issue 6 - how to be good at instagram

Welcome to clipboard, a weekly newsletter about Auckland and culture by Reilly Hodson. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to soundboard, the soundtrack to clipboard. Happy Fathers Day to my dad and also all the other dad’s who are reading this!

good brand IGs

In 2020, Instagram is real life for brands. In person retail still feels risky, money is tight, and so people are becoming extremely particular about they way they spend, as consumption and purchasing begins to feel as much a moral or charitable act as a business transaction. Because of this, businesses’ self-presentation, overwhelmingly done on Instagram, becomes a live-or-die proposition. And yet, so many businesses, whether they’re hospitality or retail, suck at it. 

As anyone who follows me on Instagram will know, I’m by no means a great creator of content myself (this newsletter’s lack of visuals speaks for itself) but I’m an avid consumer. The best Instagram accounts, in my mind, and the ones which will keep customers coming back and keep your brand front of mind, do one thing that sounds simple yet is vanishingly rare: they’re unique. 

Take a cafe, for instance. There are a few things which appear to be table stakes when you open a cafe in Auckland nowadays: a professionally designed logo (maybe a tote bag), a clean fit out, and good latte art. I would add to that list, not just an Instagram account, which everyone has, but a voice. The reason I go back to a good cafe has very little to do with the polished concrete or stack of magazines. It’s the people that matter, the waiters and baristas, and the food, too. If that’s what your cafe is built on, and it should be, then put that online!

A new cafe opened last week that I was excited about based entirely on the fact that a friend of mine designed the interiors, but when I went to their account, I learnt nothing about it. No picture of the owners, or the food on the menu, or anything that reflects the actual experience of going there. Instead, there was their logo stretched over three images, and a bunch of photos of the empty cafe fit out. Now, of course, that could develop over time into something better, but it feels cookie-cutter, run of the mill.

Bestie in St Kevins Arcade is consistently rated among the top cafes in Auckland. I’ve heard quibbles about their coffee, or food, I’ve had some quite long waits there in the past, but it’s undeniable that their Instagram hits. They tick the key boxes: every time they post, you can tell it’s a Bestie post; they post their food; and they put their staff at the centre of their presence. That’s helped, of course, by their photogenic food and bright space, but it’s clear they take a real effort with their online presence and it pays off: they’ve stuck around in a St Kevin’s Arcade which is constantly turning over tenants, and a hospitality industry that is famously difficult to stay relevant in. More cafes, restaurants and bars could learn from that approach.

Now, it’s might sound an overreach to ask for this kind of investment from low-margin, stretched thin businesses like cafes, but this can be done relatively easily. You’d be hard pressed to find a cafe in Auckland that doesn’t already employ a budding photographer, or writer, or otherwise creative mind. Let your best people put your best foot forward, and reap the benefits! All of this applies, too, to other types of customer-facing businesses, cafes and restaurants are just the ones I obsess over.

My other personal favourite local brand instas (send me your favourites!):

• Platform Store

• Checks Downtown

• Good Dog Bad Dog

• Madame George

• Crushes

• Yu Mei

clips

• BIG NEWS ALERT: Metro, my favourite magazine in the world, is coming back as a quarterly, with Henry Oliver back at the helm and Jean Teng, one of New Zealand’s best food writers and thinkers, as food editor. Shout out to Henry and Jean who are both brilliant, and shout out to local media coming back. You can subscribe now for a year for less than $40, and you should! 

• GQ breaks down the shorts discourse just in time for shorts season here in Aotearoa. Please send me any and all local shorts with 5” inseams, I can’t wait to get my legs out this summer.

• John Boyega puts Disney on blast for their frankly disgraceful treatment of his character in Star Wars in this interview, and that’s what’s getting the headlines, but this story also features a tale of him challenging a Nigerian boat captain to a fight over extortion, so it’s definitely worth a click.

• This piece is sort of a review of Katy Perry’s new album, Smile, but mostly it is an explanation of why pop, the genre, isn’t popular anymore. I still consider myself a poptimist, but it can’t be denied that the charts are dominated by TikTok rap at the moment.

• Tradespeople is a brilliant initiative that’s a directory of female and gender diverse tradies. If you need some work done around the house, maybe check this list out and support some not dudes.

• Navvy is sort of like Taylor Swift if Taylor Swift was from New Zealand and could capital-S Sing, and her new EP, ‘The Final Pieces,’ goes from rip-your-heart-out to big banger without losing a beat.

• Henry Oliver’s brilliant Essential Services zine released their second issue this week, filled with brilliant insights from New Zealand’s smartest writers about the cannabis referendum, the state of the media, and more. It’s free! There’s also a very cool t-shirt, which also donates to charity.

• This interview with 6ix9ine, the extremely controversial convicted felon who happens to be an unbelievably successful musician, is a must read. I would have paid money to be in the room when this discussion happened.

reader recs

This week, I got a couple of recommendations for good things from clipboard readers, and decided I’d give them a try and share them here. If you have a recommendation of a Good Thing you want to see in clipboard, my DMs and email inbox are open. 

Tess recommended the ‘I May Destroy You’ soundtrack playlist on Spotify. I don’t use Spotify, so I spent 15 or so minutes transferring every song into an Apple Music playlist and it was definitely worth it. Wall to wall excellence on this playlist, and I just started watching the show on Neon too and can confirm it’s as good as everyone says it is.

Ollie recommended Yummy Jian Bing on Queen Street, in that series of hole-in-the-wall food places across the road from Aotea Square. I had the beef jianbing, which for the uninitiated is a Chinese egg crepe, served here with coriander, spring onions, chilli crisp and a sweet secret sauce, for morning tea and it was brilliant. At $9, this is a perfect option for the uni students and city slickers amongst us. 

Again, send me recommendations, I’ll try them out and put them in future issues if they’re good. 

wishlist

This was a banner week for new clothing releases, here are the things sitting in my cart waiting for my better senses to delete them.

• Good As Gold stocks this slightly strange graphics brand called No Comply, who put out capsule collections on different themes. This time around, gardening! I love this jumper, and the gloves are a Supreme-level vibe.

• Kowtow are one of New Zealand’s best clothing brands, and the first drop of their Spring Summer collection just hit. It looks like there’s more great stuff to come, but at the moment I’m eyeing up this delightfully slouchy cardigan.

• Checks Downtown teamed up with Cross Street woodwork shop The Warren for these excellent t-shirts, and if my drawer wasn’t already stuffed with various merch tees, this would be a no-brainer. “Building Our Community?” Hell yeah.

That’s it for clipboard this week. If you enjoyed it, please send it to your coolest friends and make their lives a bit better. If you received this email via forward, subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.