Pokemon Go and the new blue

This week is a #Brexit-free zone. We look at Pokemon Go, learn how Werner Herzog wrestled guns from Klaus Kinski, a new colour blue that has unusual properties, chatbots and top creative from Nike, Channel 4 and Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero

Of course there is only one subject worthy of discussion this week. The searching has been frenetic, sometimes downright confrontational and with shocks aplenty. Yes, Pokemon Go has arrived.

To put this game in perspective, it has been available for a week and has eclipsed Tinder, Twitter and Uber already. What is it? Well it’s an augmented reality game. The camera picks up the area around you and shows you where Pokemon are hiding. You catch them. I think that’s about it.

The game has prompted mass meet-ups where Pokemon are plentiful. US volunteer Louis Park found Pokemon on the frontline fighting ISIS. In South Korea, people have apparently abandoned their jobs to head up to a Pokemon ‘paradise’. One user was stabbed while playing, but just carried on regardless. One woman stumbled across a dead body while looking for Pokemon. Thieves used the game to lure players into an armed robbery.

It’s now legally available in the UK, and advertisers are poised to pile-in. Snapchat, another successful app, is now relatively old and it can take ads. Ogilvy One’s Rob Blackie says it’s ads are good, but not great for brands.

Another publisher, News UK’s The Sun has found online traffic surge by 25% since its redesign, which shows the power of good design.

More nice design was available at London’s Waterloo station this week as part of the large campaign to publicise the new Ghostbusters film.

We mentioned chatbots last week, and it’s on the agenda again this week. Mindshare has published a guide of sorts to building a chatbot, with some clever people and a clever computer, IBM’s Watson. The piece focuses on creative execution and tone of voice.

The report author Jeremy Pounder wrote in an article that you have to remember the humans when developing a chatbot. As Bloomberg suggested earlier in the year, a chatbot is more likely to be a low-paid worker than a smart computer. At the moment at least.

Another buzz topic, the Internet of Things, came for some criticism this week in The Verge from a blogger who has tracked the progress of various connected devices, often with no obvious advantage.

One medium that has been subject to a great deal of change is the Out Of home (OOH) sector, which has transformed thanks to digital possibilities. Ocean has introduced the first vehicle recognition for programmatic OOH in the UK with Renault.

Wieden + Kennedy released its new Nike ad this week for Nike India, focusing on sportswomen:

As the frenetic pace of the world increases, multitasking seems to be essential. Wrong, says the New York Times. Monotasking, not multitasking is what we should focus on, and attempt to concentrate on what we are doing.

Now Euro 2016 is over, it's worth pondering how Carlsberg managed to advertise without advertising during the tournament. Also learn how the Dutch make beer from rainwater.

Next in the sporting calendar comes the Olympic and Paralympic games in Rio. Watch this superb video for Channel 4's Superhumans strand for the Paralympic Games:

If you want to get your creative juices flowing a little more, take a leaf out of Werner Herzog's book (or rather his Reddit AMA). Find tips to being creative, but also how he wrestled a gun from Klaus Kinski, how to hypnotise a chicken and how he connectes with astronauts over milking cows.

You may remember we covered the worst-ever colour, to be used for cigarette packaging. Well now meet a completely new colour, a kind of blue, described as, "one part blue neon, two parts cookie monster". Created accidentally, the colour has some unusual and exciting properties.

Finally, we are politically-neutral at the DMA. But we were not the only ones to spot the 'eccentric ditty' David Cameron hummed on his way back to Number 10 when he resigned this week. This is what Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero says Bach might have made of it: