Leigh Bowery vs Prowein

No contest. The next generation of wine brands are not being created at wine fairs. They're happening on the fringes of serendipity and culture. [Paid subscribers get a toolkit on how.]

No, I’m afraid I won’t be at Prowein for “a catch up”. Just like I wasn’t at Wine Paris to “check in”. Or Barcelona Wine Week to “have a beer”. And I won’t be at the London Wine Fair either, “for a pint at the end of the day”.

Sorry.

But if you’re wandering around Tate Modern in the next couple of months you might find me there.

Some day in the next few weeks your email will find me at the recently opened Leigh Bowery exhibition. I will be there for “work”. In fact it could be some of the most important work I do all year. But - as we’ll see - I have no idea if it will be. Yet.

You should go too. Although brace yourself. There are pictures of Leigh (who was a larger gentleman) “giving birth” to his own wife (it’s a long story, as he was also enthusiastically gay).

Why?

Andrew Chen

- General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz - wrote last year about the importance of 10x work

The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings

Imagine the thousands of tasks you did in the past year and sort them by impact. How many of them actually moved the needle? I’m certain this list of tasks would sort themselves into a power law where a tiny number of high upside tasks drove the most impact. These are what I’ll call “10x work” — these are key tasks where your doing them well/poorly really matters, and the result might define your professional output for an entire year (or more).

So how does Chen divide the important 10x work from the low-impact 0.25x work? According to Chen he’s…

…positive on sending outbound emails to interesting people, hosting dinners and events that bring together smart folks, and publishing any and all thoughts online. There’s often followup, and opportunities present themselves randomly. I’m also pro reading random books on a topic, or googling/wikipedia’ing/chatGPTing for hours to dig into things — sometimes semi-random exploration leads to the best ideas.

But on the flip side he says

I’m usually negative on low-signal socializing at conferences and random coffee 1:1s that don’t move things forward. These are fun but are too low yield

Chen stresses that “10x work happens at the frontier of knowledge, away from the routine. It’s where no one knows anything.” He also stresses that 10x work involves serendipity. And as he points out, “Serendipity loves randomness and hates routine”.

I reckon visiting a retrospective of an 80’s gay nightclub promoter and fashion designer counts as random. It’s not routine either.

This sort of thing is an activity with pedigree too. As adman (and winemaker) Sir John Hegarty wrote a few years ago:

You are a cipher. Shit goes in – and shit comes out. Go and see stuff. Visit art galleries, read books and magazines, go to the theatre … All those influences go in and will come out in your work. The more you feed yourself the more you can create.

If it works for John, I reckon there’s a chance it will work for me.

And it’s not just about swanning round art galleries either.

From mid April I’ll be spending five hours a week learning about AI Strategy on the Reforge platform.

Fundamentally rethink how you compete and win in the most intense strategic environment product leaders have ever faced.

Sounds like something I ought to know more about. And a full year on the Reforge platform costs about the same as going to a couple of wine conferences. So I could do that, or I could meet people I already know, and having a few beers over the road chatting about the old days when they close the doors.

What will wine brands of the future look like?

Like Andrew Chen I’ll be “publishing any and all thoughts online. There’s often followup, and opportunities present themselves randomly”. Feel free to message me. And those thoughts begin with thinking about how modern branding can and will change wine.

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