Last night I spoke on a panel with Cami Téllez and Aleksija Vujicic about the future of the creator economy. I almost never stop thinking about the influencer industry, so maybe I’ll write something longer here about what I’m clocking and concerned about.
Three trends I discussed last night were: the affiliate landscape, founders-as-influencers/B2B influencers pushing their tech products on your company, and the gold rush of content startups that are basically treating influencers as show ponies to spin out consumer brands (think mini versions of Unwell and Barstool).
Today’s letter includes Chris Black’s answers to your questions, a breakdown of the “no taxes on tips” proposal that Harris and Trump are supporting, and some big PR announcements on Wall Street.
“No one wants to work; everyone wants to be on vacation with a laptop and a blurred Zoom background. Being a consultant often requires a level of honesty that most people are uncomfortable with. In many ways, your job is to look at things critically and then help improve them.” - Chris Black
GUEST LECTURE: Chris Black
This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I’ll introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to submit questions to them.
Chris Black is the co-host of How Long Gone, a podcast with a cult-following and a reputation for turning men bicoastal. He’s also a columnist at New York Magazine and GQ. Chris’s agency, Done To Death Projects, works with everyone from J.Crew to Balenciaga. I think the way he uses Instagram to showcase film photos of the menagerie of characters he sees in his day-to-day life is particularly fascinating. This week, he answered some of your questions about the line between celebrities and influencers, what opportunities he turns down, and how to get your foot in the door.
“There are too many brands entering every industry every day (like his often lamented Erewhon cold beverage aisle) - in his opinion, what does a brand need to make it stand out?” - Matt
Authenticity. Everything feels like an overfunded start-up scam that we just do not need. Erewhon’s cold beverage aisle is the most visible version of this trend. Private equity and VCs need to stop handing out money to bozos. Smart consumers want things that enrich their lives, signal wealth, or make them feel good, but it still needs to feel like it’s coming from a real place, not a co-working space in Flatiron.
“You’ve interviewed a lot of different kinds of people on HLG. What’s your take on the line between traditional celebrities and influencers today?” - Zade
It’s a very thin line and primarily up to the fan base to decide. I could meet a YouTuber with millions of followers, and to me, they are an influencer, but to their audience, they are a celebrity. One of the significant differentiators used to be that real celebrities were private. They didn’t over-share. You only caught paparazzi photos. Now, everyone sells themselves in similar ways. Martin Scorsese is shilling for Kith, and George Clooney is the face of Nespresso. The bottom line is nothing matters. Hopefully, your audience wants to see you succeed, whether you are an Oscar-winning actor or a TikTok star.
“You and Jason have opinions on just about everything. What’s one pop culture phenomenon or trend you’re surprised is still a thing in 2024?” - Zade
Crocs, dressing like a thrift store threw up on you, wine bars, vaping, giant pants with a tiny top, Patreon. I could do this all day.
“Is Chris hiring?” - Rachel
I keep things very lean. I don’t want overhead or office space. In short, no.
“What does your consulting work for brands look like? What kind of projects do you support?” - Ben
It mainly consists of strategy, art direction, VIP, and communications. Every client is different, but the approach is the same. I contribute good ideas, collaborate with others, and get things over the finish line. Another big part is reminding creative people we have a bottom line without stifling or impeding their process. We can’t do any fun stuff if the products aren’t selling. There is also an element of acting as a sounding board and counsel not involved in office politics. My consulting business is relationship-based, with the idea that I can text, email, or call someone, making the entire process much easier for the client.
“Has the majority of your networking been done in person or through virtual/remote interactions?” - Ryan
“Networking” is a lame term that makes having relationships with like-minded people feel transactional. That isn’t how it should be viewed. If I don’t like you or think you have bad taste, I don’t want your money.
“A fire has consumed your entire wardrobe. Name 3 brands you'd rebuild it with.” - Sumeet
J. Crew, The Row, and Uniqlo.
“My friend Joey wants to know: how do you make and keep friends as you get older?” - Amber
I am very lucky that I meet new people constantly through my work. My advice would be to find people you relate to and be proactive, communicate, and don’t flake.
“When will the inseams on men’s shorts return to non-gigolo lengths?” - Amber
Long shorts were a huge trend all summer for men and women. Somewhere in the middle is the best choice, no matter how good the quads look.
“How do you keep from burning bridges when it's time to cut ties with a client?” - Nicholas
Depends on the nature of the relationship. Most people, even in work settings, are reasonable. Oftentimes both parties can feel when it’s time to call it. Always take the high road.
