Insularity – Part 3. New York New York.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. /LMMiami.com

• Make no mistake, I love New York and New Yorkers.
• It taught me the good, the bad and the ugly of the advertising business that town.
• It still does.
• I called it home for a few great years and keep fond memories of it.
• I visit regularly.
• I just feel New Yorkers should get out more.
• The possibly true belief that it is the most diverse city in the world sometimes makes them complacent.
• Despite its myriad restaurants serving ethnic cuisine from all over the world, despite the multiple languages one hears on any given subway ride, despite the hordes of tourists marauding like fanny pack-wearing zombies across town, New York can be quite insular and provincial at times.
• The navel-gazing capital of the world.
• Bridge & tunnel vision (wink wink nudge nudge).
• There’s life beyond the five boroughs and the Hamptons, folks.
• Yes, there’s life beyond LA, San Francisco and Miami too.
• Let me give you an example: in its most recent New Establishment special issue, Vanity Fair ignored Carlos Slim, Amancio Ortega and Randall Stephens.
• Carlos Slim is one of the top three richest men in the world.
• A telecommunications and real estate magnate in the three Americas.
• AND a shareholder in the New York Times.
• How could he possibly be left out of the list?
• To make room for Silicon Valley pseudo moguls who create apps to share selfies?
• Hey, I’m not crying bigotry.
• Methinks it is just New Yorkers ignoring anything or anyone outside of their bridge & tunnel vision.
• Amancio Ortega, founder and chairman of Zara, also one of the top three richest men in the world for at least the last ten years (according to Forbes he’s up there with Mr. Slim and with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, head and shoulders above Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet, Chapo Guzmán and way richer our faux-billionaire new POTUS).
• Mr Ortega actually makes something tangible, clothes, as opposed to some of the aforementioned dudes who essentially sell other people’s products, gamble in the stock market or purvey cat videos en masse.
• He runs the Zara empire from A Coruña, Galicia, España, where he lives and works, and has never spent a dime running ads in Vanity Fair.
• Unlike Gucci, Tom Ford, Macy’s, Barneys et al, who grace Vanity Fair’s glossy pages profusely.
• Maybe that’s why he is being punished with its staff’s indifference.
• If that’s the case, how come they also ignored Randall Stephens?
• Randall Stephens, as in AT&T’s CEO.
• AT&T spends a ton of money in media, a nice chunk of it in Condé Nast’s publications.
• Here’s a guy who’s been pursuing some of the most aggressive acquisition strategies in the very intersection of the tech & media world, with billions and billions of dollars in play.
• He had AT&T buy DirecTV and now is going after Time Warner.
• He is not reclusive or media shy, quite the contrary: he recently rocked the business world when he gave an eloquent speech about the importance of Black Lives Matter (a bold stance about a thorny issue that most CEOs wouldn’t have the cojones to even consider).
• But he lives & works in a flyover city, Dallas, so he seems to be off the New York radar.
• By the way, Mr. Stephens speaks pretty good Spanish and has an immersive knowledge of Hispanic culture: he was Carlos Slim’s right hand & money man for several years, physically based out of Ciudad de México.
• Once again, I am NOT accusing Vanity Fair of discrimination.
• Let me rephrase, they are not deliberately discriminating against Mr Slim or Mr Ortega or Mr Stephens.
• They just need to get out more.
• I am a big fan of the magazine.
• Its writing is second to none.
• I consume it religiously every month.
• Yet it suffers from a serious case of New York navel gazing.
• They need to break out of their biased rarefied atmosphere.
• A mental silo that only allows some oxygen from California.
• And, sometimes, from Southern Florida.
• Disclaimer: by no means I’m claiming I’m immune to the insularity malaise.
• I live & work in Miami, aka NY’s sixth borough.
• I live on a 20th floor condo on Brickell Avenue overlooking Biscayne Bay1 and I’m writing this in my industrial chic office adjacent to Miami’s artsy-fartsy Wynwood district, formerly known for warehouses and crackhouses, currently dotted with dozens of art galleries, sophisto businesses and legions of hipsters striking a pose for the cameras (the cameras on their own phones).
• Let’s put the little phone away.
• We gotta get out of our islands more.
• Loose the social media.
• What if the deities of big data are misleading us or worse, manipulating us deliberately?
• What if the god of the algorithm is clouding our judgement?

1 The Atlantis on Brickell, a landmark condo complex designed by internationally acclaimed firm Arquitectonica and aka the Miami Vice building because it was prominently shown in the opening credits of said TV series. Yeah, the world-renowned Lego-looking glass tower with a hole and a Palm tree on the 12th floor. There’s a jacuzzi under the palm tree. Snob? Who? Me?