Side Projects Podcast

Welcome to the Subway Series: a four-part series where we’ll examine the past, present and future of New York subway advertising in conversation with experts from across the city.

To kick things off Eli and Clara are discussing a few of the obvious questions. Why do a month-long deep-dive into subway advertising? And what can it reveal about broader trends within the marketing world and culture writ large? They also give a preview of what you can expect in the weeks to come.

Stay tuned on our Substack and social channels for more. Step in and stand clear!

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YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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You Can See Everything, the new documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about the Theranos founder Elizabeth (or “Liz”) Holmes, has proven to be a real cultural moment — the biggest non-music documentary opening since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.

In this episode, Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss the enduring cultural curiosity surrounding Elizabeth Holmes, her domineering, coke-addled boyfriend Billy Evans, and why the film’s success and hype can be attributed to its stripped back production and secretive rollout.

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This week, Eli, Trey, and Clara are talking about what seems to be a growing existential crisis in the ill-defined world of “cultural strategy:” Who is it really for? What does it really mean? And as youth-led protests swell from Marseille to New Delhi, to what extent is “cultural strategy” helping to shape (or better) society in any meaningful, material way?

We talk about Matt Klein’s recent “State of Cultural Strategy” poll, WGSN threatening to sue for “proprietary trend IP,” paying $1,000 to “define taste and culture,” industrial piping, and much more.

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What’s one thing bringing high-flying Hollywood directors and regular Americans together en masse? Vilifying tech billionaires. Just as anti-tech populism is simmering to a boil ahead of the midterms, a slate of biopics and documentaries with hubristic tech billionaires—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elizabeth Holmes—are hitting the theaters. Eli gets Trey’s thoughts on The Social Reckoning, Musk, You Can See Everything, and Artificial, how much these movies will really do to change anyone’s mind, and whether or not “really good creativity” or structural change (like getting $$ out of politics) can help turn the tides.

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Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing a new genre of creators gain prominence. Maybe you've heard them referred to as “knowledge influencers,” “brandsplainers,” or the “alternatively influential.” Their credibility comes less from sales-savvy or attention hacking as it does from a depth of knowledge and expertise across a range of niches—from advertising to AGI.

On this episode, Trey and Eli are talking with Jenny Rothenberg, the co-founder of Smooth Media, a creator rep agency/B2B conduit helping to expand the audiences and commercial viability of this growing crop of creators. We discuss how Smooth is building a new version of industry trade publications, why there’s so much demand for trend/brand creative breakdowns, and CatGPT’s equity deal.

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Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss everything becoming TV, New York morphing into one big content backdrop, navigating Washington Square Park like it’s ABC’s Wipeout, and whether or not there are too many branded social series. Plus, Aliens, DraftKings VIP list, and Unzipped.

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YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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This week on the pod, Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss the Grey Lady’s campaign celebrating 175 years of print advertising, and the quote “advertising reflects the moments that shape our world,” really means in its current context. Plus, Bumble cribbing (to put it lightly) friend of the show Amy Rose Spiegel’s “Most Eligible New Yorkers” piece, and an exploration of novelty popcorn buckets.

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YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

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Georgia Jaffe is the founder of Indie Hourzz: an online music, media, and culture platform which hosts intimate live sessions, concerts, and more. We spoke with her about hosting shows in her college apartment, cold-calling the Coca-Cola hotline, whether there are still regional differences in music scenes, and how to build an audience that trusts your point of view.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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When you think about space exploration today, it’s easy to scoff at the profligate spending of billionaires drunk on ambition, the vanity trips laced with an impressive lack of self-awareness (best characterized by Gayle King’s “have you been?”), or even Space Force uniforms “inspired by the discipline of the Starship Trooper uniform.”

But there are actually good, insightful, and even artful things happening. One of them is the launch of SPACE JUNK, a new print publication “examining the intersection of the culture of space travel and humanity’s relationship with the cosmos.” We spoke with Jack Mills about why space is both a “red herring” and an “excuse to think about the future and ways that we might rebuild,” an impending NASA partnership butt-dialling astronauts, and how he got Bottega Veneta to foot some of the bill.

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It’s been a while since we’ve had the full gang together, and there’s much to discuss. Trey gives the run down on Corgi Cafe—and makes the case for Capitol One Café. Clara rants about how “special drink” culture has gone too far. Eli closes us out on a positive and optimistic high: Flock Cameras.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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Recently, there’s been a lot of anxiety around the health of subcultures: “Subcultures aren’t dead, they’re just not where you’re looking,” “Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids,” “Alt Erasure: Has TikTok Killed Alternative Subcultures?.”

Brands like to think of themselves as conduits to subcultures, or, if you’ve spent time in the hefty, vertigo-inducing haze of a brand strategy deck, what we now call “niche communities.” But in practice—thanks to the need for immediately legible ROI—they tend to strip mine and erode what actually helps interesting ideas and people flourish. So what role if any do brands have to play in helping to build and cultivate subcultures?

