Are We Addicted To Facebook? (Future Tribe Show)

It’s episode 76 of the Future Tribe podcast and Germaine and Kelsey delve into some ethical conversations as well as branding news and updates with Google.

This season we’re going video first – bringing you the latest news in design, tech, branding, business and everything in between.

Your hosts this season are Germaine Muller, Founder and Managing Director of Futuretheory, and Kelsey Allen, Marketing Coordinator at Futuretheory and the Manager of the Future Tribe Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/joinfuturetribe).

What we talk about

  • Coca Cola's new "hug" logo
  • Firefox is showing ads in their search/URL bar
  • Facebook (and it's associated platforms) went down!
  • Is it innovation or just marketing?
  • Windows 11 is here
  • Boston Celtics and Vista Print
  • The Twenty Twenty Two WordPress default theme
  • Canva has lost their circle
  • Moving to a 4 day work week
  • Unity has a logo refresh
  • Cadillac goes monochrome
  • Google and YouTube stop supporting content that denies climate change

Links from this episode

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

Germaine: [00:00:00] Episode 76 of the Future Tribe show. I am Germaine. And I’m Kelsey. We’ve got a bunch of topics today, a lot of logo refreshes. Again, I feel like a few of those happened later on in the week. But getting into what we’re going to cover on this episode of the podcast and the show we’re going to be talking about the Coca-Cola hug logo.

The fact that Facebook now shows ads in search slash URL bar

Kelsey: Firefox?

Germaine: Firefox. Sorry, what did I say?

Kelsey: Facebook

Germaine: Firefox, sorry. Facebook’s downtime. During the week Facebook and related organizations, you would have all heard about it. We also got a bit of a chat about some Viagra slash hair growth medication brands some, some more to talk about there and a shout out to windows 11.

Kelsey: And we’re also be discussing Boston Celtics, have a new partner brand on their jerseys. We’ll be [00:01:00] looking at the 2022 WordPress default theme, Canvas had a bit of a refresh as well. We’ll have a conversation about moving to a four-day work week. It’s probably something you’ve seen in the news a lot over the past few years, but we’ll be talking about that today.

Two brand refreshes, one is unity and another one is Cadillac. And also talking about Google and YouTube choosing not to support content that denies climate change and similar issues. So they’re taking a stand against that

Germaine: A lot to uncover think let’s roll the intro and get, get talking.

All right. So the first thing that we mentioned was the Coca Cola logo. The hug logo is what they’re calling it, or I guess it’s supposed to represent the curvature of a bottle or the [00:02:00] traditional containers that you consume Coca-Cola through. They’ve done something pretty creative with it and made it look or, or used it as sort of a representation of hugging.

Let me share that for everyone who’s watching the video. So this is what we see here. There’s a few examples of hugging of Coca-Cola bottles, sort of clinking. And they’ve also got the new marketing phrase, which is real magic and some creative sort of applications of this, my initial feedback, or my initial feeling about this is it’s quite smart, especially for a brand like Coca-Cola. I think it’s something that only more established brands can really get away with because you already know what the Coca-Cola logo looks like. If you, if you are trying to get your logo out there and get people to [00:03:00] recognize your logo, this might not be the best approach, but with an organization like Coca Cola, maybe even McDonald’s potentially even Facebook this is definitely something that you could, you could attempt.

What do you think, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Yeah, I really like it. A brand like Coca Cola. I think the biggest asset that they’ve had for years and years and years is that iconic Coke bottle. And I’m sure at some point I’ve heard that they’d sort of trademarked the shape of the bottle and things like that. So to then translate that into the logo and they’ve done it really in a really smart way and that the edges of the Coke the word.

The way that they’re actually curved, it’s not just a plain old sort of curve. It actually does follow that shape of where it would sit on the bottle. So it’s not sort of a uniform curve which I think is really awesome. Cause you can sort of visualize you’re so familiar with that shape. It really just sits there really nicely unsure on the real magic tagline.

I’m not really sure what it means to me. [00:04:00] Maybe I’d need to see a, you know, ad campaign or something beyond just the tagline to understand it and put it in context, but I’m sure that they’ll find a good way to explore that.

Germaine: Well I’m sort of cracking a bit of a smile because their chief marketing officer has said that real magic is not just a tagline, that it is a philosophy which I mean the intentions around it is to increase the Coca-Cola consumer base through an ecosystem of experiences and getting consumption occasions, such as meals and breaks and merge with consumer passions like music and gaming. So I think what they’re trying to say with the real magic is the magic of the moment sort of terminology and, and sort of sharing that experience with real people.

I think in the COVID lockdown age that that sort of, I mean, hugs are such a, such a, I don’t know, crucial thing nowadays. I think it’s very it’s a hugs hugs, sort of a simple thing, or at least has been a simple thing, [00:05:00] but nowadays you can’t really hug just anyone. I mean, if you can hug at all. So maybe, maybe it’s, it’s a bit of good timing on their part or maybe, maybe the real magic is supposed to sort of talk about the magic of the moments and the fact that you can share.

Magical moments with, with loved ones, with family, with the people you want to hug. There’s a nice, I dunno, there’s a nice positive message there as well. Like there’s a couple in this shot with a Coca-Cola bottle in the, in the back pocket. I don’t know. I’ve never done this with a glass Coca Cola bottle. I don’t know about you Kelsey,

Kelsey: I mean women’s pockets wouldn’t fit it anyway, to be fair.

Germaine: It is a back pocket though. So I haven’t, I haven’t heard any comments about women’s back pocket.

Kelsey: Yeah. Fair. No, I do like the hug concept. It’s funny. Cause I feel like a lot of brands kind of shy away from talking about like hugs and contact and stuff because of COVID, but it’s nice that Coke’s leaned into it in a different way without really making it like, [00:06:00] oooh we shouldn’t be doing that. It’s COVID times. I think they’ve done that quite well.

