Strands of Genius: Kantar 2022 Trends, Time Millionaires, Squid Game IRL, Humble Food Beginnings & Homicidal Sea Pandas
Strands of Genius: Kantar 2022 Trends, Time Millionaires, Squid Game IRL, Humble Food Beginnings & Homicidal Sea Pandas
Wishing you happy holidays - see you next year!
WRITING FROM | Nashville, TN
WORKING ON | final plans and printing for Whiskey Weekend
LOOKING AHEAD | Nashville, TN :: Nov 22-Dec 2 | Beersheba Springs, TN :: Dec 2-18 | Atlanta, GA :: Dec 18-20 | Nashville, TN :: Dec 20-Jan 8 | Cancun, Mexico :: Jan 8-27 | Isla Mujeres, MX :: Jan 27-Feb 4 | Mexico City, MX :: Feb 4-Feb 26 | Isla Mujeres, MX :: Feb 26-March 7 | London, UK :: March 7-???
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
It’s crazy just how much this year has flown by. 2020 was like syrup: slow, sticky, and a bit too much. This year was more like cheese: full of variety, and very more-ish. (Apparently moreish is a word in Britain, but less used in America. We think it’s one America should adopt, though.) We’re ending the year in a much different place than when we started - We’ve moved from scarcity to abundance, from fearful to fun. We’re looking forward to 2022, and can’t wait to share the new School of Stolen Genius with you. You’ll hear from us next in mid-January. Until then, we’re turning on email auto-responders and taking an extended holiday break :) We hope you are able to rest and rejuvenate as well, and we wish you and yours a wonderful winter!
This year, we’re especially thankful for:
our clients and partners (especially those at AnalogFolk, Venables Bell & Partners, Twinings, Warc, TikTok, Peloton, Mediacom NZ & Bold Woman Brands), our friends and family, all you fringe-dwelling freedom seekers, a renewed focus on travel, the newly minted nomads, the ease of COVID tests (ahem, not the price tag associated though!), all of the amazing meals we shared, getting to explore the Dominican Republic and Portugal, finally making it to Toulouse, getting to reconnect with our friends and family in the UK and France and Spain, being able to host Whiskey Weekend again this year & YOU!
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Faris’ publisher Kogan Page is running a sale which ends TODAY NOVEMBER 30th - everything on their site is 35% off with the code SALE35 - so fill your boots! (this is is also a British expression, lol)
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“The most useful, entertaining and insightful examination of communication theory and commercial creativity that I have read.” Catherine Coleman-Jinks, Head of Marketing Excellence, Twinings
:: THE LINKS ::
TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2022
It’s that time of year again! Get ready for all the trend reports of ‘what to watch’ in the year ahead. We’re big fans of our friends over at Kantar, and found their dissection - focusing on video streaming, performance media, and life in a pandemic - super interesting, and filled with useful sound bites and quotes. (Kantar)
THE HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF TODAY’S CULINARY DELICACIES
The holidays always have us thinking of food, and this caught my attention from the Times Magazine: “Many of our most revered dishes were perfected by those in need, then co-opted by the affluent. Is that populism at play, or just the abuse of power?” I’d heard stories of the copious amount of lobsters in NY, and apparently Russian peasants used to feed caviar to their pigs to fatten them up. (These days, lobster rolls go for $34 in Maine, and as for caviar, if you need to ask about the price, you probably can’t afford it — right?) Recipes aren’t static, and neither are people, “yet, a certain carelessness seems to take hold when people borrow (or simply take) from those of lesser means. “Poverty becomes wealth, despair becomes fun,” the American sociologist Karen Bettez Halnon writes in “Poor Chic: The Rational Consumption of Poverty” (2002). To play at being poor is to pretend real poverty doesn’t exist.” (Times Magazine)
SQUID GAME IRL
If you haven’t already gotten sucked into Squid Game, where have you been?! That show was crazy, y’all. And now, YouTuber Mr. Beast has set out to make a real world version of the show, with 456 contestants angling for a $456k prize. The video already has over 100MM views, and apparently cost upwards of $3MM to make. (Mashable)
TIME MILLIONAIRES: MEET THE PEOPLE PURSUING THE PLEASURE OF LEISURE
Leisure shouldn’t be a dirty word. Hell, lazy doesn’t even have to be. Doing nothing is reserved for children and retirees, but why? Jenny Odell has an anti-productivity tract called “How to Do Nothing” and writes that, “In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook … time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on ‘nothing’. It provides no return on investment; it is simply too expensive.” Sirin Kale ends the article with a beautiful missive saying, “After all, we cannot accrue time, or invest it and watch it grow. It runs away from us; we slip and slide in its wake. Perhaps time isn’t a bank account, but a field. We can grow productive crops, or things of beauty; roses for the pruning and topiary hedges to be trimmed. Or we can simply do nothing, and let the wildflowers grow. Everything is of beauty, everything is of equal value.” (The Guardian)
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:: AND NOW… HOMICIDAL SEA PANDAS::
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 :)