Strands of Genius: Curiosity Matrix, Silent TV, How Addictive Tech Hacks Your Brain
Plus: SUNO & we want to chat with YOU!
WRITING FROM | Worcester Park, UK
WORKING ON | finally wrapping up an agency positioning sprint! only 3 more meetings!
LOOKING AHEAD
April 30 - May 18 | Worcester Park, UK
May 18 - 20 | Nashville, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
This past weekend we managed to hang out two on two on two (us, bff couple, their two kids, the best kids in the world besides those related to us) and then host old friends from Faris’ university daze in Worcester Park. It was also the hottest day/s of the year. England turned up! We are grateful and choose not to dispel the rumour that we bring the sun with us.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Daddio, Dave&Frances, Willow&Elliot, Barnes, gardens (Kew and others), last minute hail mary panic induced plans coming together out of nowhere, Katie T, Dan S, Jez, Matt N, Matt N, SteveXO, Pished Fish, Barnes Bakehouse, Sam & Lizzie, Berna, Kamal, Jack, Rosie, Waitrose, the balloon / card store, John Allison, Billboard, Daddio again, & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
9 HABITS OF CURIOUS MINDS
When people ask us what kinds of skills a strategist needs, there are of course the practical ones like brief writing or insight development. But we frequently talk about how the best strategists are curious. And how curiosity is so much harder to teach than writing briefs. It turns out that curiosity not only fluctuates over a lifetime, but can even fluctuate over the course of the day. (“Curiosity is higher on days of greater happiness and physical activity, and lower on days of greater depressed mood,” according to research published in 2020.) Le Cunff writes that “Although some studies indicate that curiosity may have a genetic component (DRD4-7R has been dubbed the “wanderlust gene”), most researchers agree that curiosity can be nurtured.” Her matrix outlines 9 habits or vectors for cultivating curiosity. (Psyche)
SILENT TELEVISION
Faris is embracing his midlife crisis and has things to say about not being able to hear television without subtitles, the fact that advertising isn’t required to have closed captions even though 17% of Americans have some kind of hearing loss (imagine this - you can expand comprehensible reach by 17% just by adding subtitles to your ads), and the modality of context: “How and when to require audio to understand the ad becomes less clear as channel delineations break down. Should online video be assumed to be primarily silent in-stream? Un-skippable ads are clearly different, as are ads on streaming television. Video has more consumption modalities than aspect ratios.” (WARC)
HOW ADDICTIVE TECH HACKS YOUR BRAIN
Dive into the world of dopamine, and how it works inside our body, and how our phone is actually just as bad as cocaine when it comes to when it comes to addiction. At first, the cocaine metaphor annoyed me — It’s an illegal drug, and phones are, well, devices we use every day. But as the author described what phones are doing to our brains, the cocaine metaphor started to make more sense. Design elements like endless scrolling are so effective because “they flip the roles of the basal ganglia and the prefrontal cortex in regulating what we’re doing” and “Because interacting with addictive technology also decreases overall dopamine sensitivity, natural rewards may not be enough to bring levels back up.” I don’t find myself reading Gizmodo often, but I really enjoyed this piece. (Gizmodo)
We want to chat with you!
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:: SUNO - FUN AI MUSIC GENERATION ‘TOY’ ::
We have been enjoying ‘blowing people’s minds’ with Suno, a newish generative AI music app website model thing. Put in a description of genre and a topic at any level of specificity and it will generate two version of a banger with lyrics for you. It seems leaps and bounds better than earlier gen music generation AI but who can keep up nowadays. Anyway it’s quite fun and you get 10 free credits or tokens or something each day.
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 | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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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. We have a distributed team ourselves, an 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.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)