“Can you give us a breakdown on how much of your time is spent on HLG, DtD clients and other projects/appearances/general influencing?” - Bill
It changes everyday which is how I like it. That being said, I can safely say that “general influencing” takes up the least amount of my precious, valuable, time.
“Need Big CB to tell us when he’s coppin’ his own Orange on Orange Aston Martin DBX 707, as discussed briefly on the 9/9 HLG episode.” - Sherman
The orange was a bit much for me, but it sure was fun to drive.
“What is the best music venue in Atlanta — old, new, or no-longer-existing?” - Jordan
Under The Couch was a student-run venue on the Georgia Tech Campus where I saw every important hardcore band in the late 90s and early aughts.
“Don't know much about him other than he's a tastemaker. how do you define good taste? can it be learned or is it inherent? is it possible to have great taste while also wearing visible labels?” - Matthew
Good taste is just point of view. I had to learn, it definitely wasn’t inherent, but it is also about being able to decipher what works for you and what doesn’t, which is something that comes with age. Being comfortable in your own skin. Wearing anything with a giant logo is the antithesis of good taste, subtlety is undervalued, but those logos have made a lot of people rich!
“CB, any advice on getting your foot through the door as a brand consultant? And how that's changed since you first started professionally?” - Brendan
When I started doing this, by accident, for Vice in the mid-aughts, most people wanted a full-time job; now, it is the complete opposite. No one wants to work; everyone wants to be on vacation with a laptop and a blurred Zoom background. Being a consultant often requires a level of honesty that most people are uncomfortable with. In many ways, your job is to look at things critically and then help improve them. The reality is, contracts dry up, clients go away, and the job is about having the stomach for that.
“In an interview with Byline, you said "Not answering an email, text, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Discord message isn’t an option when you work for yourself. The price you pay to come and go as you please is availability." Curious what percent of events/coffee meetings/job opps you say no to.” - Yours truly
I say yes much too often, but I like people, and I like to work. What I do is fun. I don’t want downtime or a life-work balance. There is something to be said for momentum. When things are going well, that is the time to keep pushing.
Remember this New York Magazine cover?
I think about it every time I’m faced with an iPad at a coffee shop. I bought a $4 cookie last week at a health food store and when they flipped the iPad around to tip, I did that stare-off with the teenager behind the counter and tapped 10%. I tip a lot for delivery. I say “Keep the change,” quite often when I pay with cash, especially at my laundromat and dry cleaner. I’m a pretty 20%-across-the-board customer at restaurants. If I get comped meals or services, I bump that up to 30 or 40%. But the whole thing has become quite emotional, especially with those little hand-written notes on the tip jar that mention college tuition.
Tipping has become a surprising conversation amid the 2024 election, and one that Harris and Trump both agree on – both have proposed policies that support “no taxes on tips.”
Eater did a great write-up about this issue. Ned Baldwin, owner of Houseman in Hudson Square, told Eater, “This plan will create resentment between the front and back of the house in my workplace. In this plan, cooks will pay taxes on their income but the servers, largely, will not. The plan seems arbitrary and unfair to the restaurant as a whole.”
Vanessa Williamson, of the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center told the Wall Street Journal that this system “What you do is reduce the pressure to raise wages. It would push more of the responsibility for paying people for the work they do onto the customers directly rather than the employers who are supposed to be footing those bills.”
I called in Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Reporter to share his thoughts.
“The tax code is a giant Rube Goldberg machine that’s more of a behavior-influence organism than a dry dusty document. The question at the core of much of the code is: what behaviors do we want to encourage or discourage? Want people to invest money in muni bonds? Make their payouts tax free. Want people to buy hybrid or electric vehicles? Give them a tax credit. Want people to drink less soda? Propose a sin tax on sugar, and let the city council team up with McDonald’s for a year to attack you as un-American.
Machine illustration by American cartoonist, Rube Goldberg. What would we do without the references from our Anonymous Transit Reporter!
The Tax Foundation provides good summaries of proposed and enacted policy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Both Trump and Harris have proposed “no tax on tips”. The question I ask is: which behaviors does this incentivize? Immediately: tipping. More tipping. More tip income to employees. Great news, I’m convinced, let’s do it.
The wrinkle with tax-exempting tips is this: the sloppy GOP plan disappears them completely, removing them from consideration from social security (and related taxes) Medicare/aid (and related taxes) and other payroll and income tax. It gives tipped workers a break now by borrowing against later entitlements, and gives business a break by cutting payroll cost off their books and shifting it hamfistedly to you, the customer. And it encourages businesses- who in many states may and do pay tipped employees below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, to bounce their employees to a tip model.
