Yearnings Season & More
It's a Grab Bag of Whimsy
Trying something new this week. It’s a grab bag edition of the newsletter. Quicker bits of nonsense on a few topics that don’t warrant a whole post (at least not yet).
Yearnings Season
Ah, the end of summer. The days are shorter, football is in the air, and the French even start returning to the office. But looming over the week’s horizon, just beyond the underappreciated public holiday, is the arrival of the terror of Q3, the doom of autumn, the September scaries: it’s Yearnings Season!
Yearnings Season is the time of year when businesses large and small start angsting over their deepest desires. Agencies are hoping for one final miracle spend boost from a monster client to make their annual number. Marketers are stressing about a critical holiday season. Media company CEOs are hoping to be acquired before the music stops playing. Universally though, once the leaves start turning yellow they’re all realizing their levers of success are quickly diminishing.
One mistake that I’ve seen businesses (agencies, brands, and media cos) make is to focus exclusively on managing the downside. Cutting costs or lowering prices or shifting marketing dollars towards sales might be the only option, but they also might be the one night stand where you contract gonorrhea if not done without also considering the non-financial needs of the business.
We don’t write a lot about leadership here at R&W, but the business threats year’s end also provide real opportunities to build culture and accelerate team building. Just as CEOs and CFOs are yearning for a successful to the year, their employees are yearning for leadership.
As stressful as it might be for the execs of these companies, it’s just as hard on the rank and file. The pressure piles up to be more efficient, talk of hiring freezes or travel bans get nerves rattling, and every task seems accompanied by a ticking clock. It’s in the uncertain times when employees realize what qualities they value in their leaders. So how do we keep our best people motivated through Yearnings Season?
Transparency- You don’t have to tell them everything (obviously), but communication is an elixir in times of uncertainty. Even shreds of substance for people to grasp onto can endear employees for the long term.
Involvement: Ask for help! It might seem counter-intuitive to ask people for more when the pressure is on, but inviting people to solve new problems might actually help solve problem those problems. And being involved will tell the high achievers that they’re valued. Plus, you’ll discover who the future stars and leaders of the organization are.
Vulnerability: Skip the platitudes and tell people how you’re really feeling (and not in the hackneyed “this is what keeps me up at night” way). When people are feeling anxious, it’s comforting to see people exhibiting strength through anxiety- so don’t be a robot, be a human.
(Full disclosure: I did not follow this guidance in dealing with Reason & Whimsy’s single employee, but he was given treats and belly rubs.)
Brand New Celebrity
This Defector piece says Chappel Roan is breaking new ground by pushing back on modern fan culture and dispelling the myth that fans have a real relationship with her. This supposedly flies in the face of conventional wisdom AND the collectivism on display in fandom in the culture wars era. Taylor Swift’s allure seems born just as much out of her “we’re all in this together” relationship with her fans as it is from her talent. And her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s recent $100 million podcast deal demonstrates how much money there is in creating the appearance of letting fans see (or hear, I guess) more of you than your initial public persona.
I think what’s really on display is the final stage of celebrity brandification. Like in traditional marketing categories, celebrities need to define their territory, and Chappel is simply carving out a less accessible, more exclusive white space, while Travis and Taylor are unabashedly mass and wide open. As Chuck Klosterman says in The Nineties, “selling out” is no longer stigmatized the way it was in the Gen X glory days. It’s a given, we’re just seeing celebs doing so in different shades now.
It will be interesting to see how the world of endorsements and spokespersonhood—the official nexus of celebrity and brand—evolves along with this new reality. Will the more indie personalities like Chappel start earning an extra premium in brand deals?
Danger than Friction
I’ve been rewatching Game of Thrones lately as research for a side project. I watch mostly in 15 minute increments on an iPad, but every time I pick it back up, Max skips ahead a minute or two from where I left off. I realize this isn’t exactly humanity’s greatest tragegy, but it’s exactly the kind of tiny annoyance that erodes usability of a streaming platform.
Other examples of this include:
-The CBS/Turner March Madness app on won’t show games that are on CBS on TVs, but will show them on mobile.
-The Paramount+ app simply didn’t work on my (admittedly not exactly new) iPad for about six months until they finally pushed an update
As spend on content (besides sports) continues to decline, the next battleground between the streamers will be in perfecting their tech and the rights; fixing the frictions that result from antiquations of both.
And as more businesses of all kinds become digitized, they will face the same challenges in this new battleground. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough tech talent to go around, so getting a head start now will be critical.
This Week’s Whimsies
Ok, this episode of Hot Ones combines two of my passions: spicy food and 1940s cartoon stars. But it’s also a simply clever, well-executed piece of branded content.
I feel icky linking to yet another Vanity Fair profile a billionaire (this one about Steve Ballmer), but I’m intrigued by the descriptions of the new LA Clippers arena, which is eschewing the usual abundance of luxury boxes for a greater focus on creating atmosphere for the fans.
If you’re looking for random images for presentations or silly newsletters that aren’t from Google or generated by AI, Public.Work seems like a great database of 100,000+ images that are “copyright free.”
Believe it or not, “How should in-app purchases work in the age of the sovereign creator?” is a question I have asked myself, so I was happy to see an (even unsatisfactory) answer.
If you’re even wondering why this newsletter has so many typos, just read this piece about ‘Why Creators Have Stopped Editing Their Content” (this isn’t really the reason, it’s cause it’s free!).