The Reality of Writing

Fri, 26 May 2023 07:52:00 -0700

Last Sunday I sat in a full house to enjoy an organ recital. It wasn’t at a quaint local church but at Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of Los Angeles’s most popular concert venues. The work was a new concertante by Essa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Laureate of the LA Philharmonic. Based on the standing ovations that spontaneously commenced upon its completion, I’d say the audience was impressed. I know I was.

In a day and age when artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are filling arenas on highly successful tours, it seems counter-intuitive that there would be much of a market for classical music, let alone works featuring pipe organs. Yet, classical music is having a moment. Writing for The New York Times, Maureen Dowd reported last week that attendance at classical music venues around the country has been on the rise since restrictions from the COVID-19 pandemic subsided. The demand has been so significant that Apple recently released a “brand-new standalone music streaming app designed to deliver the listening experience classical music lovers deserve.” It should also be noted that my concert experience was in the same venue where a recent attendee of a Tchaikovsky concert reportedly enjoyed a very-audible orgasm. To paraphrase an over-used Mark Twain quote, reports of classical music’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

HBO Ghost

Sat, 20 May 2023 12:30:00 -0700

In ancient times, during the prehistoric epoch when I was an MBA candidate (that would be the 90s), professors relied upon a handful of marketing cases that conjured a bounty of groans and eyerolls from students because of their ubiquity and repetition. One of these cases was Harley-Davidson and its disastrous attempt to respond to increasing Japanese competition in the 80s by making its roadsters lighter and quieter. Another was the case of the Walt Disney Company just before its rebirth in 1984 under the leadership of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. That case unpacked the failure of Disney teams to understand the full demand and potential of Disney’s brand with audiences around the world. But the one case that we students tired of the most wasn’t about mice or motorcycles. It was about a failed attempt to change one of the world’s most iconic brands: Coca-Cola.

Streaming on The Findings Report

The Reality of Writing

HBO Ghost