Ben Dietz, [SIC] Publishing and Rangelife

💭 Thoughts on constantly experimenting and evolving, Byline magazine, and David Epstein’s book Range.

Ben Dietz is a Greenpoint-based consultant working with culturally-informed agencies, brands and publishers. He started his career in the music biz, joined the digital content wave in the aftermath of Dot Com Bust, and spent 2004-2020 at VICE riding the rollercoaster as a commercial leader and agency co-founder. Now he coordinates a weekly breakfast series with editions around the world, sends a newsletter to 6000+ subscribers, and records a couple of weekly conversations for podcast platforms. 

🎯 Current focus 

I’m currently concepting Volume 7 of my weekly digest newsletter, [SIC] Weekly, with an eye to making it more editorial, less dense and more useful. At the same time I’m iterating on the USP of Rangelife, my ‘superformat’ studio - a consulting service I’m launching now. And I’m planning the programming for Camp Cultivate, a new invite-only multi day excursion to Mammoth, CA that has grown out of my weekly Breakfast Club in Brooklyn. 

🗞️ Byline

I am a big fan of Byline, the digital magazine that Gutes Guterman and Megan O’Sullivan launched a year ago to create a platform for young voices, many of them local to NYC. Full disclosure I’m on the advisory board, but even if I weren’t, I’d be attracted to the way they’ve opened their arms to people with something to say. I started my professional life contributing to indie mags and alternative newspapers, and without those opportunities I’d have missed out on a lot - but there are fewer and fewer outlets that matter these days. Gutes and Meg get that and they’ve attracted a really smart, cool community of creative people who get it too. 

📚 David Epstein’s book Range 

I love David Epstein’s book Range from a few years ago - I just recommended it to a collaborator of mine in fact. It’s about why generalists win in a specialized world, and as somebody who tends toward dilettantism, I find the stories Epstein tells both encouraging and instructive. Sometimes it really is better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one. 

🕉️ Focusing on ‘less is more’

Personally I feel like I’m experiencing a bit of a vibe shift; for the last four years I’ve been voraciously consuming as much information as I could, trying to recognize patterns and understand where things were headed. This summer I’m finding myself distilling moreso; consequently ‘less is more’ and ‘the whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts’ are my mantras du jour. 

🔬 Constantly experimenting and evolving 

Piers Fawkes is a friend and regular correspondent, but also an inspiration; he founded the trend forecasting and analysis firm PSFK twenty or so years ago and has constantly evolved, changed and experimented over that time with insights and approaches to the future of consumer markets. He never stops to rest on his laurels. And he even finds time to send me contributions intended for [SIC], show up at Breakfast Club from time to time and raise kids in Brooklyn. 

🌎 Taking huge steps into the world

My son is headed to his first year of college in August at Elon University in North Carolina. I’m not looking forward to missing him around the house every day, but I’m psyched for him to take this huge step into the world independently of us, and to watch him as he goes. Leaving home was a massive moment for me - I hope it is for him too. 

👂 Living by your ears

I love to listen. I’ve always been a music person and I grew up in a home where the radio was never not playing, so as much as I enjoy the silence from time to time, I live by my ears in large part - literally and metaphorically. 

👟 Vans and Nike

I’m a shoe guy (see here) and a longtime fan of both. And as a follower of the footwear business it’s no secret they’re each icons in trouble; Vans for a few years now and Nike more recently. The root issue for both was losing a connection to what made them iconic in the first place; they’ve gotten caught trying to wring short term gains out of technological sales hacks rather than leaning into brand value and culture. Weirdly they’re underdogs at the moment, and it’s fascinating to me.  I know from talking to people at Vans that they’ve diagnosed the problem and are remedying it; I think “Always Pushing” is a great new rallying cry for them; connected to skate culture and to testing boundaries in whatever area of expression a wearer wants. I worry Nike’s got a long road back, and I think “Winning Isn’t For Everyone” is a tonal misstep, but when I see their takeover of the Centre Pompidou for the Olympics it makes me hopeful somebody over there still gets it.

Follow Ben on Linkedin & Instagram and check out his weekly Substack here.

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