Everyone is a Strategist and No One is a Writer
From politics to culture, we face a crisis of cleverness and a society addicted to marketing
Hi friends! I know I mainly write about music, but I felt inspired by recent events to connect some broader ideas I’ve been thinking through to the world of politics, marketing and culture.
Music will be here, too, of course. I hope you get something of this, and, as always, thank you for reading!
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I, like many, listened somewhat stunned to Ezra Klein’s September interview(?), debate(?), sort of meandering philosophy-session with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for The New York Times.
There’s much to dig into in their warring op eds (Klein’s and Coates’s) and subsequent stilted conversation. Put most plainly: Klein, in reaction to Charlie Kirk’s political assassination, tried to argue that Kirk was merely going around college campuses, doing debate, discourse and persuasion. In his rosy portrait of Kirk’s career, he essentially turned Kirk into a banner for the virtuous act of political disagreement.
Coates responded clearly that one can condemn political violence without glorifying Kirk’s political project (which he defines as “hateful”), or casting him as a bastion of clear eyed debate (anyone who has seen Kirk’s work would be easily persuaded that his project was one borne out of our ever polarizing culture).
The two of them, to their credit, sat down to discuss their disagreement and what became quite clear is that Coates was trying to tell the truth as he saw it and Klein was focused on strategy. How exactly can democrats win? Where can they moderate? How should the “left” conduct itself in public to regain power?
To all of these questions, Coates responded with a simple fact, implicitly rebutting Klein’s claim that he, as a writer, must moderate his perspective because of the ripple effects it may have in politics. As Coates said: “I see myself as someone for whom it’s very important to state the truth plainly and to clarify things as best I can.”
I audibly sighed when he said these words. I was looking for what was bewildering me throughout their conversation, and then Coates described it so plainly.
Is it the writer’s role to be strategic or truthful?
More and more these days, the writers, thinkers and outlets who I long sought out for clarity provide little of it. What they provide instead is a sort of meta-commentary on “the way we talk,” “communicate” and effectuate our strategy.
This chin scratching mode paints a semi-picture of the pipes that make up our culture, but provides little description of the slop that’s sliding through them.
In music, in politics, in culture writ large, our discourse has been poisoned by a crisis of cleverness: many of the drivers of discourse are marketing experts (like Coco Mocoe, Bee Better and Eugene Brand Strategy), data and sales driven update accounts (like Pop Crave), and chin scratching political marketing messengers like Klein, and the Shorist brigade.
Less important are the analyzers: the critics or experts, here to provide insight, not gameplans. Klein, like so many writers and outlets, across topics, is thinking and talking like a strategist. Not a writer. Not a human. But a powerpoint presentation here to give deliverables.
Since when did so many of us become so hopelessly craven? Since when did efficacy become more useful than the truth?
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I wouldn’t usually be inspired to write about a spat between two elite writers, but I found myself sucked into this discourse, through, strangely enough, a question I’ve been chewing on regarding KATSEYE.
KATSEYE, for those out of the loop, is a global girl group organized by an American record label (Geffen) and Korean record label (Hybe). The concept behind the venture was to apply the Korean model of auditioning and readying pop stars through a rigorous training process to a group of girls from all around the world.
Per the plan, the labels assembled a final, truly global group (there’s a Netflix doc about the process), and they “debuted” with a well received EP. They then put out an unlikely hit with the galaxy brain song “Gnarly,” and built a steady buzz that turned into a cultural avalanche with …. their debut full length album?
No. With a Gap partnership.
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KATSEYE were made the face of Gap’s “Better in Denim” campaign — a media blitz the brand launched with a truly remarkable performance by the girls to Kelis’s “Milkshake.” It’s a fantastic ad. The girls slayed beyond.
Anyone who watches it would think that and maybe even react with some enthusiasm. But, ultimately this is an ad. An advertisement. A piece of corporate marketing, people!
You’d never know that, though, based on the frothing reaction online. When the video was released, TikTok feeds were filled with outright fanfare over this corporate work of culture. People were screaming, doing the dance alongside them, and most notably … spending precious ink and oxygen extolling how amazing this ad(!) was. Worse yet, there was a world of discourse about how Gap “beat” American Eagle who had just released their problematic, decidedly “uncool” jeans ad with Sydney Sweeney.
To put it plainly, the fanfare made me wonder, why is it not deeply uncool to “stan” an ad? Or to care at all about marketing unless you’re being paid to do so? Since when did marketing becoming a topic of public interest rather than a niche profession?
