The show biz organization

How to set a business for the constant cultural output

Welcome to the Sociology of Business. In my last analysis, The World-Building Economy, I explored financialization of culture, leading to flattening of business models. If you are on the Substack, join the chat. With one of the paid subscription options, join Paid Membership Chat, and with the free subscription, join The General Chat on The Sociology of Business WhatsApp group.

Van Cleef & Arpels

How is Alexis Bittar ever going to recover from its RHONY-like Instagram series?

The brand may forever stay in the Margeaux & Hazel Bittarverse, which is not the worst thing to happen in the culture industry obsessed with world-building, with perilously little world-building capabilities.

To build a world, you need to set the business for it.

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A consistent cultural influence is created through a variety of cultural products, across all cultural industries, on an ongoing basis. It’s not enough to market a movie; you need to market a point of view and a taste filter that a studio provides. It’s not enough to launch a collaboration; you have to also open a cafe to celebrate it, or host a private listening party.

Every piece of the contemporary cultural output, across industries — from entertainment to fashion to literature to sport — is consumed with everything else in culture. A company’s cultural influence and its accompanying business model is a matter of creative production.

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I will be in Australia in May, and in addition to speaking at Cairns Crocodiles, I will hold two book launches, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne, thanks to wonderful Kate Dinon of Character+Distinction. Email Kate if you’d like to attend either of those! Hope to see you there.

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Hollywood — the industry notorious for its worlds — has a creative production model that revolves around bringing the diverse talent together and organizing their respective outputs. But even Hollywood can amplify its cultural influence beyond entertainment.

A fashion product, a sports game, a movie, or an experience alone cannot win. It’s lost in the mass of SLOP. Every company, regardless of its vertical, then has to be set up to consistently produce all of them, with accompanying talent, operations, and organizational structures to support.

In practice, it looks like this.

At the center are producers. Producers identify internal and external talent regarding all the elements of the cultural output that has to be made — collaborations, capsules,