It’s not pretty. The studio at Encompass Digital Media in Minneapolis is basically a dark windowless room save for two bright lights that hang from the ceiling and mostly serve to reduce my already squinty eyes to knife slits. You can’t see what’s happening or the people you’re talking to; you can only follow the exchange of the guest ahead of you through an earpiece, giving you ample time to wonder just what land mines you might inadvertently stumble over.
And yet I gotta admit, it’s a hill of fun. And while it is live television, one of the most established mass mediums , this kind of interview exemplifies the digital age; it’s an experience that’s both intimate and oddly distanced at the same time.
I had my second appearance on Bloomberg TV’s Market Makers yesterday, chatting with Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Schatzker about Olive Garden’s new logo design and how that company hopes it will signal a “brand renaissance.” With my background as a writer, it’s a bit odd that both of my appearances on their show have been to discuss the impact of logos. Then again, we have purposefully tried to re-engineer advertising at Olson to be more design-centric for today’s visually-oriented, sharing-powered world.
Anyway, here’s the clip. And thanks for the opportunity, Stephanie and Erik.