☕ The shape of water
How Apple Music created its new brand mark.
Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
Share
Morning Brew promotes a story about Apple's new Apple Music logo, highlighting the company's behind-the-scenes approach to showcasing its creation. The brand is giving fans a peek into the making of the logo using sound waves. This strategy is becoming increasingly common among brands, including Prada, to showcase human craft and expertise.
What the raw message shows
From the headers
- Sent with
-
Sailthru
See it in the headers
Across Morning Brew's email
- Sends
- About 4 a week
- DMARC
-
Enforced, reject
Mail failing authentication is refused.
The copy
571 words · about 2 min to read
November 05, 2026
View Online | Sign Up | Shop
Presented By
Sponsor Logo: Roku Ads Manager
It’s Thursday. At an estimated $13 billion in total spend, the 2026 midterms are officially the most expensive election cycle to date. Broadcast, cable, and CTV still make up the bulk of that spend—American voters sure do love their televisions.
In today’s edition:
Wave after wave 🌊
Stars aligned ✨
One-stop shop 🛍️
—Kristina Monllos, Alyssa Meyers
BRAND STRATEGY
Making your mark
An image of the sound waves moving through water in a rig to create the Apple Music logo.
Apple is giving fans another peek behind the curtain.
To introduce the new Apple Music logo, Apple and ad agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab created a 78-second behind-the-scenes spot showcasing how the new logo was made using sound waves. Showing the work behind the work is an approach the company and agency took last fall when it showed off the process behind creating the updated Apple TV logo.
Apple isn’t alone in doing so. Over the last year, as the use of AI has many people questioning how things are made, it’s become common for brands to showcase the craft and production expertise of the human beings working on those efforts. Just this week, for example, Prada specified that the company’s whimsical, partially animated holiday campaign was “animated by hand” in the title.
We spoke with James Taylor, global head of design at Apple’s agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, about the process of making Apple Music’s new logo, why he views it as important to show audiences craft, and the increasingly common behind-the-scenes videos accompanying marketing and branding efforts.
“We’re in a space right now where audiences are looking to understand how things are done, especially from Apple,” Taylor told Marketing Brew. “What Apple does from a product and marketing standpoint always sits on the edge of wonder…There’s a curiosity, which I think is becoming even more acute at the moment because things are feeling automated and generated, and I think people are looking to feel things a little bit more. This asset, this behind-the-scenes film, does many of those jobs for us.”
For more from our conversation with Taylor about creating a logo and mnemonic that could work in harmony, continue reading here.—KM
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn
Sponsored By Roku Ads Manager
Something streaming this way comes
Sponsor: Roku Ads Manager
The candy corn is still fresh, yet something even sweeter’s on the horizon.
Yes: The biggest streaming season of the year is nearly upon us, and with that comes shopping. In fact, Roku’s #1 streaming weekend of 2025 landed during Cyber 5 (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday).
Holiday content searches on Roku jumped 86% over the month of October 2025 alone, so the shopping list starts forming before most brands start advertising. 39% of Roku holiday shoppers bought gifts in October, ahead of the traditional Thanksgiving-to-mid-December window, but it’s not too late to catch them.
Roku Ads Manager makes it simple to launch now. With self-serve setup, no DSP fees, and in-platform measurement, you can see what’s working before the season peaks.
SPORTS MARKETING
At the starting line
Aerial view of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Exposition Park.
If you thought ESPN dropping its first 2027 Super Bowl ad less than 24 hours after the 2026 NFL season ended was premature, wait until you see what LA28 is up to.
The words as text: what a screen reader can follow, and all there is when images don't load.
What the headers say
Read from the message's own headers, as it arrived.
- Came from
-
pmta180-102.sailthru.com
· 163.47.180.102
Sailthru's sending servers
- SPF
- Pass for bounce.morningbrew.com
- DKIM
-
- Pass signed by marketingbrew
- DMARC
-
Pass for morningbrew.com
Policy: reject
- Unsubscribe
-
One-click
Meets the Gmail and Yahoo rule for bulk senders.
- Complaints
- No feedback-loop header
Show all 26 headers Hide the headers
As received, minus the delivery side: the archive's own addresses show as [recipient], its mail servers as [receiver], signatures are left out and unsubscribe links trimmed to their host.
Route
- Received Identifies Sailthru
- from pmta180-102.sailthru.com (163.47.180.102) by [receiver] (cloudflare) id OxGRUGO54jsZ for <[recipient]>; Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:01:10 +0000
- Received Identifies Sailthru
- from pmta-prod-relay7.sailthru.cloud (10.55.87.21) by pmta180-102.sailthru.com id htj26c3791s7 for <[recipient]>; Thu, 5 Nov 2026 12:01:10 -0600 (envelope-from <[email protected]>)
Authentication
- Received-SPF Authentication result
- pass ([receiver]: domain of [email protected] designates 163.47.180.102 as permitted sender) receiver=[receiver]; client-ip=163.47.180.102; envelope-from="[email protected]"; helo=pmta180-102.sailthru.com;
- Authentication-Results Authentication result
- [receiver]; dkim=pass [email protected] header.s=sailthru header.b=S/oPtFth; dmarc=pass header.from=morningbrew.com policy.dmarc=reject; spf=pass ([receiver]: domain of [email protected] designates 163.47.180.102 as permitted sender) smtp.helo=pmta180-102.sailthru.com; spf=pass ([receiver]: domain of [email protected] designates 163.47.180.102 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=delivery_20261105130110.48286432.352235@bounce.morningbrew.com; arc=none smtp.remote-ip=163.47.180.102
Platform
- x-job
- 7748-48286432-20261105
- X-Feedback-ID
- 7748:48286432:campaign:sailthru
- X-TM-ID
- 20261105130110.48286432.352235
- X-Info
- Message sent by sailthru.com customer Morning Brew
- X-Info
- We do not permit unsolicited commercial email
- X-Info
- Please report abuse by forwarding complete headers to
- X-Info
- [email protected]
- X-Mailer
- sailthru.com
- X-JMailer
- aws-campaign-mailer-5.sailthru.cloud
- X-Unsubscribe-Web
- https://link.morningbrew.com/oc/6a8e359d100aabef8b0f7ab6sqy1s.7jsb/8252bcd9
- X-rpcampaign
- stlma48286432
- X-steri
- 48286432.352235.0
Unsubscribe and feedback
- Precedence
- bulk
- List-Unsubscribe-Post
- List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
- List-Unsubscribe
- <https://link.morningbrew.com/…>,<mailto:…@mx.sailthru.com>
Message
- Date
- Thu, 5 Nov 2026 13:01:10 -0500 (EST)
- From
- Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
- Reply-To
- [email protected]
- Message-ID
- <[email protected]>
- Subject
- ☕ The shape of water
- MIME-Version
- 1.0
- Content-Type
- multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_29616937_2067685728.1793901670144"
More from Morning Brew
All 44 emailsSimilar campaigns from other brands
Different brands running the same play. Compare any of them side by side.
Archived for reference and commentary. Morning Brew, its logos and content are the property of their respective owners; Inbox Archive claims no affiliation and has disabled all links. If you own this content and would like it removed, get in touch.