Germaine: They’ve also not made a big deal about like it’s not a overt hugging representation or symbolism. I think they’ve done it in a somewhat subtle way. To me, what we’re looking at the screen here, and for those listening to the podcast is essentially laughter at what looks like a kid’s birthday party. It’s very colorful. There’s there’s balloons, there’s smiles and a Coca-Cola bottle, of course, in the shot. But to me, this is sort of what that real magic trademarked term really aimed to represent. It’s these magical moments. I think as someone who, I mean, I don’t have kids, but looking at this, it looks magical to me. It looks like the kind of thing that you know, your parents talk about. When they sort of mentioned that the memories that they’ll sort of always remember and always look back at fondly, and I think that’s what they’re trying to represent in this.[00:07:00]

Yeah onto the next one. Firefox. When I, I accidentally said Facebook, but Firefox, here we go. Address bar has ads now. You can apparently disable them, but essentially what happens is when you start searching, I’ll start typing a search, in the, in the bar of the top, you can see me selecting it on the screen screen cast.

Firefox essentially just shows ads there or has partners marketing within those search results. I wanted to mention this because it’s just another example of ads, just really crossing into the, the main stream and sort of getting into more products than ever before. I think Facebook advertises so much that I don’t really use Facebook anymore.

There’ve been examples of sort of budget, phone manufacturers, pushing ads on home screens. I’ve heard of even [00:08:00] Samsung pushing it on like their really high end products.

Kelsey: Yeah my Samsung does that for sure.

Germaine: Wow. Mine, mine doesn’t but I don’t, I don’t know why mine doesn’t yours is not necessarily just a budget Samsung either.

Kelsey: No, I’m not sure. It’s only in very specific situations, but I can’t think of what they are, but it’s definitely pushed through from Samsung. So it’s not sort of intrusive as much as it could be that

But it’s there.

Germaine: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard of, TV’s doing the same thing. Talking about like screen savers on some TVs, like my TV at home sort of screen saver. But there’s talk of putting advertising and pushing advertising already in some regions through those. So imagine you buying a TV for thousands of dollars, putting it as the centerpiece in your living room to then have ads. Exactly.

Kelsey: It’s very black mirror, doesn’t it?

Germaine: Exactly. And th that’s sort of what I wanted to talk about and why I wanted to point this out.

Like, what do we [00:09:00] do? Google Chrome, people don’t like it because of the privacy aspect and the fact that people Google sort of follows the around. But then when I would say the only other browser that can really stand up to Google Chrome is Firefox is doing this. Is it just a money grab or they, I haven’t looked into it. Maybe they’re not profitable at all. And I mean, there are enough profit, but not for profits still need to make money to keep running. It’s just an interesting one. I just wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Hmm.

Kelsey: I am not sure how I feel about it either, because I feel like it’s going to be a case of people that are less familiar with the user interface and things are going to be more likely to click on those ads without actually recognizing that they’re ads. And I’m not sure how they’re planning to display it. It might just be a case of having a little like suggested or like, you know, like you’re doing social media, it’s just got a tiny little things saying promoted and it’s hard to distinguish sometimes. So then all of a sudden you don’t know that you’re being advertised to. And I think that [00:10:00] there’s a lot of ethical questions in that

Germaine: I think in an ideal world, they do the bare minimum so that it’s it’s obvious enough bare minimum saying, I don’t think the only examples I’ve seen of, platforms doing enough to make it clear that ads are ads is when there’s a little advert advertisement sort of label underneath an ad. Or in the previous verge screen share, there was a powered by company name under an above an ad. Those are very obvious instances, but I mean, it makes sense, right? You, you wouldn’t want something to be seen as an ad because as soon as you see that it’s an ad, or as soon as it’s overtly clear that it’s an ad, it suddenly loses its impact. So,

Kelsey: yeah, I don’t know. I feel like there’d be an opportunity there though for a company who’s really big on transparency and things to leverage on being transparent with the ads and build [00:11:00] a customer base, I guess, off always being honest with that, I feel like it could really tie into a couple of brands really well, but it would have to be careful execution.

Well, it

Germaine: could, but then you’re talking about two completely opposing things here. Right? So a company getting enough market share without funding from advertising essentially is what you’re talking about. Because if you make it clear that something’s an ad, less people are likely to click on it. That’s almost a fact.

Kelsey: Yeah. But from the perspective of the brand that’s advertising like pushing through whatever channel it is. I think that’d be an opportunity that to say, Hey, yep, this is an ad, but we’re being really honest with you that it’s an ad. I feel like there’s room there for it, but it would just be,

Germaine: But what does that do? Like if you saw that something was an ad, would you be like,

Kelsey: Hey, you’re being really honest with me. Thanks for that. Let’s see what you’re wanting to push to me

Germaine: Would you, so you would, you would take time out of your day to just check out and add that. I mean, [00:12:00] even getting noticed in the first place is like, think about in that, that, that sort of lens, right? Like, so two in a hundred people notice you, and then you’re going to say that, Hey, this is an ad click on me.

What’s what’s that going to do? Your conversion rates may be an opportunity for us to run some ads and test it out. Who knows

Kelsey: It could work. I mean, if you sort of take it to a different space, like TV advertising, let’s say everyone knows when the commercials come on, it’s a commercial it’s really obvious, but that doesn’t stop TV ads being important and helpful.

Germaine: Well, TV ads have the biggest reason that Netflix succeeds, because you don’t see that. Yeah. People are moving from, I mean, radio, same thing, right? I don’t radio radio is the biggest reason why Spotify succeed. Why music streaming succeeds.

Kelsey: I mean, there’s definitely other elements to it. But yeah, that would be one of them.

Germaine: And YouTube. And i, I don’t watch YouTube [00:13:00] free because there’s ads. I don’t watch anything that, I mean, where possible if, if ads were invasive enough, intrusive enough, I would pay to not see those things like, like on YouTube, it’s a bit of a different story around the web because generally Google penalizes sites that have ads that in essentially take over the, the viewers experience or make it a negative view, negative sort of experience.

But that again is because Google makes so much money through Google ads that it’s in Google’s interest to make it hard for, for advertisers to get better rates. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a whole can of worms. We don’t have to get into it, but I think It’s an interesting one. It’s one of those things that I would just disable straight away.

