Strands of Genius: King&Bullmore on Brand, Bogusky on New Business, The Cookie Crumbles
Strands of Genius: King&Bullmore on Brand, Bogusky on New Business, The Cookie Crumbles
plus our thoughts on: old school and new school idea engines
WRITING FROM | Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
WORKING ON | Finishing up phase one for a consulting project for an agency, workshops for global brand, onboarding some new back office partners, new biz zooms.
LOOKING AHEAD
March30-April 21: Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
April 22-May 5: Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic
May 6-June 1: Maybe vaccines!
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We are experimenting with having defined breaks in our work patterns because we have been super busy over the last couple weeks. We invented weekends! (lol) and enjoyed staying away from our laptops for the complete duration of one. And, it was perfect timing too, as our calendars reminded us on Saturday that we were celebrating our 8 YEAR nomadiversary! Crazy how time flies.
OK so… how ya doing? We are 1/4 of the way through 2021, which we knew was going to be another very weird and inevitably tough year. The ebullience the US election created for many has sobered up a bit, as voter suppression laws appear all over the US, the cultural pendulum swinging back and forth. What is happening in the UK? From this vantage point mediated by journalism and the stream, it seems ominous and increasingly reminiscent of recent political history in USA. Australia is having a political #metoo moment, Myanmar doesn’t seem to be calming down…that boat got stuck in the Suez Canal…
It can all be quite a lot to put out of mind in order to focus on work. Faris shared some thoughts about that in his Magnetic talk, the video is in the links below, inspiring a video edition, squeezing him between two other videos you should probably watch first, especially if you are in advertising.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
our director of operations, Ashley - who we just celebrated our three year workaversary with, Bogee & Megan, rainbows, running to the end of the beach, back-up generators because there have been many power cuts, local SIM data packages being extremely cheap and working as a reliable wifi substitute [even for Zooms/Teams], different kinds of rice and beans, Julio, ice-cream, The Order (Buffy: the college years?),
:: THE LINKS ::
WHAT IS A BRAND? KING & BULLMORE
This JWT training video from 1974 is the one of the keystones of modern branding and entertaining to boot. Everyone in advertising should have seen it, especially anyone responsible for thinking about brands. (Youtube)
THE COOKIE CRUMBLES: ATTENTION UPDATE 2021
The nice people at Magnetic have put all the videos from their Spark event online. Faris aforementioned talk is available, featuring media, meditation, magic and monsters (all in 20mins) and other talks include new research on fast vs slow media from Lumen and The Power of Context from Ebiquity. (Magentic)
BREAKING RULES. BOGUSKY AT MIRREN NEW BUSINESS
When Faris went to work at MDC a big part of it was the opportunity to work with Alex Bogusky, who at the time was the ‘creative director of the decade’ according to Adweek. Sadly he left the agency and holding company not long after Faris joined. Before he did he gave this talk at a conference about how they had never lost a pitch, which he attributed to them breaking any rules they could find in the market. It is available to watch in 7 minutes chunks and the slides are here. (Bloomberg)
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Experimental Learning Community Second Cohort ||
Applications for our second ELC close at the end of this week!
This is a 7-week mastermind-like program designed to connect marketers around the world, through less-traditional learning.
We’ll meet on Tuesdays at 10a PT / 1p ET / 6p GMT / (+1 day, Wednesday 7am for those on NZDT), beginning April 13th.
Each session will have you looking at work - and maybe even the world - differently, with prompts and exercises that you can steal and replicate within your organization. If you’re curious about the specifics of each session, you can check out the full schedule here.
The program fee is $175, and is available to members of the School of Stolen Genius. Kim had these kinds words about ELC1.
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: IDEA ENGINES ::
Faris has been running again because we are in a health arc of the year and it’s not so cold here and running on the beach is maybe even enjoyable? (Rosie disagrees, but has never been a fan of running anyhow.) Despite some well-meaning advice from people on Twitter that he should use the time to commune with nature and mediate, he prefers to listen to podcasts, with intermittent bursts of jungle for energy (and then write about it in third person for this here newsletter.)
Recently he’s been listening to some of the Stephen Wolfram podcast. He was hesitant because he had this background brand image of Wolfram as being overly complex and maybe even annoying for some reason? but isn’t sure why. Regardless, he’s been enjoying the history of pieces, in which Wolfram appears to be giving potted but detailed histories of math, physics and science as off the cuff lectures to some kind of summer school or as unscripted livestreams, so that’s impressive anyway.
In this history of science he opened up a little rabbit hole with a reference to Ramon Llull, who had this idea that he could generate all true things about the world from combinations. That’s the sort of thinking Genius Steals is based on, so down the rabbit hole Faris went.
Ramon Llull was of those wealthy ancient polymaths who don’t really seem to exist anymore. He was a mathematician, philosopher and writer, credited with writing the first major work of Catalan literature and possibly the first European novel. He is considered a pioneer in computation and was very influential on Leibniz. He was just in-between disciplines, he was also very divisive, being considered by some a mystic and martyr and by others as a heretic. In fact, he has been subject to an ongoing, unresolved, canonization process in the Catholic church since the 16th century.
In his magnum opus, appropriately known as the Ars Generalis Ultima or Ars Magna ("The Ultimate General Art" or "The Great Art", published in 1305), he built a detailed analytical argument engine, that he later codified into a paper machine made of concentric circles you could move around to construct or refute arguments. There are lots of versions but this one is in English and nearly legible.
It’s a fascinating idea, and even more Genius Steals that we realized, when we learnt it was almost certainly inspired by, somewhat based on, an ancient Arabic device called a zairja, a device used by medieval Arab astrologers to generate ideas by mechanical means.
You might remember the culture compass we’ve been playing with from a Strands a while ago? We are publishing our first trend report for members of the School Of Stolen Genius this week based on it and its companion, the Commerce Compass, which combine to form another wheel shaped machine for having ideas that capitalize on shifts in culture.
:: AND NOW… CPB’S OLD ‘NEW BRAND RULES’ ::
If we can ever be of help to you, 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 :)