Playing Games & Feeling Well
Streaming, sports, toys, gaming, sales, logos, jewelry, some not-quite-meditation.
Hello and welcome to The Colour Bar.
Do you know how the Titanic & Tiffany are connected? Is ‘quiet rebrands’ a thing? How good is that GTA VI trailer? Wait, is ESPN finally streaming? Is Netflix refreshed? Can you meditate away climate anxiety?
Find these questions (and maybe some answers!) in this week’s dispatch.
In ▶️ Curated/Cuts, watch an old story from Tiffany & The Titanic, a whacky meme-inspired ad for a sale, and a quiet redesign from Adobe.
Some fascinating nuggets in sport and gaming- a superb effort from Lego in their F1 partnership ; MLS finds a way to stream via video game ; GTA’s wildly viral trailer; while ESPN finally launches its (proper) service and the Club World Cup get a diss.
But first, this splendid new meditation app where not all is as it seems. Its all about blissful acceptance, or resignation. Sometimes, they are the same?
Oilwell
All hail a new wellness app like no other. Oilwell.app has a unique proposition, for so many of us drowning in the stresses that Plane Earth so rudely puts on us. Its meditations help you quiet all the noise of climate science, so you can focus on what matters- your own equilibrium, and growing your profits. Indeed, it is the world's first meditation app- I do not doubt- designed to “help you find inner peace while the world burns”.
Oilwell is a brand new approach to wellness. Our meditations feature mindful moments that immerse you in extreme weather events, helping you learn to filter them out. While our mood tracker offers an online space where your feelings can be safely shared and ignored.
From Oli Frost, this is specifically designed to help us rise above our climate anxiety and achieve a state of blissful acceptance, offering such invaluable activities like Smog Breathing Exercise, Endless Growth Affirmation, Plastic Beach ASMR and Carbon Capture Dreams, this effort. Plus, a handy mood tracker to monitor your existential dread.
Oli Frost co-created the climate campaign group Serious People. His efforts seem mostly works of satire intended to draw attention to important issues, with the likes of Lifefaker, Flopstarter, and an eBay auction of all his personal data.
Oilwell looks particularly well thought out and comprehensive, including visual, audio and other assets. Its skewers ‘Edelman, Oil and Gas PR’, a (fictional?) leading PR firm for fossil fuel clients.
Gems include:
FAQ: My app keeps playing oil drilling sounds instead of rain sounds. Is this a bug? This is a feature, not a bug. Our sound algorithms occasionally mix industrial progress with nature sounds to help you associate them positively.
“I help people adapt to climate reality without the inconvenience of action.”
“By helping individuals manage their climate anxiety, we're ensuring that business continues as usual, while you feel better about it.”
Lego and F1
4 million bricks. 22,000 work hours. 10 fully driveable Lego F1 cars.
At Formula One races, drivers take a pre-race lap for fans, usually in a flatbed truck. The Miami leg saw an unexpected new take on the parade- drivers they found themselves instead in life-sized F1 cars made entirely out of Lego.
Each car contains a chassis, electric drivetrain, hydraulic brakes and a power steering system, as well as authentic Pirelli tires (which are the only non-Lego bits).
The incredible vehicles are based on the LEGO F1 Speed Champions range unveiled late last year, and these models will go on a worldwide tour so both Lego and F1 fans can marvel at them.
Meanwhile, check out Steve Sammartino . This guy did it back in 2013.
🎬 Curated/Cuts.
1. Titanically Tiffany
Tiffany & Co. is a company with a long heritage, crafting jewelry for 188 years. Their journey must surely be littered with interesting stories. Yet sometimes the most obvious is not the most appararent. Tiffany has decided to delive into their archives, “a treasure trove filled with incredible stories”, and launch a 'From The Archives' series. These promise to be visual narratives through iconic Tiffany objects.
The first of these is features a historic Tiffany pocket watch, gifted to Captain Rostron by the Titanic survivors that he rescued. Could be quite the compelling series.
Fun fact, Tiffany ‘bought back’ this watch late last year in an auction of Titanic memorabilia, for just under $2m.
2. Sa Sa Le Le
A funny meme from a few years ago (pre-pandemic, IIRC), has been revived and adapted in this fun spot by online retailer Flipkart in India. A loud way to shout out the sheer size of the sale in an always crowded marketplace.
