I’m doing a course, for which I will need to present what I do in about 60 seconds and make it sound if not completely enthralling, at least memorable. The words project management or marketing won’t do in that situation. I could say that I create compelling experiences around one of Sweden’s strongest media brands, but I’ve heard there is a certain circle in Hell reserved for people who say these sorts of things and I can’t risk that.

Which made me think.
What do I do, exactly?

It is a general problem, of course, in a post-industrial society. (A manageable problem for us without working-class parents, but God help those with. Like my boyfriend the copywriter, constantly plagued by visions of his father welding.) And like with any knowledge economy job, I spend my days doing a myriad of different things, high and low. But it has to be possible to identity the activities that actually produce the most value, and define it with those. Like the baker, who stacks baking-tins from time to time but will present his work as baking bread and making cakes.

So, this is what I do.
I write emails, and I drink wine with people that matter in my brand’s universe.

The first is creating value by facilitating value creation by other knowledge workers (mostly), enticing CEOs to give keynote speeches (gently) or editors-in-chief to subject to deadlines (forcefully).

The second is creating value by building network, and it is what working in media will be increasingly about. Other businesses too, but with relationship-driven brands like media brands, it will be, in fact, everything.

Which is why I will, being a generous kind of person, give away a secret that will help you succeed in this business.
There is a trick when drinking wine with people that matter in your brand’s universe.
Make sure it is white.
Red wine stains your teeth.

Good luck.

Bryan F – A master of media

“Architecture is always dream and function, [an] expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.”
Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and other mythologies

Of course, this is true for absolutely everything.

This probably exists in all other developed countries than mine, so it’s probably old-hat to everybody else – but I’d still like to point out that I find this pop-in-at-WHSmith-and-grab-an-hour-of-office space thing quite clever.

How does a project manager within business media marketing shop? Well, my darlings, approximately like you suspected. Look at this evidence of a trip to Sainsbury’s. Four pastries and an FT Weekend. There is something depraved about it. Yes, depraved.

The other day, I took a walk around the neighbourhood in the rain – as usual, feigning sportiness by wearing Fabrics That Breathe, but in reality walking too slowly for the activity to resemble any kind of excercise. Anyway. A man jogged past me – early thirties, quite attractive, making good use of Fabrics That Breathe.

Coming around a corner, I saw him again, now in an intense discussion with another, similarly clad, youngish man leaning on his bicycle. Walking past them, I saw that The Jogger had produced an A4 leaflet (from where?) from a kitchen design firm and was now vividly describing his dream of minimalist cabinetry or elegantly built-in appliances to his friend The Cyclist. In the rain. A scene which had a certain poetry to it, two men in functional, brightly coloured materials producing aesthetic visions on a wet pavement. After years of coquettish self-hatred in the middle class over our love of sleek interiors, why not get over it and give in to modern life’s strange beauty?