We spoke with Elliot Aronow, the founder of Minor Genius, about living in an “aggressively legible world,” why he thinks Ralph Lauren is the greatest marketer of all time, a “hot MILF” theory of brand strategy, and why brands should start thinking of themselves as cultural patrons.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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The creator economy has officially won, and periodic waves of influencer backlash have become a perennial feature of online discourse. Some recent examples include the “no influencers sign” in Nantucket, whether “hating influencers has become a socially acceptable way to hate women,” and talk of an influencer recession as the landscape becomes more crowded and competitive.

To parse legit grievances from convenient moral cover for envy, we turned to the writer and strategist Ochuko who you might know from her newsletter “as seen on.” We discuss why waiting for the end of influencers is like waiting for the end of the Kardashians, where we’re at in the five stages of acceptance, capitalism, honor, meritocracy, and scrounging for scraps on TikTok Shop.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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Is it a fun new beverage? Fast food innovation? Celebrity wedding? A disdain for data centers? An underdog sports story? We’re living through a moment of seemingly calcified cynicism and alienation, but there are palpable signs that people are looking to involve themselves in something bigger than themselves that’s positive.

As America celebrates its Semiquincentennial, we wanted to get a gut check (and an optimistic take) from someone who has a few ideas on positive connectivity and finding common purpose. Our guest this week is Scott Reich, author of One Day in September and The Power of Citizenship: JFK 60 Years Later. We talk about his push for mandatory civil service, why we need more local heroes, getting off the phone, tiny Cheez-It bags, and why you should visit a presidential library.

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YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

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Phyllis Kao is a senior auctioneer at Sotheby’s. You might’ve recently seen clips of her taking bids for a 67-million-year-old T-Rex named Gus, which sold for a whopping $50.1 million to an unnamed buyer. Being an auctioneer (auctioneering is not a verb) has always sat at the intersection of performance and expertise. And in the attention economy, Kao has displayed a knack for both in a way that’s helped the 18th century institution navigate the modern media ecosystem while also attracting a younger audience of bidders. We talk with Phyllis about how auctions have evolved with the rise of social media, her thoughts on celeb-backed auction houses like Pharrell’s JOOPITER, why there’s such high demand for brand archives in the age of AI, the lost art of expertise, and more.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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Brands have rightly diagnosed a desire for connection and romance, hosting “mixers,” posting personals, and even producing dating shows on social. But what role should they really be playing as matchmakers? We wanted to hear from someone with a real pulse on the dating scene and hit up Amy Rose Spiegel, a senior editor at The Cutand author of the publication's Personals newsletter to come on the pod. We talk about why she doesn’t buy into the stereotype that Gen Z aren’t having sex, dating narrative bias in media, why you should never use AI for dating, how romantasy has shifted the way some people are dating, and if people are tired of brands mediating their love life.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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Eli and Clara discuss the highs and lows of the World Cup, with an eye toward how brands leveraged big-name talent like Madonna, Messi, the Muppets, and David “the Coca-Cola of humans” Beckham. Plus: our thoughts on the FIFA Peace Prize, Hidden Valley Ranch, Erling Haaland’s vlog, and (unexpectedly) Kamala Harris.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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Clara and Trey sat down with Jalil Johnson—fashion professional, writer, and creator of popular Substack ‘Consider Yourself Cultured’—to talk about the changing role of fashion in culture and the current obsession with taste. They discuss how social media incentivizes reference curation over developing a point of view, “buying the look” instead of learning the ropes, Covid-era style experimentation, the pleasures of delayed gratification via made-to-order clothing, and heat wave styling inspiration.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

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Hypnotist and hypnosis instructor Désirée Eckert joins Eli and Clara to talk about the trance states we enter every day (scrolling on our phones for one) and why building our awareness of trance is a useful tool for seeing both how our attention is extracted and how we can reclaim it.

We discuss the infinite scroll, quitting cigarettes, prescription drug commercials, The Twilight Zone, hate-reading IG comments, the Folgers jingle, and more examples of how hypnotic inductions and trance states appear in advertising and on our screens.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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As prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket stretch their tentacles across culture, their advertising has become ubiquitous. Ahead of the World Cup, Kalshi has inked partnerships with a slew of high-profile athletes and football personalities, like José Mourinho and Lionel Messi. Polymarket, for its part, was a marquee sponsor for the UFC 250 fight at the White House earlier this month. They’re also currently under investigation for deceptive marketing practices (something for another podcast).

But more recently, a new Polymarket spot, directed by Gabriel Moses featuring Rick Rubin, Future, and Peso Pluma, has caught people’s attention. In this episode, we break down the spot, discussing the deliberate dissonance between the ad and the product, tastewashing, if these people are too hot to be gambling, why tech seems to be the only place where brand marketing is alive, and more.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

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For our second special edition pod, we spoke with Mark Stenberg, Senior Media Reporter at AdWeek, to compare notes on what people are talking about this year: AI FOBO, the proliferation of creators, and the increasingly blurry purpose of the festival itself. We get into why Cannes may be less about new ideas than consensus building, why public panels feel more PR-approved than ever, and data dissonance in the basement of the Palais.

IG: @sideprojects__

YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast

Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.