Familiar Made New
a swirl of new vistas & old friends
There’s a lot going on this week, but all very quickly.
Dash into The Colour Bar’s swirl of creativity, brands, sports and media.
Irreplaceable Instinct?: Tiktok’s tips for 2026
Curated/Cuts: 1984 art, Swiss sounds, Flat Earthers
NBA: New horizons for European basketball?
Creator Studio: Apple’s not so little surprise
Culture Check: views on 21st century US pop culture
➕ Youtube vs fakers, an AI bill in India, BBC comes to Youtube
Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play above and let me read this to you.☝🏽
First, a quick nudge, dear readers.
I have a short, anonymous survey running to help me shape TCB this year. It’s genuinely quick (2 minutes!), no emails, no deets needed.
Whether you are a regular or occasional reader, I’d really appreciate the input.
Go on, give me a couple of minutes here.
1. Tiktok’s ‘Irreplaceable Instinct’
Tiktok has some advice for brands in 2026. TLDR: not virality, but connection. Sound familiar?
Here are three key themes.
People are craving grounding through honesty, community, and shared experience. There are phrases like “people will come to TikTok for unfiltered stories“ , and “brands showing real process and people over curated perfection”.
Call me jaded, but this sounds terribly familiar? We seem to keep seeing new ways to push the ‘authenticity’ and ‘unfiltered’ themes, a few times every year- not just from Tiktok, but the entire ecosystem. We get it- real is good. Which would be just fine, if authentic had not been co-opted and nearly rendered meaningless by how performative and shaped it often is.Curiosity becomes the new currency as audiences dive deeper into new journeys of discovery. Say what? You mean that great gift of the internet- rabbit holes. “Unexpected entry points where brands that show up thoughtfully with relevance and delight will earn meaningful attention.”
Also, apparently “audiences are hopping out of their For You feeds to explore in the comments and search bar too.” So we don’t defer to the algo? Is FYP not the holy grail now?Impulse will lose to intention as shoppers reward brands that justify the “why to buy” first. This is promising, if accurate. One of my peeves with the e-commerce aspect of social media in general is the push to ‘buy, buy, buy’, something I have increasingly resisted both in my writing and personal life. If it is indeed true that “the ‘little treat’ mindset is fading as consumers seek clearer justification for every purchase,” I welcome such intentionality in shopping.
I wouldn’t hold my breath though, given the fundamentals such selling is based on.
I understand this is a cool-but-regular resource for advertisers and brands that all platforms do, and its bound to be self-serving. Though I would like to hear how much it actually makes sense to those who want to create, engage and connect with ‘customers’ or ‘fans’ on the platform ; or if its just me that feels jaded.
2. Curated/Cuts
· 1984
I will invariably pause for anything to do with 1984, George Orwell’s brilliant dystopian novel that refuses to lose relevance. Recently we got some striking art for a new Faber edition, from London artist Murugiah. I spotted the bold & bright illustrations and dripping paint in our very own Singaporean Japanese bookstore recently. It has been nicely showcased by Its Nice That, including some early drafts, and the interior illustrations.
· Sounds Swiss
Switzerland Tourism and Travel Switzerland partnered with French electronic music artist and producer Thylacine (real name William Rezé). The result? This little musical journey with the sounds of Switzerland. Trains, buses, boats, cable cars, birds, water all become musical notes weaving a story of the country.
Thylacine recorded and shot this across the country, spanning 16 days, taking 23 trains, 3 gondolas, 2 boats and 1 bus.
· Columbia’s Flat Earth
Is the Earth flat? This is ‘Expedition Impossible’ from sportswear brand Columbia- they have a message, an offer, and a chuckle.
“Flat Earthers, this one’s for you! Post a photo proving you’ve reached the edge of the Earth*, and get everything owned by the company”
*”The Edge of the Earth” is a visible, physical end to the planet Earth. We’re talking infinite sheer drop, abyssal void, clouds cascading into infinity. What is not “The Edge of the Earth”: A clifftop in Seattle. A cul-de-sac in Kansas. Or your buddy Dave legally changing his name to “The Edge.”
