July 22nd, 2022

Hello and welcome back to the Friday Afternoon Dispatch.

Today got away from me, so I'm a little late on hitting send. If I keep this up, I may need to change the name of the newsletter to the Friday Evening Dispatch. But here it is, and without further ado, lets jump into some of my favourite reads and listens from the past seven days, as well as some of the topics and ideas that I've been exploring with many of you.

Let's go.

What I've Been Reading

I love this campaign for its terrifying simplicity. The campaign from Danish broadcaster TV2 and Københavns Kommune, takes an eery new approach to climate change communication by installing benches that would withstand rising sea levels. City benches have been elevated to match what the United Nations considers to be a realistic rise of the sea-level by the end of the century, with a plaque on each bench that reads ‘Flooding will become part of our everyday life unless we start doing something about our climate".

“Fandom amplified by fake accounts helped shake down a major studio — at an ultimate cost to Warner Bros. of more than $100 million — to re-release a movie that had already bombed years earlier.” This is one crazy read via Tatiana Siegel on the manipulation of truth, the weaponisation of social media, and the exploitation of fandom. Rolling Stone journalism has been on a tear recently. Congratulations Jason Fine.

“Jae’s idea of branded entertainment, and his belief to never interrupt an audience but to attract and engage with them, has helped brands like successfully educate fans on their purpose-driven initiatives". If you work in branded entertainment (or the business of "brands and entertainment" more broadly), then knowingly or otherwise, you have been influenced by Jae Goodman. With his teams at CAA Marketing and Observatory, and alongside some of the biggest brands in the world, including Nike, eBay, and Chipotle Mexican Grill, Jae has paved the way for an entire industry, and the shift from thirty second spots to media and entertainment that engages and inspires, and that just happens to be created by a brand. This feature reads almost like a bookend. I know it is just the start of the story.

"Rob Stringer has made a great decision in appointing an entrepreneur like Vanessa Picken, now he needs to give her the rope to make the company her own. This might mean a few years of big mistakes or commercial risks that don’t come off, but Stringer would be doing himself a disservice if he doesn’t give Picken the confidence and security to take big chances even if they don’t come off." Great op-ed from Luke Girgis on the new leader, new start, and new opportunities that the team and artists at Sony Music Australia deserve.

“(The trend) of creators getting autonomy and control and leverage of their businesses, of their media, of their ownership, of their payments methods, of everything, that trend is now coming at the world a thousand miles an hour and nothing can change it.” Patreon founder Jack Conte talks to James Vincent about the world waking up to the fact that artists deserve to be paid for their creativity and value - a reoccurring them on the Dispatch.

"Teenagers today are increasingly unlikely to pick up a newspaper or tune into TV news, instead preferring to keep up-to-date by scrolling through their social feeds. And while youngsters find news on social media to be less reliable, they rate these services more highly for serving up a range of opinions on the day’s topical stories." This is a great read from Yih-Choung Teh on the future of news for the digital and social media generation.

“A global transition to cleaner energy sources could be the world’s best opportunity to minimise the chance of global conflicts. There is more to be achieved than can be done with more traditional Defence spending. (Australia’s) enormous potential to export renewable energy, especially to our region, could be our most effective peace plan". Somebody recently wrote that the battle against climate change would only be won when it was cheaper to protect the planet than destroy it. This piece from John Hewson goes a step further, arguing that world peace and security are as much to play for in our green future.

What I'm Listening To

Land of the Giants has been one of the best returning series of the last few years. In previous series, Vox Media has looked at the tech giants - Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Google - that have transformed every aspect of our world and forever changed our lives. In the latest season, the series looks at Facebook (Meta). the company that’s determined how the world interacts and communicates online, with a culture of "move fast and break things" that became more a reality for a broken world than just a corporate motto.

Matthew Ball has being doing the rounds this week in support of his new book, “The Metaverse And How It Will Revolutionise Everything”. In this episode of Offline, he joins Jon Favreau to explain what it is, why its matters, and "are we doomed to live in a virtual reality controlled by Mark Zuckerberg?". Terrifying Zuck avatars aside, Matt looks at the good, the bad, and some of the unexpected ways in which the Metaverse could help improve our lives on the outside (and offline).

Matt Belloni and Rich Greenfield are both regulars on the Dispatch. In this week's episode of The Town, the pair discuss the misperceptions of Netflix, Apple, and Hulu in the streaming ecosystem. It's a great listen about the ever-changing modern media landscape.

What I'm Watching

In 2020, Rob Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds teamed up to purchase Wrexham A.F.C, the National League (5th Tier) football team, in the hopes of turning the club into "an underdog story the whole world could root for". Welcome To Wrexham captures the journey from Hollywood to Wales, and their crash course in football and football club ownership. The series will arrive on Hulu and Disney+ next month, and I cannot wait.

That's it for the week.

Keep me posted on what you're reading, watching, and listening to, and enjoy your weekend wherever in the world this dispatch finds you.

Ben