Unhealthy obsession with Julia-Jakob streamlined

Posted by Josh Friedlander | No Comments

I spent way too much of my weekend reading up on Julia Allison and her current boyfriend, Jakob Lodwick, and now I think I’ve decided I have a bigger crush on Jakob.

(My conclusion: they are far more interesting together than separately.)

I can’t pinpoint when I began reading about Julia, but I must have learned about her through Gawker. They love to hate her over there, which means they love her.

At first, I loathed her (for real) and told myself it was just a little case of the Conradian fascination of the abomination. But then I decided she was a media genius (a new media meets old media branding sensation who, unlike Paris Hilton, really does have a brain behind that trademark teacup pose). But I didn’t actually like her until she began this seemingly-bizarre affair with someone of quality, and now I’m hooked.

Why am I writing this? Because just as I was thinking: I can hardly get my J-J fix from the (six? seven?) separate web sites they individually post to, they thought of me (the consumer) and posted a joint site http://jakobandjulia.com.

I wonder how far they will take this (T-Shirts? Original music?) and what is gained or lost by having so many seemingly-intimate moments on air. What is the risk/reward profile? Or is it all for fun?

I wish I had a trenchant analysis, but I’m willing to stay tuned to see how this evolves. As a media partnership, I think it’s far more interesting than anything I’ve read lately in the Wall Street Journal. Will the iphone really change the cell phone paradigm? Will Google with their new software? Who cares? Here we’ve got an intuitive gadfly matched with an extremely logical and productive new media maven.

The two of them could take just about any idea and create a viral sensation out of it. So I suppose I’ll make one small point: as a question of morals, if they focus their gifts on showcasing just themselves J-J could be a limited enterprise, but think about what they could do by focusing outward.

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