohli gives a quick overview, though presumably there is much to follow from the event that included big names and brands across Indian and global film ,TV, streaming, entertainment and more.
PWC branding and backlash : The global accounting/ consulting giant has revealed a brand refresh after over a decade. The new logo uses exactly the same lettering as the old one, while switching out its “butterfly” crest for two orange parallelograms. The reactions have ranged from “meh” to “wtf”, especially in light of its recent cost cutting efforts and layoffs.
AI and etiquette: Mark Wilson over at Fast Company says it just bad etiquette to communicate using AI. “If you use AI to write me that note, don’t expect me to read it”, he says. “You are, by the nature of sharing these automated words, signalling to me that you care less about my time and attention than you do your own. “
Cricket Max: a lookback at Martin Crowe's revolutionary format- a predecessor of T20, but with the virtues of the multi-innings game.
A Big Dawg in Fortnite: Hanumankind, the Indian rapper who exploded onto the global scene last year with his smash hit Big Dawgs. Now, his iconic dance step from the track has entered Fortnite as an in-game emote. It looks to mirror some of the swaggering choreography in the killer music video, paired with a snatch of the song’s stomping beat.
“ If there’s no trustworthy information, what we think will likely become less important than how we feel. “ _Eric Schwarzman