Mona Lisa Marketing 🎨

Good afternoon 👋🏼 A few weeks ago I read a blogpost by Seth Godin about Mona Lisa, and it got my wheels turning.

It wasn’t really about art or Leo DaVinci. It was about timing. And risk. And what happens when culture meets a moment.

There’s a conversation I keep having with shows, producers, and creatives: how do we make content ahead of the trend curve?

Godin calls this “The Mona Lisa Problem”—when we try to recreate cultural impact by focusing on the thing, instead of the moment.

Chasing trends instead of creating them.
Hoping for buzz instead of earning attention.
Playing it safe and wondering why nothing is clicking.

The answer: The Frame Rule.

You can’t frame something that hasn’t been painted.
You don’t create the moment. You create the work.
And maybe that’s the whole point.

We keep creating, taking risks, making something that might not land right away—so that when culture comes knocking, there’s something already on the wall.

So where do we start?
Our girl Mona might have some ideas.

The Mona Moment

The Mona Lisa wasn’t Leonardo’s masterpiece.
Not at the time, anyway.

He didn’t paint it for a patron. It didn’t hang in a palace.
It wasn’t even that well known.

Just a quiet little portrait of a woman with no crown, no jewelry, no clear identity.
Not a saint or a queen—just some girl with a weird smile and no eyebrows.

Leonardo kept her close. Took her with him. Tweaked it over and over.
It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t popular. It was just…his.

Then in 1911, someone lifted the painting right off the wall of the Louvre.

And suddenly, the world noticed.

Newspapers were exploding at the time. Color printing was just becoming widespread. And suddenly, this quiet painting became a cultural headline. A mystery. A meme. A phenomenon.

The moment arrived—unexpected, unpredictable, unplanned.
And Mona was already hanging on the wall.
(Well, technically, she’d just been stolen off it.)

So if we can’t predict the moment… maybe we should start talking about what it takes to be ready for one.

The Frame Rule

Most shows are busy trying to replicate what’s already hanging on the wall—same formats, same ideas, same safe choices. But by the time something’s been framed, it’s already over. It’s already history.

So what’s our job?

Enter: The Frame Rule.
You can’t frame something that hasn’t been painted.

The work, then, isn’t to make something perfect. Or viral.
The work is to make something.
To keep creating. To take risks. To push past the edge of what feels comfortable.

It’s a perspective shift.
Zooming out wide enough to see that our body of work is made up of smaller, risk-filled experiments that eventually tell a bigger story.
Which, let’s be real, is what we end up calling our “brand.”

So we keep going. Keep making. Keep shifting.
Because here’s the truth about cultural moments:
We don’t get to choose what gets remembered.
We don’t decide what gets framed.

But we do decide whether we’re making anything at all.

When culture came knocking, the Mona Lisa was already there.
(Or, technically, gone.)

So make something.
And it might as well be daring, interesting, or different.
Because the work you’re making today might be what the world is ready for tomorrow.

☝🏼 One last thing…

We’re in previews for ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, which basically means: we’re building the plane while flying it. In front of 100 people. Every night.

We rehearse during the day—restaging moments, adjusting lighting, rewriting beats. And then we test those changes in real time, onstage, with an audience watching. Sometimes it clicks. Sometimes it absolutely does not. And then we do it all again the next day.

It’s vulnerable. It’s messy. It’s thrilling.

Because this isn’t just about polishing. It’s about discovering. We’re still shaping the show. We’re still figuring out what it wants to be. And that means we have to take big swings. Which is scary. But also? Kind of magic?

There’s no way to know what works unless we try. So we try. We play. We reflect. We revise.

I also just need to say: it’s been wild and weird and wonderful to share this part of myself—the actor part—with people in New York who’ve only ever known me in other roles. I’ve been in the city for 10 years and have existed in so many different spaces, and to finally be seen by so many of my friends and former colleagues, in this way, is deeply moving to me. It’s a moment I always hoped would come, and it’s unfolding completely differently, and far more beautifully, than I ever imagined.

If you’re in New York, I do hope you’ll come see us. Because the show is sweet and timely and only 90 minutes(!!) And I’d love meeting Fourth Wallers in-person 🥰

I’m sending big love to you all.

See you next week!