Gossip Drop #7: An appalling re-brand.

You may have noticed it already.

You know what feels embarrassing? Trying. And you know what my terrible, Canva-designed logo at the top of this email/post reveals about me? That I’m trying. I am utterly mortified.

It’s so bad you guys. I don’t claim to have come up with a good name for my Substack, and I certainly don’t claim to have created a visually appealing logo. When I worked at Mamamia, we were all trained in how to use Canva to design beautiful, bespoke images for our stories, and despite the fact that I was technically the boss of the editorial team at the time - they banned me. From making images. Because no matter how much effort I put in, my attempts were always… ironically… NQR. Not quite right.

So perhaps it is fitting that my logo is NQR. Perhaps it’s actually quite clever that I haven’t nailed it. Perhaps it is, as the young folk say, my ‘brand’.

Whatever. I cbf changing it.

But yeah I guess I’ve re-branded my Substack by giving it a brand, which got me thinking about re-brands generally.

The very best re-brand in living memory, I believe, belongs to DISSH.

Every now and then I’m reminded that they actually launched in the early 2000s, with the traumatic fashion that defined that era, and then underwent a makeover. The original owner’s daughter became the company’s director, and BOOM it exploded - all clean and minimalist and capsule-wardrobe vibes. Apparently the brand tripled their revenue between 2019 and 2022, which begs the question: will my re-brand triple my revenue? And what does it mean to triple your revenue when your revenue is currently zero?

All great questions. But I digress. It’s time for recommendations.

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Recommendations

I’ve long proclaimed to be a basic bitch, and the fact I watched Conclave over the long weekend further confirms it. Apparently viewership of the Oscar-nominated film rose 283 per cent the day the Pope died, because we all know that the only way we’re going to understand what on earth is happening inside the Vatican right now is if we watch a dramatised, Hollywood story about it, preferrably starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci.

Apart from being a truly brilliant film, it really does explain how the conclave works, which is pretty much like the Survivor finale but with less efficient voting and more robes. I won’t give any spoilers except to say that if real-life were to mirror art, I would be thrilled.

I’ve also gotten into the latest season of Black Mirror for the first time in years. I feel like it either lost its way for a moment, or my interest just waned, but it’s back and I’m in. Every episode is like a stand-alone film, and the themes are particularly striking given that AI is coming for our jobs and tech billionaires seem to be running the world. Episode one with Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd is so bloody clever - a commentary on both health care and the never-ending treadmill of tech subscriptions.

As trite as it sounds, the show makes you think. About reality and who we are and what’s possible and what it means. The season seven cast includes Issa Rae, Emma Corrin (episode three is genuinely like going to the movies and getting lost in a story), Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti and Will Poulter, and the production value is insane. Unlike anything I’ve watched recently.

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Thoughts

I had a not-so-original thought recently, and I’m now seeing it everywhere and it’s terrifying me.

I think we’re all losing touch with our instincts. Let me explain.

We’re all born with instincts, or intuition. We know when we’re hungry, or thirsty. We know how to get the attention of our primary caregiver. As we grow, we instinctually know how to connect with people, to be part of a tribe, to be altruistic. As adults, we have instincts about how to behave, how to show people we love them, how to parent.

But our environment can fuck with our instincts. There’s decades of research to show how processed food messes up our hunger signals. Who knows if we’re hungry anymore? And in the first world, many of us are lucky enough to have easily accessible food, so we don’t even really have to consider whether we are hungry, we just eat.

So how about our social instincts? Are they being eroded by a) consuming ‘social’ content that isn’t actually social, and b) having access to a limitless pit of content on the internet about people and what they think and what we should do and what we should not do? If someone tells me sad news, I now find myself second-guessing everything that comes out of my mouth. I’ve read a million think-pieces and seen a million videos about what NOT to say to someone who is grieving. DON’T say you know how they feel, but also dear god don’t say ‘I can’t imagine how you feel’. DON’T bring up your own experience. DON’T send flowers, because they’ll eventually die. DON’T bring up their loss unless they do first, but also DON’T let it go unacknowledged, you monster. I no longer trust myself to follow my instincts, because I feel like the internet has told me - over and over again - that my instincts are wrong.