3. NBA Europe
The NBA is looking to set up a European Basketball League, with potential teams from the likes of Real Madrid, Manchester City (or not), and cities franchises from London, Berlin and Paris. The NBA’s global appeal is strong, its brand arguably the most widely resonant of the American sports, and five of the last seven MVPs in the NBA have been European. So the idea is powerful, but the devil lies in the detail.
NBA is working with FIBA on this, and it is said the league will see ($ link) 12 franchises with valuations up to $1B plus four additional qualifying teams, with the NBA (50%), FIBA, and teams all having stakes in the league.
Key resistance is from the EuroLeague, Europe’s primary club competition in the sport. Its chief says, “I truly believe that this will only hurt the status quo rather than make it better if it continues to be in a way that it has been presented.”
4. Apple’s Creator Studio
Apple’s relationship with the creative community has been a strange one in the last decade or so. I was part of the era that felt the pain of its abandonment of Final Cut Pro as a sustained pro editing software. There was distinct shift toward the casual creator, with iPhone and iPad utility taking precedence.
Now, in a not quite expected move, they have announced Apple Creator Studio, a suite of tools pretty much looking to eyeball Adobe’s suite, the Creative Cloud. While Apple still calls this “studio-grade power into the hands of everyone,” that wide target demo will include editors, photographers, musicians, illustrators, and others, built as it is for use across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Including the likes of FCP, Logic Pro, Pixelmator and others (with ‘AI enhancements thrown in), the biggest surprise for me is the price point. While not quite a like for like with Adobe (which has more, and more powerful tools), at $13/month this seems a bargain. But take for example Capcut, widely viewed as a casual video editing software. For only editing across mobile & desktop, it costs about the same for the pro version! Also, the individual one-off app purchases for most of these is still available, which makes those allergic to subscriptions quite pleased.
Creative folk probably feel a bit unsure how Apple might support these in the longer run, but there is promise.
Can’t say I ‘m a fan of those icons, though.
5. Playlist: Culture Check
You might have noticed how I’m not the biggest fan of the term, democratisation. Not because of any philosophical or autocratic leanings, but because the ‘democratisation’ of something or the other is bandied about all too freely and frequently. It is liberally positioned as a virtue, taken for an unqualified good, used and misused and abused for various narratives. As someone somewhere famously probably said, “just because everyone can, doesn’t mean everyone should”.
On a pretty interesting listen recently, I came across this:
“But it also feels at the same time where everything is possible. And so there’s no barriers. And barriers are what create cultural value.”
This, from the culture journalist podcast, ‘How 21st century culture lost its way’ with W. David Marx. There’s plenty other nuggets and nourishing food for thought on the pod, though it is an entirely US-focussed look at the last couple of decades in pop culture.
➕ Quick Hits
Youtube vs AI? Big red shut down a couple of huge channels that were using AI-generated content to make fake trailers (over a billion views combined). Lets not be too quick to think this represents a wider trend, though. “What this means for the rest of all the other slop polluting YouTube is unclear. The platform is still overrun with AI-generated music, hours-long informational videos presented in a “boring” or “sleepy” style, and even veritable snuff films.”
India and Brazil have draft bills looking to mandate that AI companies must pay for copyrighted material. Their population, diverse local language content and user base make these markets hard to ignore for the likes of OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic. Javaid Iqbal Sofi in Rest Of World argues Why India’s plan to make AI companies pay for training data should go global.
BBC on Youtube The BBC could soon make programmes for YouTube, after being put under pressure to produce more content on the increasingly dominant digital platform. There are some murmurs how this might be a $$ deal with the platform, but nothing yet to suggest Youtube is looking to pay for original content again.
