Apple's new, er webcam! ➜

This week at Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) some good gear was unleashed: the 2nd generation M1 chip – logically titled M2, expanded CarPlay functionality and the ability to edit and un-send texts in iMessage. All good! The new Continuity Cam though, was rightfully met with a collective What The?! Would Jobs or Ives have signed off on this product design? In ‘innovating’ a (practically ridiculous) ‘solution’ has Apple perfectly spotlighted the real problem? Macbook user eye-rolls all round.

The men (and women) who stare at goats ➜

Remember the George Clooney film, satirising the parapsychological techniques apparently deployed by military folk to stop the hearts of goats? Well, this is not that. This is, in fact, an equally bizarre promotion from the nations favourite four fingered snack. Kit Kat is (as it usually does) asking us to take a break. This time from all the time we spend staring at our screens. Bravo! How so then? By, er, well, staring at our screens and trying to outstare a goat and some other random animals. Blinking madness!

Vimeo make videos shoppable ➜

The march of video content is set to become even more unstoppable as Vimeo’s latest feature is set to make videos shoppable. The publishing platform’s newly launched suite of interactive features is impressive and elegant in its simplicity and it presents endless opportunities for brands to: create branched videos, seamlessly link product with experience and add reasonably graceful direct sales CTA's. Expect to start seeing a whole lot of this soon.

RHS brand refresh! ➜

The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) has unveiled a new brand design to ‘celebrate the transformative power of gardening’. We like! And in a cunning commercial manoeuvre, Design Bridge, the agency behind it, explain that the colour palette used across magazines and online media will vary from season to season, mirroring the changing colours of the gardens. So that's artwork and website update fees rolling in every quarter! Nicely done. Full disclosure; it was a pro-bono project, so we can't really knock them.

Pret refresh! ➜

Onwards to another brand refreshing itself this week: Pret. The food retailer has seen a challenging couple of years as city centre footfall has not – and may never – return to pre-pandemic levels as many continue to embrace the flexibility of WFH. But Pret is adept at adapting and the brand refresh supports a new growth strategy that moves away from being a ‘shops first’ brand. Always innovative and always interesting. Keep watching!

The Drumbeat Drop is our candid take on the weird, wired, wonderful world we work in.


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