Soft Power In Your Area

What Louis XIV and Blackpink have to do with each other.

Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

You may notice a refreshed look around here! That is the doing of Suze Myers, a friend of mine who I first met while I was an undergrad at Barnard. I whole-heartedly recommend her talents for any and all visual branding, website building, and graphic design needs that you may have.

x Chloë

Louis XIV loved ballet; he was an accomplished dancer who loved the art of it, as well as its use for propaganda and control. Here he is depicted in typical “Sun King” branding, dancing in the role of Apollo in Ballet Royal de la Nuit (1653). This ballet took 13 hours to perform in full.

It was 2013, and I was working for the Grateful Dead channel at SiriusXM. I was in the office at all hours of the day and night, six days a week, doing any of the various and sundry normal and abnormal things a music industry intern does. Sometimes I’d run into Marky Ramone making late-night coffee from the cheap Kering machine in the break room; sometimes, if it was quiet, my boss would give me the corporate card with the directive to “buy the most expensive burgers in Midtown” to quell our munchies. But, of the many memories I have of my time working in the Manhattan offices of SiriusXM, there’s one that has stood out to me the most through the years.

It was a quiet morning when a dapper Korean man and his entourage walked through our Rock’n’Roll High School-esque open offices. I asked a colleague who it was. “That horse dance guy is trying to start his own channel here,” he replied. 

He was referring to Psy, whose hit “Gangnam Style” had taken the world by storm. 

At the time, we agreed that the idea of an entire channel dedicated to K-pop seemed presumptuous.  

We were very, very, wrong. 

To understand the importance K-pop holds in the context of global affairs, let us first rewind to the midst of the 17th century, where Louis XIV, tyrannical king and marketing genius, remade – and in doing so, made – France. Perhaps this statement rings a bell. If it didn’t, let me refresh your memory.