If I was a Mozilla Firefox user moving on from that to Facebook’s downtime. Now I noticed this. Did you notice it?

I did. I

Kelsey: realized how much of an addict I felt like when I [00:14:00] wake up in the morning and I think I clicked on Instagram first, and then I tried to go to Facebook and then I tried to message somebody on messenger. I couldn’t get through anywhere. And I just was like, I feel so disconnected. I don’t know what to do in this circumstance. Definitely eyeopening for me. But yeah, definitely noticed it.

Germaine: I did laugh when I saw mark Zuckerberg sort of apologies or posts about it because he was saying, we are sorry, we let you down, you use Facebook and Facebook’s many companies to connect with your loved ones. That is the biggest thing that I feel like in terms of a loss, it’s not the advertising revenue that we’ve lost so on and so forth. The only reason I laughed is because increasingly, initially I used to think when people called mark Zuckerberg, sort of a computer, I used to sort of say, think, you know, be, be nice to the guy who’s done really well he’s built this, I mean, it’s an amazing thing that he’s been able to do through, you know, maybe not so great means, but but then, you know, [00:15:00] seeing hearing you sort of mentioned that, kelsey, and talking to my, my family, how many of them use WhatsApp? Vibe is in there as well in terms of that sort of communication conversation, but WhatsApp’s big, Instagram’s big, Facebook’s big.

I actually still experienced a few things that were sort of a bit funky on Instagram and Facebook. As recently as just a few, few minutes ago. So it’s clearly an ongoing thing that is trying to be rectified, but I think what it also did was brought up the, in an interesting conversation, I saw a few competitors and, you know, email newsletter software, for example, take it, take it as an opportunity to say, hey, don’t like, this is a reminder that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket.

This is a reminder that you need to take ownership over your own platform, ownership over your own network and your own group. I mean, we have a Facebook group by the way, shameless [00:16:00] plug, go check it out. Link in the description. It raises an interesting question, like do we th the beauty, the reason we have a Facebook group is convenience.

Like Facebook’s already got the users. So how much easier is it to get them to just click a join button, then if we were to create our own platform, have to maintain that it’s not, it’s not difficult or impossible. It’s just additional work that Facebook can do for us for free and exactly more friction as well.

We’ve got to, we’ve got to send them there. So I think it’s raised some interesting questions. And, and then at the same time, there’s talks about talks about what crypto and decentralization will do. So potentially in the future websites won’t even require like this, this very controlled framework to operate because what’s, what’s happened here with Facebook is [00:17:00] essentially that the, the, the instructions on how to find the Facebook services the instructions that are given to your computers and mobile devices were just wrong or incorrect or messed up.

And because of that, without the instructions of where to look that they couldn’t function, they couldn’t work. But I think, you know, the there’s still sort of is a good reminder for anyone listening. Who’s got a business, Facebook groups are fantastic, but think about what would happen if Facebook was to go down tomorrow and then also accidentally like, delete your data, delete your group’s information.

You should be extracting those, that information as much as possible. Not because you want access to people, but because people should be joining those groups. To be able to sort of have that shared experience with you or to be able to hear what you have to say, or to be able to communicate with you or [00:18:00] others in that group.

So by doing this, I think by, by sort of trying to own as much of that information, you’re probably doing them a service because at the end of the day, they’re not joining just for the sake of it or just for the fun of it. They’re joining because they want to share or have a share of whatever your you’re sort of putting out then, whatever your your message is.

So just had to mention it. I know there’s a bit going on with Facebook and how they target minors and this there’s a lot of, lot of things to unravel there. It’s still early days in terms of what’s happening in the U S regarding this. So potentially something that we’ll talk about in the next episode, or maybe even as a special episode, but at this stage, I think we can leave it at that.

The next thing I wanted to talk about was I’ve seen an increase in pilot and brands like that, that essentially men’s personal care brands that have recently sort of blown up. I did some research around why that was, and actually found out that the patent around [00:19:00] Viagra and hair growth medication sort of happened to expire at a, at a very similar time.

And that essentially raised this opportunity for brands to just start ups, to essentially copy those products, but do it under one label and only be differentiated by marketing and brand. Now this isn’t a new phenomenon, but I think it’s an interesting thing to point out and an interesting sort of conversation to have, because I’ve seen this in the past with watch brands and watch manufacturers.

I’ve seen it happen with toilet paper as well. And I think you mentioned Kelsey, you’ve seen something happened similar to this as well.

Kelsey: Yeah, so, I mean, I’m just, I’m familiar with this machine called a tens machine, which is kind of muscle repair and relaxation things. And just sort of exploring that space, seeing how many different variations there are of the same product [00:20:00] that all, you know, they can range from like 50 Australian to 200 Australian, but there’s no real difference between them besides like the marketing that goes into it.

So I’m not sure what the like sort of patent stuff behind it is, but yeah, that’s one product that I’d picked up on.

Germaine: It’s all, it’s all ma I mean, people say it’s all marketing, but it’s when these new brands come up, that I really understand that it really is all marketing. I mean, obviously I know it’s all marketing.

The, the, the other one was tissue paper. So we were looking at or toilet paper. We were looking at trying to get something that is really good for the environment or as good for the environment as possible. We looked at a few variations and few different options and the big one was just get a hundred percent recycled toilet paper.

When I started sort of going down that rabbit hole, as it turns out big brands, like who gives us C I’m not going to say the word, because I think that’s a swear word in, in some, on some platforms. But it’s a very big brand. I would say, Kelsey, you’ve heard of them.

Kelsey: Yeah, I have, yeah, they’ve got some [00:21:00] really funky sort of branding and wrapping and stuff

Germaine: branding, right. I mean, it’s really targeting millennials. But as it turns out there it’s a good product, but it’s the same thing that you can buy off Ali express straight from China, which is a hundred percent recycled, but ultimately there’s not a huge difference. In fact, there are competitors who essentially sell for the same price, and it’s all just branding and marketing. And what you’ve got to do is look a bit further into it, to work out what is the product’s actual characteristics and value there. Don’t get me wrong, the, at the end of the day, the way the world works, people pay for the amount of eyeballs that you can reach and there, and that’s the real value.

