The Oct. 11, 2020 New York Times Magazine, which comes with the Sunday paper if you still get it delivered, is identified as "The Culture Issue" and it contains a number of articles on where the editors think matters currently stand here in the U.S. For instance: can Hollywood successfully make a film about slavery in view of prevailing controversies about American history and racial identity?
Although I read most of the articles and skimmed one other, what struck me most forcefully was a full-page ad on the back cover by First Republic Bank. Not surprisingly these days, it featured a large photo of two smiling folks identified as satisfied customers: a tall, thin black gentleman and an attractive bespectacled woman, apparently of Asian family origin, who is evidently his wife.
There's a pretty clear cultural message right there -- not necessarily all that new, but one meant to send a signal nonetheless. You don't have to be one of those "privileged" white people to do business with First Republic, which, in the current environment may be making a concerted effort to visibly diversify its customer base. As a culture, that's where we are these days and perhaps rightfully so.
But who are the bank's two customers, shown in what appears to be their tastefully decorated home, and what can we learn about our prevailing culture on that basis?
The man is identified in the ad as Rod Brewster, the Founder and CEO of a company called Pingtumi (think "ping to me") that evidently has availed itself of the bank's services. It makes an app that allows users to push messages out to groups of people who signal they want to receive them by scanning a QR code -- a Quick Response code, or one of those things that looks vaguely like a square finger print. They can be printed on almost anything, or appear on a website.
Receiving ever-more messages of one sort or another via smart phones is probably a lot more about where American culture is these days than what the NYT Magazine articles talk about. But there is more. The Pingtumi app also allows users to poll subscribers about topics of interest "and gain insights into their thinking." In other words, collect presumably usable data, and that's definitely where we are, culturally speaking.
The woman, identified as Ghia Griarte, is a Managing Partner of Ponte Partners (think "bridge"), a San Francisco-based firm that puts investors together with firms in need of capital, with a priority on confidentiality (according to it's website), and also makes investments on its own behalf.
Conveniently, the website shows the logos of a handful of the companies with which Ponte Partners has been involved and by looking at what these companies do, we can get additional cultural insights.
As it turns out, they facilitate small business finance by means of an online platform that matches up potential borrowers and lenders; make programmable robots for the education of children; make avatars for those who wish to "level-up their digital personality;" make software that helps accelerate how fast website content can be pushed out to potential buyers; make digital three-dimensional scenes and animations (think virtual models for swimwear), and, necessarily in view of most of the above, provide security for digital content.
Think about those products and services in the context of culture. It's pretty much the directions in which society is going.
But there is more. If you want to be "with it" from a cultural point of view, perhaps so you know what to wear and what to do, or perhaps for business purposes, Ponte Partners has also been involved with a firm that focuses on identifying consumer and design trends -- both current, and future. These include things like fashion, beauty products, lifestyle interiors, health, etc. This outfit has, among other things, "on-the-ground trend hunters" (you heard about that occupation at your high school job fair, right?) to help customers keep abreast of global trends.
Next year, perhaps the NYT Magazine's culture issue will focus on some of these topics and tell readers what it all means.
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