totally real and important c-suite for a totally real and important company
today’s ride 🚋
midwestern haikus: when was the last time you did this little thing called "living life"?
deep dish with nish: how to find your local scene 🔍
keeping on track: an anthem for the exhausted and aggravated 😮💨
thanks for being here!
— nish ✍🏽
your subject line will not save a life 🩻
i've been thinking about marketing lately, mainly because we had an all-hands recently that felt a bit closer to a shareholder meeting than i expected.
my co-founder and i sat down with the rest of our c-suite to figure out our latest product launch, what budget we had for marketing, if we were in the green for this quarter, and what Q4 plans we had.
the product we just released is a six-song release we've been sitting on since november of last year. the go-to-market strategy is drop videos about it on social media as often as possible as long as it takes less than ten minutes to film. quarterly earnings look decent at least, we’re in the green for the first time this year. oh and also our board meets in our CIO’s home.
if it's not obvious by now, the company i’m running is tenmonthsummer. five friends, one band, zero investors (but there is still time to jump in on this round of funding!) and, as of late, a content calendar.
it seems silly when you put marketing terms into your artistic life, but some folks have turned their whole life into marketing. i’ve worked at agencies, start-ups, and big consulting firms, and i've watched grown adults debate is this the right shade of blue? for a slide deck for forty-five minutes like a life hung in the balance.
an entire industry built to sell you a product or a service has convinced itself it's in the business of saving lives. the biggest culprits of falling for this are us (i’ll throw myself in here, yeah), the people who work these jobs.
"don't miss out" vs "last chance” is not as dire as the choices a surgeon is making in the trauma center. i’ve seen an A/B test underperform and heard a zoom call go quieter than when bad news comes out of a waiting room.
an entire industry built to sell you a product or a service has convinced itself it's in the business of saving lives.
i've watched good people, smart people, people i daresay i like, burn hours of their singular life arguing about post impressions and grammar on a post nobody will remember even while they read it. there is a good bet someone is probably reading your post taking a 💩. (and please, remember to wash your hands after you’re done reading this newsletter while on the throne.)
i've done it myself. i've missed things while sitting at dinner with people i love because i’ve checked slack at like 9pm, or i’m opening spotify for artists to check up on our streams. when i say we take marketing too seriously though, i don't just mean for the band.
i mean the whole apparatus.
i’m talking the conferences, the case studies we read like scripture, the way we keep saying "data-driven" when it means nothing (because every decision we make is driven by some point of data, no matter how innocuous). i think most of us who work in it know that, deep down, and keep looking for a new hex code because we can’t fight the urge.
i get it because someone's gotta pay rent, and our pets are not putting in any of the effot. but i think when we clock out, we gotta actually clock out.
tasting the sun is worth a lot more than a viral post, i promise.
deep dish with nish:
from our last haiku, one of you asked the following:
you convinced me! but i don’t go to concerts that often, so how do i go about supporting smaller bands?
love this! more of this! you don’t need to change your entire social life to support bands, but even going to one show a year (we’ll keep the stakes low) for a small artist makes a difference!
a few options:
bandsintown is a super good website/app to let you do that
also search #’s like #[yourcity]livemusic on instagram and/or tiktok
ask your friends! they probably have a good recommendation and then you can go with a bud
as always, the google machine is a big help here!
(send in your questions to [email protected] and maybe your question will be the star of the next newsletter!)
keeping on track:
this week’s song is "team player” by our label-mates out from the northeast, career day
career day has put out new music this year, but when i think of a song that captures my feelings about the corporate grind that we must run through to keep a roof over our heads and exist in this capitalist system, i always come to this song.
in many phases of my life, be it grad school or when i was unemployed after a lay-off, i have felt the crushing weight of checking the bank account a few days before rent is due.
if you’ve never been in that position and wondered will i make it? then i really need you to turn on those empathy receptors to imagine the exhaustion one must feel when wondering month after month am i keeping the roof over my head or am i investing in a tent?
let’s lay it out there: if a lot of us did end up in the position above, we wouldn’t need the tent because we’d have somewhere to go. that’s the reality i’d bet is true for most of us in marketing, which is why i want to further harp on the fact that being a marketer is LITERALLY not a life-or-death situation.
lyrics i love:
the 1st always brings deep breaths
before i check to see if
i’ll even have enough for rent
just how is every month like this?
always overworked, yet
somehow deeper in debt
this must be my exit
there are many arguments of shades of blues and discussions on placement of words in my future and yours, i am sure. and we will meet them head-on if we must! but if you, like me, work in marketing (or a similar kind of field), please please please — i beg you — laptop shut, turned off, charger locked in a drawer after work hours. just trust me.
if you don’t want to send in a question for deep dish with nish but still have thoughts, comments, concerns for my mental well-being after seeing this existential spiral caught on keyboard, talk to me! i love mail, even when it’s ‘e’.
liked what you read? tell someone about it! that beats me vageuposting into the void trying to fight an algorithm! 🤖
as always though, thanks for being here. 🙏
warmly,
nish
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