So there are some watch. I love my watches and there’s a brand called movement. Thinking it was movement. There, there are a few have been purchased, acquired sold to a more established watch manufacturers, for example, or fashion brands, for example, simply [00:22:00] because these new brands, you know, I’m talking about not the likes of citizen or Seiko, because those are staple brands that, you know, I think they’ve always done well, though.

They’ll continue to do well, but brands like that that don’t have a strong marketing push. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really see advertising for either of them unless I go past a jeweller maybe, but these watch brands they come up who essentially just creates cheap Chinese, like buys $10 watches from, from China and sells them for $250 because they can put a layer of marketing that you and I, if we are not interested in that product past, say, I want a nice watch or I want a simple looking watch. We’re not going to look into okay. What kind of watch is it? I mean, do, do you Kelsey know that there are different like technologies behind watches? Do you know the difference between quartz watches or automatic or semiautomatic watches?

Kelsey: No awareness, but I’m not a watch, I’m not a watch [00:23:00] person, so, I’m the wrong person to ask

Germaine: well, but that, that that’s my point. Right? So if you were to look at a look at a watch, that looked good and you were just, after a nice watch to wear as a fashion accessory, and it costs, you know, an okay amount. Like you didn’t think it was outrageous. Like it’s not a $20,000 Rolex, but it’s a $200

Kelsey: still too much

Germaine: or $50 nice watch. You’re probably looking at it from an aesthetic or fashion point of view, not a, you know, principles and characteristics and features point of view. And I just wanted to have a quick chat about it because it kept sort of popping up all over the web in terms of new brands who essentially do the same thing as any other brand, but it’s just a marketing push.

Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, thinking about the toilet paper that you sort of brought up before I feel like there’s a really important place for some of those companies who are putting the marketing into it, because for that [00:24:00] product, for example, unless you’re really into your sort of sustainability sort of mindset, you might not even be aware that a hundred percent recycled toilet paper is an option.

So you’ve got these companies who are putting the marketing in to say, here are the benefits of what we’re doing. Yes, it’s the same product you can buy from the factory in China, but here’s why you should buy ours because we’re telling you all this extra information. So I feel like there is an important place for those companies to get that information out. They’re kind of like doing a social service in a way it, you know, depending on the company, of course. Cause I mean that made potentially that’s what made you aware of a hundred percent recycled toilet paper existing?

Germaine: I, I get it. Yeah, completely. I think my point here is, cause what you’re talking about, is really, what is the point of difference and how are they, how are they able to get more market share than anyone else?

And your point is completely valid because you’re saying if they’re able to educate their target market and educate a certain demographic [00:25:00] that’s a good thing at the end of the day. Okay. Yes, you know, they might be selling it for more, but then that marketing that they have to do costs more like

Kelsey: They’ve got to cover those costs.

Germaine: Exactly. It’s not cheap or free, so it makes sort of sense. But at the same time, it’s a, it’s a reminder that marketing’s everywhere and marketing is not everything at the same time or the most accurate. So

Kelsey: absolutely. You have to take all those things with a grain of salt, I think because you can look at that company and go, Hey, that’s a really good idea. I get it. Let’s look further in and maybe I’ll find this cheaper alternative.

Germaine: Or look into it and sort of ask yourself, like, are all these things worth paying for. What, what, what, what’s there to it more than just what what’s been marketed to you from, from that to talking about Microsoft’s new latest product, windows 11, a bit of a change of pace there, but you’ve been using windows 11. As a, an in, in sort of release candidate or beta form for

Kelsey: accidentally installed it without realizing [00:26:00]

Germaine: on your work laptop. So like a main laptop, but you haven’t had a bad experience with that at all have you?

Kelsey: No, It’s been really smooth. I haven’t had any problems with it. I’ve really enjoyed the user experience as well.

Obviously it’s not a massive, I mean, visually there’s a change, but the core sort of functions and everything still pretty, this pretty much the same.

Germaine: Yeah. So. I didn’t have a great experience when I accidentally installed windows 11 on one of my devices. So I’ve been a bit burnt. I haven’t tried it.

You’ve you’ve been running at Kelsey for like two to three months. I want to say a fairly decent amount of time. And, you know, if there were issues with the operating system, those would have already popped up on, on your device. But this is more of a shout out than a necessarily a deep dive into it. So if you’ve got a windows 11 compatible device, you should check it out.

There’s, there’s not a lot to talk about when it comes to the operating system itself, [00:27:00] but they also haven’t pushed out or Microsoft. Hasn’t also pushed out all the new functionality within windows 11. So there might be things worth talking about in the future.

From, from that into Vista print, the only reason I giggle is because of windows and vista, vistaprint what a chance.

Kelsey: You’d make that connection.

Germaine: Yeah. I don’t like what you’re implying. No. So you spotted this one, Kelsey, and yes, you were a bit confused by it, which is completely fair. Let me share what it is that we’re going to talk about.

Kelsey: I had to ask, I had to ask for some clarification before this stream. So we spotted it on brand new which we love. I seem to check it almost every morning to see what brand updates there are and this one came up. So as you can see in the image, it is just on the Boston Celtics Jersey at the moment. So Vista print, you might be familiar with that’s the one on the left, their logo. you might be more [00:28:00] familiar with. It’s sort of the V there’s like four different colors that would come into it, a bit of overlap sort of stuff going on. The new logo, whether it’s the logo they’re using everywhere or not, I’m unsure. It was pretty much identical to the Celtics curvature, I guess, or the, and the font that they use.

So it seems like they’ve just duplicated that maybe for like a visual I don’t know, consistency kind of approach. So I did have to check whether it was an actual rebrand or just a rebrand on the jerseys. I don’t know. I’m not sure how I feel about, about it.

Germaine: This is, this comes back to, I think, looking at something for its purpose versus looking at something for its design or layout while it does cause confusion for someone like Kelsey.

