Strands of Genius: Cheese Isn't Bad For You, Brand Strategy 2021, Spark, Collab with Serial Marketers

plus our thoughts on: stress

Mar 02, 2021

WORKING ON | Finished up book updates over the weekend, workshop tomorrow, Rosie is doing some fundraising for the Cumberland Plateau where we spent last year, as well as her regular stuff

LOOKING AHEAD
Feb 21-April 15: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic

Tues, March 16 @ 2p ET / 7p GMT| Workshop: Creativity in the Time of Crisis with Serial Marketers (RSVP)
Weds, March 24 @ 9:30a GMT | Speaking: Faris @ Spark 2021 with Magnetic Media (RSVP)

:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::

We’ve been in the Dominican Republic for a week or so and I’m starting to wake up, at least that’s how it feels. It feels like my brain has been frozen for a while, in some kind of protective stasis, where it wouldn’t accept any new inputs and I couldn’t really focus on reading anything apart from Tweets and watching very easy-to-watch television. Space is a conceptual thing but it just feels so much quieter out of USA, where the ambient level of crazy is constant being ratcheted up in politics and the media, a constant breaking news alert stamped over everything. I’m still eating way too much Twitter, but it doesn’t feel as downright demoralizing, even though it’s the same, because I’m not getting it from all sides, as it were. I realize I’m speaking from a position of nomadic privilege and many people are suffering and it’s been so long but man, I was doing really badly for a while there.

And I’m starting to feel like people are nice again and is that a flicker of hope (wow I had forgotten what that felt like.) Also, and almost certainly not coincidentally, I submitted my new chapters and the updated manuscript for the second edition of my book Paid Attention. [This is Faris, today. Could you tell?] Writing book like things is a very isolating and insular experience for me, and I needed some space in my head to get it done. Also, as we’ll discuss below, I don’t deal with stress well. Oh and it just occurred to me that it’s now March (2 down good job you did it) and that’s the month where 8 years ago we left New York and went nomad, which is hard to believe.

This week, we’re especially thankful for:

Jared, stuffed peppers, banana hot sauce, Peleton yoga, Mosquito’s micheladas, B&C, Anne-Marie & Tobin, Lillian & Jason, some sun, some runs, the Ramble book by Adam Buxton, tostones, Star Trek Discovery Season 3, Rick & Morty Season 4, Ashley, wifi, The Witches of Eastwick, and all the nice people on this Twitter thread replying to Faris with excellent podcast recommendations.

We are co-hosting a workshop with Serial Marketers’ David Berkowitz on March 16th at 2pm ET (We’re in AST, so that’s why you see the 3p in the image above) and we’d love if you would join! Check it out and RSVP on LinkedIn.

CHEESE ISN’T BAD FOR YOU

According to this piece in Wired [of all places], cheese has gotten a bad rap and isn’t the artery clogging waistline exploding blocks of fermented milk fat we’ve been made to fear. Obviously all nutrition information is bizarre and somewhat unreliable and seems to constantly change because its hard to do any rigorous longitudinal research on diets across lifetimes but hey this is in a science magazine and who doesn’t need some good news. It’s not even particularly high in calories compared to carbs and the “evidence tends to show that cheese does not make you gain weight”. Eat good cheese, though, it’s better for you. [Our favorites? BellaVitano, Drunken Goat, Cashel Blue, La Tur, Winnimere and everything from our friends’ cellars at Corzano e Paterno but especially Buccia di Rospo, which might be the greatest of all time— in case you’re looking for some new recommendations.] (Wired)

BRAND IS A STRATEGY

Faris updated and extended his piece about brand strategy, behavior and the value of strategic consistency, with new news and some new thoughts and people seem to be enjoying it. He’s all about updating things he wrote at the moment, apparently. The joint Chief Strategy Officers of the UK’s largest agency [AMV BBDO] are setting up a consultancy that will work clients and agencies [welcome to our world!] and they said “I think for many years, we thought we were doing ‘strategy’, but a lot of it was really just creative inspiration. I think a lot of clients have started to realize that”. (Medium)

THE LOSER, AS ALWAYS, IS YOU

This video from independent journalists in Australia explains what’s been happening with the whole Media Bargaining Law pissing contest that’s been happening between Facebook, the Australian ‘Liberal’ government and Rupert Murdoch and it’s very funny, which makes the whole thing easier to not get angry about. (Twitter)

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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: STRESS ::

Do you get stressed? Especially over the last year? How do you deal with it?