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I’m not the first to notice this rise in public interest in marketing, as if the topic itself is sports or music.
of Feed Me clocked people commenting “Marketinggg” as a form of saying “yasss” a few months ago and asked some thought leaders in the space to reflect on why normal people are complimenting marketing tactics as if they themselves have access to the pitch deck Google Slide.A potential answer that arose, as
shared, is that now ads are becoming more highly produced and optimized for social media, and hitting a true pleasure spot in young consumers that feels “worth leaving a comment over.” Writer raised the fact that TikTok and Substack has maybe made everyone “tuned-in and extra opinionated on marketing strategies and business in general.”It makes a certain sense: with ads being shoved in our face via TikTok and Instagram, and with ads seeming more and more like general music videos or TV shows, maybe it’s only natural that people would begin to discourse on advertising as if they’re actual works of culture.
I can “get” all of this and still find it depressing that the public doesn’t immediately say “silence brand!!!!!” when confronted with an ad.
And I find it more depressing that people seem to think it’s cool to unpack marketing as if it’s film analysis or a music review. There are multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of views breaking down just why the KATSYE x Gap moment is so incredible.
What if people spent that time instead pondering art or the world as it is?
Why do we give marketing the relevance it’s begging from us in the first place?
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I can’t help but wonder if this wider interest in marketing is not a mere change in the quality or nature of ads.
Maybe, it’s that in an alienated world mediated by digital platforms, the most interesting topic isn’t policy or culture—it’s attentional dynamics.
Attention is the primary commodity that platforms are exploiting, and people know that this valuable resource is being wasted away. Thus it makes some sense that the consuming masses are seemingly giving some deep thought to the nature of that exploitation. The problem is, though, that people aren’t questioning this attentional theft itself (how awful and evil it is), but rather reflecting on its mechanics; How KATSEYE harnessed our enthusiasm, or, in the case of Klein, how Kirk practiced politics and wielded digital platforms to cultural and political, success.
Coates was talking of the substance of Kirk’s legacy, but Klein couldn’t get past the objective strategy behind it, as if the strategy itself was worth more than the reality of his legacy.
Klein was talking about marketing; Coates, the world.
All of this is a self fulfilling prophecy. As people talk about more and more about marketing, it becomes the show itself — the album roll out, the fashion campaign political communication.
Remember when Trump won and everyone was suddenly talking about podcasts (Trump won because he went on them, apparently) rather than policy? As we focus on how marketing is done, substantive questions of the world itself get sidelined.
Implicit in this focus on marketing is a focus on everyone but oneself. What will politically-moderate strangers think of this article? How is this album campaign breaking to the masses through (or not)? With everyone so concerned with other people’s opinions and attention spans, there is little time for individuals to reflect on the nature of their own experience.
Time spent on identifying “good marketing” or “effective political communications” is time spent pondering a vague imagined other. When done en masse, don’t we all veer into the same milquetoast middle? The same conceptual center?
I don’t know what will bring us out of this strange, sad state. But a first step is to sit down and ask: what do I think? And to look away from that bright light pointing to the illusionary masses.
And for all of us to decide, collectively, please, that “marketing” is not a cool pastime.
And if it’s yours, maybe it’s worth charging for your time and labor. I sure do!
it’s all related to how stans debate their faves’ album sales now instead of whether the music is any f***ing good! american taste has gone full consumerist
One could excuse Klein's desire for strategy if his tactics were actually insightful, good or effective. It was not difficult to see how the right-wing were weaponising Kirk's death as a sociopolitical power grab, even at the early juncture in which Klein decided to publish his essay. His piece did not provide some aisle-healing balm, all it did was validate the right wing's efforts. Throughout the interview with Coates, Klein undulated between wanting to extend kindness to his opponents' vies for authoritarianism, sportingly wanting to learn from them, trying to figure out how his side "wins" almost exclusively through the thought process of capitulation and then finally, questioning what his place in the movement was at all. It was all an embarrassing cauldron of conflicting intentions that made his attempts at "strategy", quite frankly, fucking incoherent. He doesn’t even know where he stands. He spent an hour trying to build strategies on a foundation of sand and didn't have the wherewithal to let Coates' moral clarity and grace help him reflect on what he'd done. Even if you look from a purely tactical standpoint, I don't think he sees how unproductive his essay, and the wider implications of the position it articulates, was. The conversation is infuriating to witness because he's ultimately so bad at the thing he wants to be good at.