A monster is made only of nerves. —Sean Singer, A Day in the Taxi
Hi friends,
Hello and sending extra cheers to new friends referred from Currant and WITI. This newsletter started as an electronically mailed letter to friends. I hope to retain that intimacy as we grow.
Sometimes I share field notes from building a brand marketing team, or analyses on cultural/newsy moments. Today, just a (stacked!) lineup of recent publishings.
a content research framework for the ambitious nerds
Keep brands weird: The research framework for exceptional data-driven content
In my latest piece for The Content Technologist, I share a research framework to help content & brand professionals use the right data for better - and weirder - outcomes. This works whether you're in-house or agency/consulting-side. See how you can get dirty with your data and get memorable with your content. Pls share w/ your colleagues!
Thanks to CEO & Publisher Deborah Carver for the intro: "I looooove expanding research to non-traditional sources, so I was ecstatic when Vicky pitched this super thorough, holistic framework for ensuring brand alignment on data-informed content. It's just a little weirder than your typical qual/quant dataset."
And from Strategy Director Anna Wilhelm: “I love this article and framework so much-- like I do most things Vicky creates! But this piece specifically reminds me so much of the good times I had working with brilliant minds like Laura Thomas and Mary Carroll. No one knows better than a strategist that the key to great work is to get weird.”
And in case you missed it: here's how to use visual concepting tools like Figjam and Miro for creative strategy.
a media diet for the curious travelers
I shared what I’m reading/watching for the good people at Why is this interesting? - and who you should be too! I didn’t talk about Ted Chiang’s AI writing - he probably gets enough press - but also highly rec. Excerpt below.
Describe your media diet.
Chaotic and spontaneous? There's so much out there that I just consume what flies into my face through newsletters and Discords.
That said, I'm drawn to the dark arts. Not the magical kind, just the sad kind. (Though there's magic in the sad too.) I fuel this through shopping at Books are Magic in Brooklyn, and opening my Poem-a-Day if the title intrigues me.
My media diet is at its healthiest when I engage outside techno-optimism. I'm sensitive to lofty language and its blind spots, after spending my early career years as an insecure marketing professional. There's nothing like the image of SF dudes pumping Drake while microdosing on the toilet and dreaming up the next inconsequential dating app — all while my post-grad self manually growth hacked brand communities on $17.50/hour without benefits.
When I'm sporadically back on IG, I load up on the usual: The Eras concert reels, The Office clips, and bi-coastal millennial bits like Brian Park's take on the Aesop Soap Guy.
a poem for the sadgirls & boys
BLOOMER's my summer project, an album-meets-poetry collection that I'm gradually publishing over at poems.vickygu.com » Head to the site to read extra commentary on the writing process. Track 1 below.
homeostasis
after 12:51 by the strokes
kiss me now that i'm older
kiss me just to forget her
look away when we're sober
look away we're not over
watch me go all bipolar
watch me break a young molar
stay and let's take it slower
stay and we'll hold my composure
a snack for summer workaholics
I wrote this last summer for nice pyjama company Desmond & Dempsey's Sunday Paper. Thought I'd bring it back for the season. Much love to Sam Hillman for the edits, and +++1 to the pjs. This one’s for Erin.
In Praise of Unmagical Crystals
Weirdly, I don't remember much from childhood summers. I'm sure they were fun. I only remember more summer schooling than languid lounging. The closest beach to Dallas was six hours away, beaches were for lazy people according to my dad, and our industrious family culture thus carried on.
Weirdly, I do remember our short-lived Fourth of July tradition: crystal digging. Instead of driving six hours south to the murky Galveston shores, we'd drive the opposite distance up to Hot Springs, Arkansas. All in service to set up sweaty shop at a muddy crystal mine among the Ouachita mountains.
My best friend and I would swelter in clay mines while excavating uncut gems in ratty hand me downs and New Balance sneakers before retro was cool again and crystals got gooped. We'd squeal upon spotting a small hunk of quartz with its jagged imperfections, caked in mud and covered in orange iron stains. We'd lug buckets of dirty quartz back to the rental house for our dads to hose down. We'd marvel at our shiny loot.
Two decades later, I have no idea what happened to our crown jewels. I only know that they passed the original no bullshit radar: our simple third grader hearts, that cared about neither the spiritual richness of indigenous healing powers nor the manufactured marketing of touristy gift shops. Hearts for which evanescent glee was enough. The dopamine kick we got from crystal digging was somewhere in between seeing Dolly Parton at the neighboring wax museum and buying kawaii stickers from the Japanese stationery store, which is to say: the joy is here today, gone tomorrow. The joy is—
Nostalgia, in landlocked summers.
Fun, for workaholics.
Magic, from being.
Paid subs, read on for reflections on neurodivergence, managerial lessons, and BTS on the making of BLOOMER. And welcome Nicole to the club, we're so happy to have you!