Flipsides
At Work, At Home, At Play
Sport bounces around new formats, old traps, and a different view for the Winter Olympics; while the daily, the real and the fake play other games.
The Colour Bar spars with all.
Balls to virality: innovation, lethargy & oddities in new sport formats
▶️ Curated/Cuts: Oily winters & human LLMs
Iconic: MacOS visual design gets a slap
Deep,Con: Fake faces of news
➕ Sora flops, music sues Anthropic, a message for NBA
The Colour Bar- that teammate who reads widely so you don’t have to.
Busy? Lazy? Multitasky? Click play at the top of this, and let me read this to you.
1. Energy & Lethargy
I find myself frowning when I see sports being talked about the same way as, say, attention-farming on Instagram. The conflation is frustrating, especially when it inserts itself into the thinking behind new formats or entire sports. I have nothing against experimentation and building new reasons for people to play/watch/support physical activity, mind you. Where it rankles a bit is when these are grounded in beliefs like ‘dwindling attention spans’, or ‘speed over substance’ or ‘all life should be based on principles gleaned from a decade of social media indicators’.
Ok, one of those might be made up.
Then, once these are launched (sometimes with care and merit, surely)- too much of the early, even explosive ‘success on social’ is counted as a meaningful sign of long term resonance. Virality is ephemeral. Social is a barometer of a day, a week, a month; we have snapshots- often useful, sometimes instructive, occasionally meaningful. But not, simply by default, representative of societal narratives or cultural journeys.
So we have now heard of The Baller League ‘pausing’ operations in Germany, even though recent launches in other markets like the UK, were based on replicating the success of the German model. Sure, the timing/crowded nature of that market is also a factor, but it is a reminder that even models with strong backing and attractive names are not assured of success. Across the fence, though, the Kings League just raised another chunk of cash.
“There are a dozen formats that flash bright, get very loud on social, and then quietly get folded. So when people in sport say: “We just need a new format to capture youth attention,” I hear: “We want a growth hack that substitutes for long-term habit.”
Michael Broughton recently penned a good insight on the learnings to be had from some of the sports/formats/leagues that have attempted success in recent years (above quote from his piece). In spanning T20 to Spartan/Tough Mudder he is net positive, while he outlines, “why ‘contrived cool’ is a dangerous strategy.”
As is true for many consumer brands, sports that are attached primarily to personalities- not the actual product- are on shaky ground. In this celebrity and social-led thinking, there sometimes seems to be a blurring of lines between ‘good content’ and ‘good sport’. Yes, there are many linkages, but these are not interchangeable ideas. Talking of interchangeable:
Honey, I Shrunk The Tennis
If you doubted the appetite for new formats trying to muscle their way in, I present-Typti.
The racket game is presented as a mix of pickleball and tennis. Ok, right- because clearly we need to find a new game that combines an existing hybrid sport with the very sport that inspired it! That’s a mouthful.
Essentially- remixing a remix, then?
Apparently, because many tennis players look down upon pickleball (yes, they do), Typti has a good chance of wooing them over. So, because… it’s mini tennis?
Typti is played on a pickleball court, uses string rackets and foam balls- very much like tennis but smaller and lighter. You can watch what tennis look like when shrunk, here. And in case you’re still here and wondering, it gets its name from the belief that all brand names should be five letters and preferably meaningless. Ok, then.
Typti is launched by Tennis Channel founder Steve Bellamy, backed by hotel heir Tony Pritzker, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and actor Chris Pine, among others.
2. Curated/Cuts
An AI Town.
This is cheeky, cute, meaningful… and should make us consider our next prompt.
The town of Quilicura in Chile is home to many AI data centers, and is facing a serious water crisis. This spot announced that on Jan 31st, the townspeople themselves would become AI for the day, in a symbolic bid to save their water. So we were asked to kindly not us AI for “dumb stuff”.
Naysayers might call it gimmicky, or question its real impact. But hey- I am happy when creative is built to make us pause. Take a moment. Reconsider.
If then, we anyway go ahead and make a lame cartoon image of ourselves via a generator, so be it.
Oilympics
Another week, another Winter Olympics spot? Not quite.
The ‘twist’ in this one hits wonderfully the first time, early in the spot. Then lets loose and drowns us (literally) in the metaphor. Watch:
Using Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ as the soundtrack, ‘Oilympics’ from Greenpeace calls out how major sporting moments are being used to greenwash environmental destruction.
On the nose? Maybe. But they sure feel the need to be blunt with what they are fighting for. Consider this- by 2080, half the places that can host Winter Olympics won’t be able to. Because, no ice.
From the team at Studio Birthplace & Redivider.studio. Full credits here.
3. Iconic
MacOS visual design gets a slap
Here is an incredible analysis of the new Mac OS (Tahoe) icon system.
Me, I haven’t ‘upgraded’ to Tahoe yet, so I can’t say how these missteps play out. But Nikita Prokopov aka Niki has thoughts. Many thoughts. Pointed thoughts. Incredulous, frustrated, annoyed, disbelieving thoughts.
“It’s bad. But why exactly is it bad?”
If you like geeking into visual communication, this is for you. If you enjoy creative nitpicking, this is definitely for you. If you like well-laid out critique with a pinch of humour, this is for you. If you want to see how something that you interact with everyday is messed up, this is for you.
If you want a glimpse into how the little things mean more than a little, this is for you.
If none of those matter, and the interfaces we interact with daily are of no consequence to you, then… then yes, please move on, nothing to see here!
4. Deep, Con
News of AI deepfakes or disinformation is steadily becoming the kind of occurrence we skim past in the newsfeed. What’s more insidious though, is how we might well skim past or engage with these deepfakes- increasingly oblivious to the fact that we are, indeed, being conned.
With our daily lives rushing by, such constructs often stay theoretical, or mock-ups. Till ‘meaningful’ examples pop up, with the ability to showcase the real potential. Recently, this happened with a well known newscaster, a semi-political figure, and a political tinderbox.
Yalda Hakim (BBC, Sky). Aleema Khan, sister of jailed former Pakistani PM Imran Khan. India & Pakistan.
Hakim spoke with the sister about her brother’s imprisonment, and soon a clip from the interview went viral (especially on Indian feeds). In it, Aleema Khan boldly characterises the Army Chief Asim Munir as a “radicalised Islamist” who “yearns for a war with India”.
Except she said nothing of the sort.
The question about the war and the incendiary response, both were deepfakes. Not only was this clip shared millions of times, it even prompted the Defence Minister of Pakistan to respond to Aleema Khan. Once Yalda Hakim saw it, her attempts at clarifying the reality through statements or tweets continued to be drowned out, as this took on a life of its own on social and mainstream media.
So no, its not all harmless remixes of us dancing with friends or looking like Disney characters. Behind the cute, fun, impressive and flashy generative AI, meaningful harm sneaks in through a backdoor that we continue to leave open.
➕ Quick Hits
A group of music publishers has filed a second lawsuit against Anthropic. Compared to the first that claimed copyright infringement on 500 songs, this alleges infringement of over 20,000 songs and is seeking $3 billion in damages.
OpenAI’s Sora app, after a flashy start in October, is now struggling. Data suggests the app is seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about NBA’s European ambitions. Here’s Callum McCarthy with some words of advice for NBA boss Adam Silver.
“Do you think we exist only to make money?”
_A European basketball club owner (from the above piece on NBA in Europe)