The Office Is The House. The House Is The Office. The Office Is The House.
LOL good luck with work-life balance in pandemicland.
My almost two-year-old thinks the sofa is a trampoline and keeps jumping on and down on the cushions. When he’s not doing that, he’s climbing up the bookshelf. We teach him not to do that and to climb on the child-safe climbing toys we got him, but he’d rather play with the things with sharp edges and frightening falls. Human nature for ya.
Then I answered some client emails.
It’s a far cry from my March workdays when I’d pull into my coworking space, make a coffee and chat with coworkers. But here we are!
Anyway, as we go into September, I wish you good health and a fulfilling personal life and a fulfilling work life and a huge stockpile of alcohol/coffee/controlled substances/freemium meditation apps or whatever your vice of choice is. We’re taking Friday and Monday off because LABOR DAY WEEKEND and we’ll see you next week.
First time reading the newsletter? Keep the conversation going.
Give Money To:
Claudio the tamale guy, aka Claudio Velez, who’s currently on a ventilator in the ICU with COVID and needs help with medical bills. A beloved Chicago entrepreneur who has fed generations of bar-goers by showing up at neighborhood bars at midnight with delicious, delicious tamales, Claudio had opened up his brick and mortar restaurant here FOR LESS THAN ONE MONTH before getting hospitalized. His restaurant is shut down for the time being—in the meantime, send this guy some $$.
The Big Picture
Derek Thompson argues that COVID is changing retail forever. Short term: Massive boosts to the Walmarts, Amazons and Costcos of the world. Medium term: A ton of retail stores in urban centers like Manhattan, San Francisco and Washington DC closing and the decimation of the restaurant industry everywhere. Long term: A retail and restaurant explosion from indie businesspeople and new restaurateurs taking advantage of dirt-cheap commercial real estate.
Via Instagram Story(!), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gives a master class in how to research and prep for a Congressional hearing—and, honestly, gives good advice for interviews and presentations in general.
Last but not least, Army brat Nate Powell’s great comic about changing military dress codes, the police Punisher skull, the evolution of auto design and the aesthetics of the Forever War.
Chicago bar owner Virginia Thomas asks if Chicago’s tavern culture can survive COVID-19? And what happens when entire business categories are forced to sharply restrict their business/shut down entirely due to public health, anyway?
Marketing/Advertising/PR
How Israel’s security service uses Arabic-language Facebook groups to manage public perception of the West Bank occupation.
Andy Gryc on why most engineers are such awful writers and why the passive voice is used by engineers so frequently.
Brands and agencies are finally resuming big-budget television commercial production. The TLDR is that noone really has a foolproof way of doing shoots during COVID, everyone’s winging it as they go along and hopefully we should have best practices soon?
Awesome idea: Netflix gave indie YouTube creator King Vader a budget and the chance to run wild with The Umbrella Academy. The result = The Raincoat Academy Starring King Vader.
Media
How Sumner Redstone normalized media companies using permatemps and the idea of huge corporations paying their employees as 1099 contractors with no benefits.
Spotify’s newest problem is counterfeit podcasts. Yes, counterfeit podcasts.
Meghan McCarron’s epic deep dive for Eater into Peter Meehan’s rise and fall at Lucky Peach and the Los Angeles Times. It starts with the food editor for the Los Angeles Times deciding he’s going to live in New York instead of moving to LA, and the newspaper agreeing to that! and quickly turns into “a toxic management style characterized by intimidation, a barrage of sexualized commentary, and explosive anger, according to two dozen current and former staffers.“
Awesome experiment from Maria Bustillos and company: Brick House, a journalism cooperative that will give access to a wide range of indie publications for a monthly subscription fee. Their Kickstarter is here. (Thanks Jen for putting this on my radar!)
Tech
You knew it was coming sooner or later… Zoom For Dummies.
Speaking of Zoom, Product Hunt just put together a F**KING AWESOME collection of Zoom backgrounds.
Fun
Newsletter treasure Tedium on the history of Kool-Aid.
CNet’s Jesse Orrall pre-recorded himself in video meetings for a week to see if anyone would notice. A hero for our times!
That’s it for this issue. My inbox is open and please don’t hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance.
Love and coffee,
Neal
About This Newsletter: Neal Ungerleider is a strategic communications consultant who works with advertising/PR agencies and in-house clients. He worked as a journalist in a previous life. Neal’s newsletter focuses on marketing, media and communications news.
Follow Neal on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn and learn more about his services at nealungerleider.com. You can contact him at neal@nealungerleider.com.