[SIC] DAY THREE HUNDRED TEN

Vol 3, No. 29. A few tasty morsels. Unlocked.

[SIC] DAY THREE HUNDRED TEN

Hi all,

I’ll spare you the gory details but the last 24 hours has been a nonstoppably hellacious travel day. Apologies for missing you Monday; hopefully this no-foolin’ media blitz Tuesday helps to make up for it a bit.

First of all, I got featured in Dalya Benor’s The Pleasures List this morning, taking note of a few of my favorites. Have a look.

Next up, I was quoted in

Mark Stenberg

’s AdWeek piece Inside Dirt’s Immersive Approach to Advertising, about one of my favorite examples of next-gen media startups.

Though it’s a quick quote to end the story, Mark and I talked at some length yesterday for the story, all of which was about how these (for now) small-scale business attract brand dollars in a world of “Cost per Mille” and programmatic advertising.

My answer essentially is that it’s a matter of taste. In an increasingly slop-y information space, Media (agnostic of format) that has it will prosper. It’ll do so by flexing around traditional rules / separation of church and state and institutional practices to create something that’s much closer to what young (and therefore leading) consumers of *media* - trained to break the fourth wall by a zillion “how to” explainers - want.

Case in point: The mainstreaming of Lemaire, AKA Magasin’s Brand Rank: Spring 2025 Edition, part I. This is business information you can shop to. This is consumer choice weaponized for marketers. This is a great Hot / Not list. This is a future vintage shopping inventory.

It’s also nothing new - but what Laura and co have done is harnessed their own taste (and their curiosity about the taste of others) to make a hybrid B2B2C media object that holds incredible value. A superformat.

Apropos of that: Last Friday’s episode of People Vs. Algorithms, called The Taste Premium is a must-listen. First of all,

Why is this interesting?

co-founder

Colin Nagy

gets a mention in passing as influential travel person. Credit where credit’s due.

More interesting this is a conversation about How Long Gone’s Chris Black, one of my favorite superformat creators. Chris gets blithely cast as a “male influencer DJ Podcaster guy. Journalist” by Troy Young first, before Brian Morrissey notes “how he monetizes taste …is pretty interesting”

Then it’s what I think is a bad take from Anonymous Banker:

 “his desire is to make more content to try to monetize … what’s interesting is he wants to move more into the traditional media realm, that’s one of his goals, is to move back into the more traditional media realm to try to monetize it. He has a big audience, or an audience that’s highly engaged, around a specific group of men, but what’s interesting is as he thinks about building future value its actually moving backwards not forwards in terms of content”

I don’t think there’s anything retrograde about wanting to build presence in ‘traditional’ media. It’s part of the superformat cycle, same as a Tiktok shopping video. The important thing is to engage all of the cycle, not just one part.

Troy, to his credit, bring it back home:

“The Chris example is just another one where someone who is considered to have great taste is someone whose recommendations move the needle in commercial settings, and therefore their premium is justified.”

That’s right.

It’s also one of the topics of the panel I’m serendipitously moderating tomorrow at the inaugural NY edition of the Brands & Culture conference - which Chris, and Daisy from Dirt happen to be sitting on.

My topics for panel:

• Is Parasocial media is the heir apparent to social media?

• Is Hidden media is the most valuable form to advertisers?

• Is Meta Narrative is the order of the day?

• Is what you say no to is more important than what you accept?

• And is it true that consistency is the only key?

Gonna be a fun chat.

Will follow Friday with a recap.

[SIC] DAY THREE HUNDRED TEN