Strands of Genius: Airlines Are Banks, Meeting Bloat, Why Brands Try To Be Funny
Plus: Democracy, manifest!
WRITING FROM | Thailand
WORKING ON | ~living that sabbatical life~
LOOKING AHEAD
Aug 24-Oct 1 | Koh Lanta, Thailand
Oct 1-5 | Bangkok, Thailand
October 5-22 | Japan
Oct 22-Nov 4 | Isla Mujeres, MX
Nov 4-Nov 12 | Nashville, TN
Nov 12-23 | Chattanooga, TN
Nov 24-Dec 5 | Isla Mujeres, MX
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Hey hi how are you? We met a couple doing yoga the other day - it took us all this time to find/bother to find an open class because spent first couple of weeks exhausted - and they said they were ‘traveling’ for six months which reminded me how people used to make this distinction between tourism and traveling, which is basically a nonsense or at best durational variance. But time does change things, duration and age. They were young and excited and it turned out from very near where Faris grew up on the edge of London. Lol. They were on the island for 4 days before moving on and it reminded me of our first six months when we were intending on a six month sabbatical and then aiming at getting agency jobs in Sydney or somewhere. We were running on scarcity in time and budget so hurtled through places in a day or two, almost constantly moving. (Slow down, you move too fast, try to make the moment last.) This month of rest has been glorious and we are super excited to do some ‘traveling’ in Japan for a few weeks before returning to the other side of the world. Change is growth. But in a good way, not like when you are 45 and you get a new mole or some such.
[Also Faris read the same historical anecdote in two unrelated books in succession last week and wants to tell you about it but might not until next time.][Oh and Rosie says hi from behind her kindle.]
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Prim, cooking classes, doing nothing, reading and coincidences, The Expanse, PaperGirls, Mr Chai, 506, sandwiches, new business approaches, OG, being together, being silly, tuddles, finding a yoga class, two great books: Trust, Babel YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
AIRLINES ARE JUST BANKS NOW
The domestic airline industry in the USA is an excellent example of what happens when you deregulate vital public industries that have significant constraints on capacity for whatever reasons and also tacitly encourage creeping financialzation across industries. (If, for various structural reasons, finance is significantly more profitable and less capital intensive than say making stuff or providing flights, all companies will tend towards banks.) “Consumers now charge nearly 1 percent of U.S. GDP to Delta’s American Express credit cards alone. A 2020 analysis by the Financial Times found that Wall Street lenders valued the major airlines’ mileage programs more highly than the airlines themselves. United’s MileagePlus program, for example, was valued at $22 billion, while the company’s market cap at the time was only $10.6 billion.” (Atlantic Gift Link)
MEETING BLOAT
When we left NYC and office life a decade ago we wrote a piece talking about why we decided to do that and a big part of it was that there were so many meetings and also everyone was always “busy”. Meeting bloat has gotten much worse since the pandemic, and big meetings with senior leaders or clients cascade down into prep meetings and post mortems, eating all available working time. “A single weekly executive meeting at an unnamed “large company” led to additional meetings with unit heads in order to prepare, which led to additional meetings with their underlings, which led to even more preparation meetings, and so on. In all, the Bain partners found that the company was accidentally committing 300,000 hours a year to preparing for that one weekly executive meeting—and that’s before considering prep time not officially marked on a calendar.” (Vice)
WHY BRANDS ARE STILL TRYING TO BE FUNNY — EVEN IN ‘LATE STAGE SOCIAL MEDIA’
Quick read to get the perspective from 10 agency execs and strategists and this prediction of an inflection point rings true: “Either organic reach on social becomes a matter of survival of the funniest, or most unhinged, or brands’ comedic players taper off, giving way to social posts centered around education, information and brand purpose. When asked the anatomy of a good text-based social posts, the 10 agency execs and strategists echoed the same sentiment: Relatability, originality and timely.” (Digiday)
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:: A SUCCULENT CHINESE MEAL ::
This is apparently the Australian meme of the decade but we just saw it and it’s a) wonderful b) like hearing Matt Berry’s dad? iykyn
It has spawned its own meme lineage…
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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
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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 in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, 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.
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