Maybe you like it? It does seem like some people thrive on it, but in general you probably don’t. More generally, it’s assumed to be a bad thing. Faris does not deal with stress well, at least that’s what he has decided, and it certainly seems true. He doesn’t enjoy it and it makes him act up and act out and can trigger unpleasant bouts of anxiety that don’t make anything more fun.

The modern idea of stress was invented in 1936 by an endocrinologist who tortured a lot of rats in a variety of ways and found that, regardless of how you torture, they all seemed to develop the same physical problems over time. So stress became this thing that went from a psychological thing to a physical ailment. Oh, and also the scientist in question was entirely funded by Big Tobacco, who were looking for other things to blame heart disease on. They pioneered the just-asking-questions- approach, the how-can-we-be-sure playbook of propaganda that energy companies still seem to use a lot.

Regardless, it seems like a thing and it seems like it can be harnessed, since deadlines definitely make work happen backwards in time, and the closer to the deadline, the faster we seem to be able to work. At least sometimes. But it feels like riding stress in this way creates these ripples elsewhere in your life: It impacts how patient you are in traffic, or how patient you are with people. Sometimes everything just seems so overwhelming and like it’s never going to stop. And then, it’s good to remind ourselves that we don’t necessarily want it to stop, that we are so grateful for getting to be a person, and knowing and being with other people, and working by thinking about stuff and saying it loud on stages sometimes.

We listen to Sleep Stories on the Calm app most nights - bed time stories for ‘adults’ and love most of the ones we hear. (This is one of our favorites, and Stephen Fry has sent us off to sleep many, many nights.) For some reason, when we tried to listen to one that was a gratitude practice it made both of us agitated, because it had been a very hard day and week and month and year. I suppose that’s the work, though, to feel through the anger and inconvenience and tragedies all around us and just remember that we are alive. Oh, and to breathe. That keeps coming up ;)

We use this newsletter as a form of gratitude practice, that’s why there is a short section at the top, and we suppose we should use this time to say that we are so grateful for you for reading and supporting us and being our community. We also use it to work out what we think, and also to talk to each other in an asynchronous way. (Because sometimes that is easier when your nerves are frayed, and that stress thing is making you think you somehow have permission to be a terrible person to the people you love, which you don’t, but they will probably forgive you, even if you don’t deserve it.)

Also, what I learned on Twitter this morning with that podcast request is that people really want to help, and asking is the hardest thing, at least for some of us. We love you and are here to help and thanks for reading, gentle Stranders.

[Yes that’s what we’ve taken to calling y’all let us know if you have a better idea].

:: AND NOW…TWO TURNTABLES ::

Hip-hop lore says that DJ Kool Herc ‘invented’ modern DJing, but he really developed the trick of playing the same record on both sides so he could indefinitely extend the drum break for dancing to in what was called the breakbeat merry-go-round. The first DJ to mix records was likely Terry Noel, resident at the ’60s New York nightclub Arthur. However, famed British pedophile [and beloved radio and television personality, all the way until he died] Jimmy Saville claimed he had pioneered the technique at the Grand Records Ball at the Guardbridge Hotel in 1947. Anyway, turns out nothing is original and Western Electric had built bespoke turntables with a built in cross fader for synching things to movies as early as 1923.

Faris is also speaking at Spark 2021 for the lovely people at Magnetic Media alongside Ebiquity and Lumen Research, talking about attention and the cookie-less future that is just around the corner. It’s online and it’s free! You can register here.

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

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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 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 :)

Strands of Genius