Right now, I feel like I’m noticing this most when it comes to parenting. Parents know their child better than anyone else. But when there is a never-ending stream of information coming at us, constantly, about what’s best for our children, I think we get confused? And we lose our confidence? Especially when the information is contradictory! Me working while my daughter is 16 months old is both horrible and awful and selfish and why did I have a child if I wasn’t willing to spend the first five years with her, and ALSO good role modelling and important for her socialisation and financially smart (in my case, also very financially necessary). I’m so consumed by the severe cost of me making a mistake (will she be traumatised that I wasn’t with her all the time???) that I’m not able to take a breath, look at the situation, and listen to my intuition. Which, I’m pretty sure, says: honey, she’s fine.

I think we’re losing our intuition, too, because we no longer have to contend with uncertainty. I mean, we do of course, but we can pretend that we don’t. Compared to a generation ago, we ‘know’ far more. We wake up in the morning and know what the weather is going to be, and we know how to find an answer to almost any question we can think of. Who needs instincts when there’s a ‘right’ decision and a ‘wrong’ decision, and ChatGPT can tell me which is which?

Anyway. I’ve eaten half a packet of biscuits while writing this, despite not being hungry, which again reiterates that I’ve entirely lost touch with my instincts.

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Gossip

This is kinda gossip, kinda humblebrag.

The Binge series Strife, that I’m a writer and co-producer on, is back for season two next week. How exciting!

This is the humblebrag bit: apparently season one broke records as the streamer’s most successful original series premiere ever. Sick one.

While I did a little bit of writing, the big dog (AKA head writer/showrunner/visionary) is Sarah Scheller, who is bloody brilliant, as is the entire team at Made Up Stories who did the hard work of making the show while I shouted a few rogue ideas around the writer’s rooms, and then turned up to set to stare at Asher Keddie.

But I think that means I can share a few secret tidbits about it? (I absolutely do not have permission to do this, but I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: my Substack is for secrets).

For anyone who missed it, Strife is loosely based on Mia Freedman’s memoir, Work, Strife, Balance, and follows Evelyn Jones - a modern, imperfect publisher who starts a women’s media company called Eve Life. I co-wrote episode four of season one, which guest-starred Kylie Minogue as a celebrity who publicly calls out Evelyn.

Kylie Minogue. Said words. I wrote. On my lounge.

One of my favourite contributions to season one was the scene where Evelyn is on live TV, and is put on the spot to participate in a ‘what’s in her bag?’ segment. And she’s like hmm no. And the host is like why are you being weird. And she’s like haha no. And he’s like hehe do you have too many lipsticks! So her bag gets turned upside down and she has a used tampon in there. Because we’ve all had that nightmare. Haven’t we?

This season follows the advent of podcasting, and while it’s 99 per cent fiction, there are little bits of fact sprinkled throughout.

The major storyline is about a competitor site launching, and that actually happened, many times.

There’s a beautiful character named Paul, who we first created because he reminded us of beautiful Paul at Mamamia. We meant to change his name. We forgot. Sorry Paul.

There’s a scene where the team are naming their meeting rooms after famous women - that’s real. At Mamamia the meeting rooms are Malala, Lizzo, etc. Once I was meeting with a podcast producer about our interview podcast, But Are You Happy, and she messaged me to say ‘I got Lizzo!’ and I thought she meant she had Lizzo as a guest… for the podcast. She did not. It was the meeting room. I was so bitterly disappointed.

When the writers pitch in Strife, and when their stories go viral, they’re usually inspired by real articles from Mamamia.

When the show comes out, I might do a more detailed post on what’s fact and what’s fiction? If you’re interested?

Let me know!

Clare xxx