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.

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?

‘Welcome to the new WillSmith.com. In the coming months we’ll be bringing you several ways to communicate with friends and interact with content and information from around the globe.’

willsmith.com

Oh dear.

For another day: let’s talk about the power of daydreaming in digital consumption and, yes, production.

It was never quite like this, but I wish it would have been.

… sometime in the future … but this month, Crédit Lyonnais finally decided that enough was enough. After five years of non-activity – save the odd deposition to cover fees – their bloody-impossible-no-hope-customer algoritms have, correctly, identified me. They’re closing my account for me.

With some types of products and services, consumers are thought to be profoundly boring. Like with bank accounts. Either hyperrational assessors of offers or safety junkies, clinging to a brand because it feels like an institution stuffy enough to lack the imagination needed to do anything remotely risky.

Well, I had a bank account for five years after moving from France, because I liked to toy with the idea that I was back in Stockholm temporarily.

Also, I thought 1 euro per month plus the additional sporadic 27 euro fee (I could never figure out what that one was for, actually), was quite cheap for this pleasurable sensation of faux cosmopolitanism.

I’m not suggesting that this is the most common rationale for keeping a Crédit Lyonnais account. I’m not even suggesting that I’m not an utterly, utterly silly girl. But I think that there’s some kind of poetry in the power of humans to take the most prosaic of services, and just go crazy romanticizing it. And it should be taken into account when trying to figure out the intricacies of ‘consumer behaviour’. That is all.

In New York, I once saw a middle-aged hobo type sitting on the street with a tin cup in front of him and a hand-lettered sign reading I USED TO BE QUITE ATTRACTIVE. I noticed his tin cup was flush with bills. Another time, in San Francisco, I spotted another grimy homeless guy with a sign that simply read I NEED $ FOR A HOOKER, which also seemed to be inspiring charity from the local citizens.

from John Waters: Role Models (2010)