From · Abhinav Tripathi · Neville Shah · FCB Kinnect ·
3. Adobe
When you make one of the (the) leading suite of creative tools for the entire world, your design rebrand will end up being even more important than rebrands usually are. It is a pretty meta situation. Adobe has a new design system (and logo), but it has crept up on us; so we don’t know when it actually launched. If indeed, it did 'launch'- Adobe themselves have not said much.
At any rate, there is more on it this last week or so; and we can see it is a redesign that’s made Adobe's branding simpler and sharper. Especially, the 'A' icon and 'Adobe' wordmark are now fused.
Like the Amazon rebrand I shared last week, this has also come on over time and with minimal fanfare. ( Mother Design's posts on it seems to have, erm, disappeared). For some, it begs the question- is 2025 the year of ‘quiet rebrands’?
Netflix Anew
Netflix’s user interface and navigation has been an industry benchmark, a lead they have had since their early days, and maintained as the competition swam in. It’s sometimes underestimated how crucial this has been in making the Netflix experience so loved.
Now, Netflix has given its TV navigation has a tweak, or three. It is the first major overhaul of its app's landing page since 2013. Have a look here, and also here:
“Our redesigned TV homepage is simpler, more intuitive, and better represents the breadth of entertainment on Netflix today,” said Eunice Kim, Chief Product Officer. You can watch a talk-through / walk-through the interface and the technology behind it with her and the CTO here.
If you like, Vulture's Eric Vilas-Boas has a proper look at it here. "In aggregate, the changes feel almost safe for streaming’s erstwhile great disruptor. They’re either logical evolutions (a shinier and nimbler homepage, faster recommendation times), lessons learned from their competitors (content-tile details, nav-bar hopscotch), or obvious plays in 2025 (vertical video, a ChatGPT clone)."
Return to Vice City
The latest instalment of the huge GTA video game title, ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ launched its trailer and smashed numbers, racking up over 475 million views across platforms in one day. It now sits at over 100 million views only on Youtube.
Watch the trailer (which in the opinion of this humble, once-GTA-player, is quite ordinary).
Meanwhile, in another instance of the trend of trailers/shows/games brining songs back from the dead, Spotify said that the song 'Hot Together' by The Pointer Sisters, increased its streams by 182,000 percent after being featured in the trailer.
All this comes after/despite GTA VI pushing its release to 2026.
Sports+
ESPN, not Plus
ESPN (finally?) launches standalone, all-inclusive streaming app for $30 a month. Pay TV subscribers to the ESPN channel will automatically be able to authenticate into the new app. “ESPN+ will remain a less expensive offering for consumers, functioning as the entry tier for ESPN customers who don’t want the entire service.”
Sports Streaming in a video game
Major League Soccer (MLS) will stream four live matches via the EA FC Mobile video game. This is another example of the disruptive ripples and innovative we continue to see in sports/broadcasting.
Despite splitting with FIFA, Electronic Arts (EA)'s football title EA FC continues to have a highly engaged, relatively young user base. This is clearly an effort to widen its base beyond being a video game to a major platform for the sport. Its equally, if not more interesting on the MLS and Apple TV side of things. For MLS, an experiment like this is focussed on reaching younger audiences, while also growing reach.
Sportspro breaks it down more, with their own take on all the players too.
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA Club World Cup is upon us, starting June 15, across 12 cities across the USA. It has had a chequered journey since the year 2000, and now finds itself on the cusp of a new format. In a “dramatic expansion from the previous tournament format”, 32 clubs will be competing in a nearly month-long tournament.
Yet, amidst a crowded calendar (this seems to be a recurring theme with team sports), a lineup missing the likes of Barcelona and newly crowned champions Liverpool, and less then impressive commercial deals, there are definitely question marks.
reckons it is a flop already, a month before it kicks off.And,
Portas Consulting is one of the finest sports management consultancies, especially in the EMEA region. In big news for the firm, they have been acquired by CAA Sports. Exciting, super-powered times ahead for David Portas and the team.
Matthias Lynen López tell us why it matters.
"Breathe in denial, exhale responsibility".
_from the Oilwell app