I would say that even that confusion that is caused leads you to visit the actual Vistaprint site to confirm. And that’s only because you’re aware of Vista print, but if you’d never heard of Vista print before in this screen grab [00:29:00] that you can see on, on video, I would say hands down, Vista print on the left or the old visit print logo is not legible.

Nowhere near as legible as the Vista print on the right hand side or the new version. So this, I think raises a question of. What, is it okay to change a logo or check? This might not even be a logo. This might just be a great example of using, using the space that they’ve clearly had a lot of money for to get more bang for their buck.

Because the previous logo, I mean, was fine. If you are already aware, aware of the V icon, but if, if that had had no impact on you, well, what’s, what’s the point of this.

Kelsey: And it’s interesting to note as well. I was just looking at sort of the rest of the jersey. Nike is going in there very confident with a white tick on a white shirt, and they’re just going, yeah, everyone knows who we are. It’s [00:30:00] fine. We don’t need to stand out. I kind of love that confidence.

Germaine: It is. Yeah, it is. Interesting. I actually didn’t notice the Nike tick until you mentioned it and I sort of looked a bit closer. But then again, Nike probably has a lot more presence within, within, I mean, definitely a lot more presence within the sporting world, but also probably within the stadium itself within other apparel, for all we know everyone’s rocking, you know, Nike, Nike shoes with big Nike ticks on them where Vista print wouldn’t necessarily get that level of coverage or, or have the opportunity to have that have that level of coverage.

So yeah, this raises that question of, I think at the end of the day, what are you trying to achieve? I ultimately, I think would like this approach it doesn’t do anything for brand image and consistency, but it does everything for, you know, awareness and

Kelsey: it’s much more readable that’s for sure.

Germaine: And at the end [00:31:00] of the day, what are you, what are you spending your marketing dollars for, for someone to see your name and remember your name or for someone to see an icon and,

Kelsey: oh, recall maybe not quiet. Maybe you remember the color for that,

Germaine: even if you’re exactly. Even if you remember the icon, unless you know the name it’s w what are we working on our, our own branding, that’s a conversation that I was having with Damiane yesterday, about what is, what is the goal of an icon? You know, do we, does the icon need to stand out more does it, does it matter how much it stands out? If the, if the name of the organization itself is not as legible. And I think at the end of the day, that needs to be the priority reading the name of the organization, because that’s what you can Google.

That’s what you can get to a website. That’s what, you know, you can, you can sort of be customer of a business with. So I think it makes a lot more, more sense what they’ve done here.

We’ll also get this conversation around [00:32:00] Canva’s new logo, refresh out of the way while we’re talking about brand new and talking about other brands and, and I mean, Vista prints a design sort of brand as well, but what are your, what are your thoughts on this one?

Kelsey: I like it, but it feels like a step backwards. And I’m not sure if I can articulate why it does, but it feels like an older logo, then the Canva in the circle and I feel like they’re sort of lost an opportunity by getting rid of that circle to have that, I mean, really solid stamp of this is Canva, here’s our circle, recognize the color. I’m not sure.

Germaine: Is it because it’s sort of got old school Instagram vibes with the gradient

Kelsey: I was just thinking, makes me think of instagram because of the gradient

Germaine: and the cursive right. Instagram, do they still use, I think they still actually do use the cursive.

Kelsey: Yeah, I think more so they use the icon now because that’s so recognizable, but when they do use the text it does have the cursive in [00:33:00] the gradient as far as I’m aware.

Germaine: So maybe that’s why you feel like it’s a step back because yeah, I mean, I actually didn’t notice how weak the previous letters were the previous logo was like the A’s a much, but better in the new logo. I didn’t actually realize that the, that the a, in the old logo, it looks almost like a upper case G

There’s a change in angle as well. I’ve never given it the time of day, but looking at the canva logo now, The old logo was quite weak from a, from a technical point of view. Yeah, clearly worked fine from a marketing point of view, but I think the new logo succeeds in a technical sense, but maybe not from a marketing or branding sense.

Kelsey: Yeah. I feel like they could have done a combination of those two in that they’ve cleaned up, obviously the text and everything, but kept it in the circle because I just feel like the circle [00:34:00] adds that bit of strength

Germaine: potentially, yeah, as an iconic sort of representation of Canva. I also wonder what they’ll do on social media now that they don’t have that circle.

Kelsey: Well, I mean, it’ll go into a circle anyway, won’t it.

Germaine: Well, would they use the whole whole text? Ah, there you go. So they’ve actually, almost, I mean, not quiet, but they’ve almost brought back the circle in this example.

Kelsey: Yeah, it’s definitely it looks, it looks very familiar from the old logo, which was in the circle obviously, but they’ve just kind of added that gradient and clean up, cleaned up the text.

Germaine: Yeah, I think it’s helped that they kept the script font that they didn’t well for, for consistency’s sake, at least. But this might be an instance where I would almost vote for them having them going with a flat color. Instead of, I know we’ve talked about this in the past and I’ve [00:35:00] sort of, we’ve both, I think commented about logos shifting to a, a black and white approach as not being a great thing, but maybe this is why, why they just go, go with that approach because when they try something different, they’re not necessarily liked for it.

Kelsey: Hmm. I mean, like I said, I don’t hate it. I, I do like it. It’s just, just doesn’t feel like a step forward. I think.

Germaine: I think that’s fair. That’s, that’s a, that’s a fair comment. But I’d be interested to hear what you think your listeners and watchers.

Moving on to looking at the 2022 WordPress theme, the word default WordPress theme. Now anyone who’s familiar with WordPress knows that each year, WordPress launches a default theme that is named after that new year. So the previous one was 2021. Let me share what it looks like. We’ve got a few [00:36:00] glimpses here. I haven’t explored it too much. But sharing what it looks like in, in some screenshots from WP Tavern, I, I think it’s a great, great example of sort of a nice, simple theme.

The default themes always tend to be quite simple. They also tend to be compromised by open source elements. So the fonts used in this example or used in the default themes, open source, just like WordPress itself. And it naturally tends to be a theme for publishing, which makes sense again, so the, this example, I think that for the first time I would argue for the first time, the 2022 theme or the default WordPress theme has gone with a slightly more creative approach.

