Show, don't tell
Better to have something the client can react to.
Yes, this is how every writing workshop began in undergrad. (Also: shoutout my creative writing professors who said “no dead dog or dead grandma stories this semester.”) Turns out the old “show, don’t tell” adage applies to client services, too.
I thoroughly enjoy the talking part of Three Point Four Media: meeting new clients, catching up with old ones, and talking about what the project could be. That’s all fun and good, but sometimes you need to come out of a conversation about scope of work and next steps and put some strategy on paper. More often than not, the client does not know what they actually want until they have something in front of them. So assembling a plan and strategy with tangible ideas and direction the client can react to is far more productive than having a conversation about making a plan. Tell them what you think they should do—then have a conversation. A better use of everyone’s time, which is basically the Three Point Four Media motto.
The links!
An article
We have previously discussed the legend Steve Albini in this newsletter. After the sudden death of the Chicago musician and beloved engineer this week, I revisited his iconic 1993 piece about the music industry for The Baffler: The Problem with Music. It’s a beautiful screed about everything from grubby A&R reps to producers who don’t know what they’re doing. I especially love this hypothetical scene about a band’s first meeting with a major label A&R guy:
The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he’s as naive as the band he’s duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it.
When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they’re really signing with him, and he’s on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in ’85? Didn’t we have a blast.
By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody “baby.” After meeting “their” A&R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, “He’s not like a record company guy at all! He’s like one of us.” And they will be right. That’s one of the reasons he was hired.
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A project
We’re rolling out some new editorial work for Acumen America. For this piece, we convened three of the brightest minds across the Medicaid ecosystem to discuss the role of innovation in Medicaid, the barriers to progress, venture’s role in the Medicaid system, and what’s next. Follow Acumen America on LinkedIn for regular updates on all things impact investing.
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An album
I was at a record shop with a good friend last fall and he pointed to this Pharoah Sanders record high up on a shelf and said, “I really think you should buy that—it’s extremely your shit.” Reader: he was right. For whatever reason it didn’t click until the last week and it has been in heavy rotation at Three Point Four Media Ann Arbor HQ. This passage from Pitchfork’s review of last year’s reissue does a good job capturing the vibes:
It’s peaceful but with an undercurrent of unease; it’s warm and welcoming, yet it makes most sense in darkness; it sounds folky and ancient, yet could only be fully rendered following the structural earthquakes of modernism; it comes across as simple and approachable while it’s overlaid with a blurring film of strangeness.
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A recipe
That’s right: it’s 2011 and you’re sitting at a reclaimed wood table in a dimly-lit Brooklyn restaurant. Get in, we’re having ramp pesto for dinner. I foraged a bunch of ramps in the Berkshires last weekend—it’s truly amazing you’ve made it this far and have not closed the browser yet—and in an effort to preserve the optimism and greenery of spring made ramp pesto to store in the freezer. I adapted this Times recipe. No need to blanch the ramps, that’s just a fussy food stylist thing to make the pesto bright green. Any nut will do: walnut, pistachio, pine nut.
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A run
Went for a very hilly run in Connecticut, which consisted of going uphill for two miles then meandering through some woods where I had to pull ticks off my legs every five minutes.
Thank you for listening. Noah will be with you in two weeks.