It’s a parlor trick, and if the candidates were serious about redistributing tax revenues to service workers who make tips, they’d expand the EITC, figure out expanded or new credit(s), or pull any number of other levers, whistles and bells inside the big, noisy machine.”
What’s interesting is that if you assume cash tips aren’t taxed in New York, your cash tip might be effectively 30-50% higher than its card equivalent. Tip cash if you can! And submit more questions for our Anonymous Transit Reporter!
If we had a water cooler, I’d talk to you about:
The Row is making big moves. According to Bloomberg, the family behind Chanel and the billionaire heiress of L’Oreal have bought a stake in the Olsen twins’ label, The Row. From a brand perspective, this elevates the business to a new level of luxury. Imaginary Ventures (whose investments include SKIMS, Glossier, and Reformation) is also investing in the label, people familiar with the matter said. The Olsen sisters will remain The Row’s majority shareholders. The transactions value the company at about $1 billion, sources told Bloomberg.
While we’re on the topic:
According to a New York concierge service, the pandemic more than doubled the cost of the .001 percent’s live-in staff. The reason? Working from home. “When they used to come and go, it was easier. Now they’re on top of the live-in staff all the time, it’s a much harder request to fill.”
“Then, for me, like so many others, the onset of the pandemic ran a black light over my life and revealed what I could no longer ignore: Drinking wasn’t ever fun anymore.” I enjoyed this essay by
A friend saw a SQIRL sign at WSA yesterday... another one visited their pop-up today….
Donald Glover is having a nice summer in Nantucket. “I wake up, I bike six miles to the gym. I do hot yoga, I bike back and work out, I do vocal lessons. Make breakfast for the kids most days, sometimes dinner, and try and help out on the day…. This is just some semblance of family and togetherness before the storm, essentially.” Beautiful cover, and incredible styling by Jessica Willis.
Earlier this year, WSJ reported a dangerous culture of overwork on Wall Street. Today, the same paper reported that JPMorgan added an 80-hour weekly cap and Bank of America is revamping their timekeeping. My banking group chat said that this is probably just a PR move, and these new protocols won’t do anything if the work culture remains what it is – which is cutthroat. Bankers would need to set lower standards with clients (which would likely result in lost business) or enact a real cultural change among the mid and upper level (which would be even harder because people at that level feel like they went through the hard years of being a junior, and it’s important for those below them to do so). Banking has always been tough, but technology has commoditized so much of the work. That being said, one of my readers emailed me this morning saying that in the 1980s, he used to take his 25-pound Compaq computer and a dot matrix home with him on weekends to work on spreadsheets.
The Kardashians are officially in on the Ozempic game. As one friend who is a medical professional texted me, “I do think it’s crazy that they are allowed to make all these claims in that post, and clearly know they are BS because they have the asterisks on everything, but they don’t have to share anywhere in the post what the asterisks mean.”
Everyone is trying to reposition or offer "nature's Ozempic" and can't wait for when the lawsuits start to roll out, not to mention Lemme has already been warned by the FTC and currently being sued for deceptive advertising. Wrote about how it's becoming the new "gluten-free" marketing adlibs a while back if anyone's interested in seeing how other brands are quickly grabbing on to it: https://www.snaxshot.com/p/glp-1-the-new-gluten-free
LOVE FEED ME but sensing so much ego in the Chris Black interview, hoping for more authentic male “tastemakers” in the nyc future. He might as well have said “Keep Calm Carry On,” in his remark on work-life balance (hustle culture trigger). Not sure when we will see a GQ writer who’s ready to call out that maybe friendship/ family is just as important as your career/ how other men view you. I also am not sure how much a tastemaker actively profiting off of his own tastes should actually be deemed relevant? Great read though, I’ll be doing the opposite of whatever he deems tasteful. 💕
Everyone is trying to reposition or offer "nature's Ozempic" and can't wait for when the lawsuits start to roll out, not to mention Lemme has already been warned by the FTC and currently being sued for deceptive advertising. Wrote about how it's becoming the new "gluten-free" marketing adlibs a while back if anyone's interested in seeing how other brands are quickly grabbing on to it: https://www.snaxshot.com/p/glp-1-the-new-gluten-free
LOVE FEED ME but sensing so much ego in the Chris Black interview, hoping for more authentic male “tastemakers” in the nyc future. He might as well have said “Keep Calm Carry On,” in his remark on work-life balance (hustle culture trigger). Not sure when we will see a GQ writer who’s ready to call out that maybe friendship/ family is just as important as your career/ how other men view you. I also am not sure how much a tastemaker actively profiting off of his own tastes should actually be deemed relevant? Great read though, I’ll be doing the opposite of whatever he deems tasteful. 💕