They’d tend to be somewhat more simple, but this one to me is this, this sort of [00:37:00] cascading effect is a bit more stylish. And even this homepage, I think it’s quite nice. What, what are you initial reactions, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Yeah, I mean, it’s very, unoffensive, it’s simple, very easy, I think, to adjust to your own brand or whatever it is you’re wanting to use it for, which is the point really when you’ve got a default theme. Yeah.

Germaine: More will come out as as we play around with it as well. And we might cover more info in future episodes. But this is a bit like windows 11 wanted to flag it, check it out. If you’re in the WordPress world, let us know what you think about it as well. Jumping back to,

Ooh, should we talk about the four-day work week?

Kelsey: We haven’t had this discussion in the office yet.

Germaine: It’s something that I think about all the time. And what, what, what sort [00:38:00] of come up is the verge sort of mentioning the game developer Eidos Montreal is switching to a four day work week. There, the, the thing I wanted to bring up here is that I am not opposed to that sort of concept.

And the theory around it is that when you decrease your working week, productivity apparently doesn’t drop. So you do the same amount of work, but there’s this whole thing about people fitting when it comes to workloads, fitting in the workload to the time given. So. Yeah, it might take 30 minutes if you’ve only got 30 minutes, but could take an hour if you’ve got an hour. I think this is a bigger from a sort of business sense in that it’s a game developer I don’t know if you’re across sort of all the drama around game development and poor working conditions, Kelsey.

Kelsey: I’m not, but it doesn’t sound surprising from my understanding of some of the like tech startups and things [00:39:00] in history, Facebook, for example, and just yeah, long working hours and all that sort of stuff.

Facebook, Tesla long

Germaine: working hours. Yeah, like I said, it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting sort of conversation to have. I don’t know. There’s a comment on, on the verge article saying that most of the research into four-day working weeks show that people have a lot of downtime over the course of a five day week where they’re not engaged, where they’re making coffee, chatting and moving to four days makes people more engaged and productive over those days.

Now I don’t, this is just a comment in the comment section. This might just be someone who you know, as, as one of my friends would say someone who just walked work, walked off the street and gave their thoughts on something that they actually didn’t have an expertise on. But as a, as an employee, Kelsey, what would, what would your response be if I floated that idea in the office?

Kelsey: I think I’d be keen for it. I mean it adds an extra tiny weekend, which is always positive. And I don’t know, I think I’m very deadline-driven personally. [00:40:00] So I think if I did only have four days, let’s say to get something done, I’d probably work better and work harder towards those deadlines. Haven’t tested it so it could be the complete opposite, but that would be my initial reaction. But also I am coming from the perspective of, I’ve definitely read a lot of stuff about four day work weeks over the years of just random news articles popping up in different studies that pop up and they all sort of say the same thing that I’ve just said. So it could be very biased from that reading those studies and things.

Germaine: The only thing, the only negative I could think of is being client services, I think we could have issues with whatever day we take off not being available to help clients, which, you know, obviously we’re really big on. And it does then increase the, the lag between, you know, email on Friday, get a response on a Monday at the earliest to email on a Thursday, let’s say, and get a response on a Monday which by that stage, [00:41:00] you’re almost you know, as far apart from like, it’s, it’s basically, you know half a week, more than half a week gone by that stage because, you know, you send an email on day four of a workweek.

You get a response on day one of a new workweek. And I think raises an interesting, I mean, you have to shift sort of that, that sort of mentality. And I don’t, and I don’t know how like, customer facing businesses wouldn’t necessarily do the four day workweek thing am sorry. It’s different when you’re a game developer, because you’re working towards something or about a four year period.

And you don’t, I would have see, we don’t necessarily need to, you know, answer client emails immediately or, or that sort of thing.

Kelsey: Yeah. I think it sort of goes into more of a societal discussion when you’re talking about customer facing and client facing businesses, because obviously we can go, yeah, let’s go to four day work [00:42:00] week, but as you said, that’ll impact the clients, but if the clients are also in a four-day work week, there’s no issue. But then of course, you’ve got you know, e-commerce or just shops, things like that who operate through the weekends that might need support who already had the issue of not being able to get support, let’s say for some websites or whatever on a Saturday or Sunday, it might be more difficult. So I think there’s already some issues that show up in the current setup of things. And it just ends up becoming more of a societal shift which has happened in the past. I mean, Sundays used to be very much like religion driven, where nothing was open and now things are open and businesses have adjusted to that. And obviously this is going back, I don’t know, 60 years or something, but there’s definitely like shifts that have happened in the past that have been a real big societal change. So it could happen.

Germaine: What would you think about 10 hours a day instead of eight hours a day, and then getting it, you know, getting your work week done in four days instead of 5 days.

Kelsey: The other, I mean, that [00:43:00] sort of plays into a whole other issue. I think in that all the studies I’ve read I can’t name any of them obviously, but a lot of the studies I’ve read that sort of say, you know, people and they have four hours or something of actual productivity in a day in a regular eight hour work day.

And just imagine if we up that to 10, would it still be just four hours of productivity? Would it reduce because you’re thinking about a whole 10 hours of work you would get through. I don’t know what kind of impact that would have or when they talk about moving to four-day work week, are they literally saying drop off an entire day? Don’t worry about the hours, keep it to eight hours a day. Will the work still we done, or does it need to be increased to 10 as I think there’s a lot of logistical and yeah, well, there’s different considerations that were need to go into it.

Germaine: Oh, so, so many considerations on a, I mean, from a business owner point of view, it’s really around productivity and client support.

Like not, not even productivity it’s it’s about how much work can we still get the same amount of work done? Because it would require us to almost [00:44:00] reframe estimates around projects as well, because we’ve suddenly like, or does it, you know, are we still going to be as productive? So clients who’ve been told we’d do something, you know, in eight weeks or 15 weeks, can we still stay true to that sort of timeframe?

Or are we going to have to push those? It’s, it’s a big conversation to have, again, like, like a few of the things we’ve brought up this episode. But again, I think the biggest thing for me was that there’s a game developer that’s done that they, they work on a different, you know, we, we, you don’t work in a way that we work on a big project for four years and then reap the rewards.

