Strands of Genius: 48 Laws of PowerPoint, Talking to EY, Mindfulness and Media in Education
plus: our thoughts on creativity vs craft, flexing creative muscles in quarantine, & making use of your constraints
WRITING FROM | Beersheba Springs, TN
WORKING ON | Stakeholder Interviews
LOOKING AHEAD
Aug 7-14: Beersheba Springs, TN
Aug 14-17: Ashland City, TN
Aug 17-21: Nashville, TN
Aug 21-28: Beersheba Springs, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We got to the Beersheba Springs and the next morning there was an earthquake! We didn’t feel it but somehow earthquakes feel epic, perhaps because we have never lived anywhere that had them. We’ve kicked off a larger partnership with an agency called Arco, and have been building up the streams for SoSG, and slowly we’re starting to find a sense of normalcy, even if it’s far from what we would have said was normal last year ;)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Wholemeal, pork roll in a bowl, inside-out Reese’s Pieces Cake, Mel&Michelle, Lauren and Elmo, jumping photos, playing hike and seek, spotting a snake and the most poisonous mushroom in N. American [Destroying Angel - see below], the Bombshell movie, having neighbors to take cake to so you don’t eat it all, a 30 day core challenge we started today [ouch], better weather than predicated, remembering that it is much easier to be kind and have empathy when you feel good so self-care helps you help others, people wearing masks, USPS because it delivers here in rural TN and Fedex / UPS won’t, Shann for being our guest curator this week, and the Tao of Pooh.
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:: THE LINKS ::
MINDFULNESS AND MEDIA IN EDUCATION
Our friend Gwenyth, former professor of media at Fordham University, has launched a new business, consulting on school curricula to ensure students grow up equipped with tools to navigate the complex media environment they are growing up in. This article explains that teachers can leverage meditation as a tool to help people become more aware of how they are allocating their attention, thinking about who is trying to acquire it and why, and generally to help young people steel themselves to the endless assault on their attention and build their powers of concentration. (Clio Consulting)
LET’S TALK MARKETING WITH ERNST & YOUNG
Faris recorded this podcast with Adam Fraser, director of consulting at Ernst & Young. They ramble through a broad conversation about the economics of attention, advertising / attention value exchanges, how we price media and what we are actually buying, brand vs direct response online, brands as socially constructed ideas, the fear of new media, the goldfish myth, the Attention Council, why most arguments in advertising are naive binaries and a bit silly, and who Faris would have dinner with… (Apple Podcasts / Google Podcasts / Spotify )
THE 48 LAWS OF POWERPOINT
Russell Davies, former head of planning at WK London and Nike, co-founder of the UK’s Government Digital Service, and the pioneer that led many people in the advertising industry to blogging and that, is writing a book about PowerPoint that will be good. He just published his 48 Laws of Power[Point] and they are great for anyone who uses slides as a communication tools:
1. Don’t read the screen*
2. Lists
3. Use lists
4. Lots of lists
5. But 48 items is way too many - who thought this was a good idea?
(Russell Davies)
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: CREATIVITY + CRAFT + QUARANTINE ::
Creativity as input & output, inspiration and practices in quarantine.
Creativity is one of our primary topics of interest here at Genius Steals, since the very name of our company, and everything we do, reflect what we believe about it.
However, first we need to disentangle creativity from craft. In advertising agencies, there is a department called ‘creative’, which comes up with ideas, mostly for ads, and then either creates them or directs their production with various partners. The creative people in advertising agencies are by and large copywriters and art directors [some are designers vs art directors], and these are crafts. Creativity and craft are different.
Everyone is, or can be, creative, whereas craft is the deployment of skills to make something. Everyone can have ideas, not everyone has developed the copywriting craft, or that of design. Obvious enough, so far. Confusion creeps in, conceptually and politically, with broad exhortations that everyone in the agency should be creative [but we’ll see call one specific department that]. Creatives, like anyone who spends are their time thinking things up and having very few of them actually made, tend to be quite protective of their ideas and their ownership of ideas, in general. Not always, but often.
The arguments can work both ways. Having a deep knowledge of craft and history helps you develop and use creative muscles, making you better at having ideas. Equally, the muscle memory of experience means advertising agencies with art© creatives tend to default to advertising ideas. Ultimately, ideas and execution of ideas are different. Some ideas are never implemented [in advertising terms] but still change the world.
Creativity, broadly, is a many splendored thing. It is “a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed” or “the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others”.
As with lots of abstract terms, like brand, we use the word in a host of slightly different ways [from Creativity - Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.]
Ways that "creativity" is commonly used:
Persons who express unusual thoughts, who are interesting and stimulating
People who experience the world in novel and original ways. These are individuals whose perceptions are fresh, whose judgements are insightful, who may make important discoveries that only they know about.
Individuals who have changes our culture in some important way.
At its core, creativity is the ability to think laterally [i.e. non-linearly] and create useful, novel combinations.
'Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.' - Leibniz
Ultimately, all ideas are combinations of new ideas, and what human brains are uniquely good at, for various structural and evolutionary reasons, is making connections that are non-obvious, non-linear, non semantic. Finding structural similarities in different things, and tying them together in a useful and satisfying way.
We can deconstruct creativity into inputs [inspiration], process [thinking], context/constraints, and outputs. Without inputs, we can’t create: one cannot invent without inventory. We need to load up our box of legos, and keep it filled with new ones. We need a constant stream of novelty for inspiration, which is partially why we like being nomadic: We’re constantly exposed to the new.
During quarantine, our ability to get direct input is hugely limited. We’ve been thinking about how you flex those creative muscles in quarantine, across the various elements, because quarantine presents a new set of constraints. For individuals and agencies. For example, we had to learn how to produce a film - entirely remotely - for the Nashville Strong spot we did with Dolly, as many agencies are.
Individually we have some ideas too, which we are developing at present, in order to keep yourself inspired, fresh, and full of creative vigor. One we call Hide and Seek is detailed below.
Let us know what you have been doing to keep yourself inspired!
:: AND NOW… HIKE AND SEEK ::
‘Hike and Seek’ is an activity we invented in which you go hiking and use the SEEK app to identify flora and fauna. That’s it. Spend 30 minutes outdoors, focused on something, feel better, be more creative, learn things. If you want to take a page from Rosie’s sister, aim to not scan the same thing in nature twice. If you want to take a page from Rosie, make up some songs about that which you find ;)
This is [probably] the last time we are going to give the SEEK app a shout out, which we’re doing because everyone asked about it after the tweet. [Editor’s note: Is it, babe? Don’t make promises you can’t keep ;) ]
OH AND BY THE WAY, this little white mushroom we found is THE MOST POISONOUS mushroom in North America. So there ya go.
WHAT’S NEW @ THE SCHOOL OF STOLEN GENIUS PRESENTS
INTEGRATED BRAND MODELS :: AVAILABLE
INTEGRATIVE BRAND MODELS :: PDF & VIDEO
Featuring a downloadable PDF of the deck and the hour-long presentation with Q&A, you’ll learn about a variety of brand models, the evolution of brand strategy, and how this applies to marketers today. All members may access the bundle for free, alternatively you may also purchase the bundle as a one-off.
Our in depth interview with guest curator Shann Biglione, head of strategy at Zenith Media NYC, is now live for members.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!
It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)