I lead with a Tom Waits quote in the subtitle, because its a great line, a great thought and somehow seemed to hover over today’s dispatch.
But the Tom Waits quote you will find at the end.
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
Curated/Cuts: Tiny Bars & Mood systems
Tech Billonaires: Mozilla lets it rip
Musk Movie: never a dull moment around Elon
➕ · 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 Julia Makhalova-Chi 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
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.
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.
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?
“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.”
_Tom Waits