We work on projects that take three six, maybe 12 months, but not years. So it’s, there’s, there’s different components that goes into what we do and how we work and different things to consider. But like I said, you know, not, not, not totally opposed to the idea. If it meant

Kelsey: We’ll have to have more conversations about this

Germaine: Exactly. Once, once we’ve all had a [00:45:00] chance to think about it. I think it’s something that we could discuss.

Moving from that to unity, we’re back on brand new. These guys are brand new, get, gets shout outs all the time. Every single week.

Yeah. I would say it’s one of, one of my favorites that I visit every day.

There’s some, we’re talking about unity. Again, a nice segueway cause we were talking about game development. This is, I would call this a refresh probably. And to me, this is a refresh in the right direction as well. Yeah. What do you think?

Kelsey: I agree. I’m not super familiar with unity. I recognize the brand and I knew that it was game-related but beyond that, I’m actually not a hundred percent sure.

I think they’re game developers, I suppose. Yeah, I like it. I think as we sort of discussed in the past, when they go to flat design. Unity has done the opposite. They haven’t brought in color, but they’ve added two other shades of gray, which I think is nice. It adds a bit more depth and dimension to that box that [00:46:00] they’ve got.

Germaine: It’s still flat though. I would, I would say it’s a flat logo,

Kelsey: but it’s not more flat from the previous one, which a lot of brands have been doing,

Germaine: which is completely flat, yeah. I I like though that, that effect, because like you said, they haven’t flattened the logo, but

Kelsey: they’ve added depth to it, but it is still single I’m single color, even though it was greys but yeah, they haven’t introduced any like reds or blues or anything crazy like that. Just added lighting essentially to that box. And I like that they’ve capitalized the year as well.

Germaine: Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to say. It’s they’ve, they’ve tweaked the. The word Mark A. Little bit. I don’t know how to look at this T here. I think the tea looks a bit funny. That’s the only comment with that with that shift?

Kelsey: No, like it.

Germaine: Oh, look at the whole sort of product identity system.

Kelsey: Wow. Do you know what this [00:47:00] is? Just made me think of looking at that GameCube. GameCube. Yeah. They used to have like a little box that would bounce around and the cut ones they’ve got there. Make me think of game cube.

Germaine: Right. But it’s very Adobe as well. I mean, I don’t know what the Adobe, we’re the first to use this approach of sort of acronyms within a colored within a coloured sort of identity system. But yeah, it does have that feel. I’m trying to work out if why, why is it sort of BK? Like none of the, none of the letters seem to match the names, but that’s okay. I, I I’m, it’s not our target group is really our target demographic. I do like these little components though, that show how each of these products help with development or sort of how they relate to what, what element of development or what component of development. So I think all in all, this is a nice example of how to sort of do a refresh [00:48:00] without losing anything really.

They’ve just really it. Yeah. That’s, that’s a really all they’ve done.

Kelsey: Really curious about how that actually compares to the game cube logo. Cause I’m probably just imagining it now, but just looks very similar. From my memory, but this is memory over years.

Germaine: Okay. It’s a cube.

Kelsey: Yeah. It’s a cube with the same lighting structure.

Germaine: Interesting. You are not wrong. That probably has more to do with balance though, than anything else, like visual balanced rather than, well, I don’t know whether they just, maybe they did just copy.

Kelsey: No, there’s there’s definitely enough differences there. It was just something that was familiar when I was looking at that animation because the movement of the cube and I’m so familiar with watching that little, did it, or I don’t know the sound that it does, but, [00:49:00]

Germaine: and I’ve never had a game cube, so I couldn’t talk to it.

Kelsey: It’s falling on deaf ears then

Germaine: a little bit, but I can, I can, I did see the sort of similarities at least at the start there. So interesting brand video. Yeah. It’s like slight missteps there, but then again, they’ve got a lot of products that they can talk about and

All right. What, one more, one more refresh Cadillac going, going flat again. Well, monochrome and a flat at the same time.

Kelsey: In a really weird way too

Germaine: oh man. Like this was an opportunity to simplify the shape without Lou. I mean, I don’t know what the shape represents in the first phase or the icon represents. Do you have any idea?

Kelsey: I’ve got no idea. I mean, I’ve never really looked at the original Cadillac logo that closely, and it’s very odd and very complicated so I can [00:50:00] understand why they wanted to adjust it, but I don’t know why they adjusted it to this.

Germaine: You used the right terminology there. They just adjusted it. They just adjust the colors. They didn’t, I wouldn’t even call it a refresh. It’s just a load, like a monochrome logo.

Kelsey: It’s almost like if you printed off that first logo in black and white, but the printing didn’t quite work. So it didn’t pick up all the little shades and things. That’s, that’s what I’m thinking of right now.

Germaine: Yeah. And that’s not a compliment. The old logo was already a bit of a, what were they doing? What were they thinking?

Kelsey: But at least it looks like a badge

Germaine: is it because we talked about. Volvo maybe last week or the week before. And they sort of flattened their logo. I think for a lot of EV applications, they’re flattening logo so they can light them up because, you know, lit up logos represent electronic I’m sorry, electric vehicles for whatever reason. I just don’t get it. I feel like they shouldn’t have [00:51:00] bothered with it, or,

Kelsey: yeah. And I’m trying to picture that, like, because it’s so flat and kind of trying to be a badge but not quite on an actual, real 3D physical car. Just the thought of how that would look. It sounds just, I don’t know. It’s weird.

Germaine: Yeah. I’m just, it looks weirdly, weirdly like a transformer because it looks sort of like a head or like a helmet.

Kelsey: Yeah. I just don’t like it.

Germaine: Yeah. All right. That’s that’s enough, talk about ’em enough, talk about logos and icons. I think Let’s let’s cover off the last topic, which is Google and YouTube stop showing ads on content that denies climate change. Pretty [00:52:00] self-explanatory heading there. Google ish issued an update saying essentially ads, ads, and monitorization policies on climate change, in recent years, we’ve heard directly from a growing number of advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside a promote inaccurate claims about climate change and advertisers simply don’t want the ads to appear next to this content and publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.

This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate change is one that, that the global climate is warming and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change. We will also continue to allow ads and monetization on other climate related topics, including public debates on climate policy, the varying impacts of climate change, new research, and more. My [00:53:00] initial reaction from a black and white point of view is why are we letting platforms decide what, what is right? What is wrong? What is moral? What is immoral? I think, you know, not seeing aggressive videos with, you know, abuse or murder or blood and gore is fair, but not seeing ads and content on, I don’t know, other issues. Where do you draw the line?

Kelsey: Yeah, I think it’s a very big ethical conversation, obviously. I mean, it’s one thing to sort of have an opinion on something, and I think we’ve had this sort of discussion previously, have an opinion on something versus straight up facts from the world’s smartest scientists and all of that. And where does social media and companies that have these kinds of platforms, Google and all of that, like what point do they have to intervene and are they allowed to intervene? [00:54:00] And is that cutting into free speech or anything like that? I personally think that this is a great move. I mean, obviously it’s positive for the advertisers cause more for Google because advertisers will continue to advertise with them. So

Germaine: That is sort of the second thing that I noticed is they’re effectively saying people don’t want to pay, to advertise next to these things, so it’s easy for us to remove these things and continue to take their money. Than, than, you know, stop showing ads in front of this type of content. Well, actually what they’re saying is this content is of no monetary value or financial value to us. So we’re just not going to allow it anymore.

Kelsey: Yeah. Which I think is probably the main driver in it, but then there’s obviously the ethical considerations of maybe not, well actually, yes, Google and Facebook and other platforms these days is such a breeding ground for misinformation. And obviously there’s been such a crack down on it through Instagram and all of that, where they really tag it and say like, check the facts of this. It’s related to COVID for example. And they’ll [00:55:00] really try to call it out. So I think that it’s an ethical thing to do. To sort of say, this is not factually correct. And we will not support you by doing this by giving you money from advertisers and blah, blah, blah. But obviously it is also a very smart business decision to keep the advertisers on board.

So it is two fold, but I think it’s really positive, but it does come into that thing of where is the line drawn. What’s okay to sensor. What’s not okay to sensor. Does it all need to be absolutely factual to go through? Can there be some opinion in there?

Germaine: Well, but then what is fact like that

Kelsey: sometimes that’s not clear cut. That’s the thing. Like you can have obvious, scientific stuff going on, but when there’s other debates around

Germaine: like even obvious scientific things there are scientists who say that climate change, isn’t a problem that, you know, it’s, it’s not the general consensus. It’s not that the vast majority do not say that, but I [00:56:00] mean, There are scientists to say that there are sort of people who do research in certain areas.

They say that now in that it raises a bigger question. I’ve had sort of conversations during the week about this sort of thing is like, how do we, what do we say? Do we say, okay, yeah, you’re a scientist, if you fit X, Y, Z criteria, is that how we do it? Or if you went to XYZ at school, your doctorate is respected, but if you got it from, you know, docPHDsRus.com we weren’t sort of accept it or value it.

Kelsey: Yeah, there’s definitely I can picture like the tin hat people sort of saying, this is a conspiracy, they’ll only allow content that fits their agenda and their agenda is who says their agenda’s right kind of thing. It’s a tough one because obviously when it comes to climate change, it’s pretty clear that it’s real, there’s thousands and thousands of scientists around the world that say it is. And as you said, it’s, it depends on where those [00:57:00] climate denying scientists are getting their degrees and things.

Germaine: Yeah. It’s more that, how do we decide who gets, you know, who’s saying something that is supposed to be listened to more like I was I stumbled on across a debate or heard about a debate with Alex Jones the famous conspiracy theorist and I I just, I was sort of like, okay, it was, it was a debate between Alex Jones and someone else.

And I thought, okay, let me, let me check out this debate because Alex Jones apparently just lost his, lost his mind and just was, you know, going crazy as he’s known to do. And. I didn’t realize that they actually, he doesn’t actually have a presence on a bunch of platforms as of 2018, YouTube, Facebook, spotify. And I then went to his website and I could see why, some interesting things.

Kelsey: Yeah, all these platforms they’ve [00:58:00] always had community guidelines and policies that allow them to remove people that they would deem problematic. So I like this is just is an extension of that surely. And there is a obviously more ethical questions to come up around it, but it’s, it’s not like it’s a new thing.

Germaine: It’s not a new thing, but I think increasingly, it raises questions around, okay, you know, how much control do these platforms have? Cause if you can see more of certain type of content, if they can sculpt content, like this is going a bit crazy, but like what if it was to be, you know, Facebook vs the government of the United States or government of US UK and Australia trying to do, you know, X, Y, Z to Facebook, what stops Facebook from just going, you know, what all your, you know, all these platforms that push news in your countries, we’re banning them.

We’re only allowing these other platforms that are on our side to push information [00:59:00] out. And then, you know, what happens there? How do we manage that? How do we control that. Again, another topic that’s like a huge can of worms huge topic to get into, but I’d love to hear, you know, you, you, your thoughts if you’re listening, if you’re watching the video I’m going to hop in and have, have conversations with anyone who wants to sort of get into these topics. And I think it’s at the very least an interesting exercise in, in talking about different viewpoints and talking about different approaches but a lot of news this week.

But that’s about it from, from my end. How about from you, Kelsey?

Kelsey: Yeah, no, I think that’s everything. We definitely had a few deep conversations, topics that came up today. So our little shelf of when cans, whatever you call them is growing. But yeah, everything from me.

Germaine: There’s a lot more to get into, but.

Remember to follow subscribe, [01:00:00] like do all that fun stuff. Check out the Facebook group. We’ve also got the fish tribe clips channel, where you can get short snippets of things that we talk about on our longer episodes and our longest streams in bite-sized more narrow sort of content. Check all those spaces out and let us know if you want us to cover or discuss anything at all.

You’ll see all our contact details and links in the description of whatever platform you’re listening to or watching this on. Have a good week, and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Kelsey: Catch you then .