Strands of Genius: Krista Freibaum and Zoe Turnbull + 10 Top Brands to Watch in 2024
featuring: an interview with our guest editor and a research report
Welcome to the Bonus edition of Strands of Genius! On Fridays, we’ll be publishing interviews from our guest editors, and sharing a research report. Thanks for being along for the ride. Oh and by the way, you look great today :)
:: STEAL THIS THINKING | RESEARCH REPORT ::
New year, new retail opportunities. And though 2023 is firmly in the rearview mirror, the economic headwinds that characterized much of the year have yet to fully dissipate. But every challenge also brings with it new opportunities, and many retailers are adapting to meet their customers' changing wants and needs. Read on for some of 2024’s retail winners.
:: DIVE IN | THE INTERVIEW ::
KRISTA FREIBAUM + ZOE TURNBULL, CO-FOUNDERS OF SERIOUS BUSINESS
>> Krista Freibaum + Zoe Turnbull guest curated Strands on March 7th, 2024. Read it here.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what keeps you busy. How did you end up doing what you’re doing today?
ZOE: From age 14, I had a precocious idea of working in New York Media (Influenced by Tina Brown, and Anna Wintour) and won a paid business media internship via my college, that got terminated 3 months in following 9-11 — which is how I ended up doing PR. I genuinely like humans and love how this line of work keeps me in direct contact with people all day every day.
KRISTA: Zoe and I seemingly both fell into PR and for different reasons but I started out in new media editorial writing music and events listings and interning in the promotions department at Warp Records. I found my way to PR through a *PAID* internship one summer that my friend’s girlfriend turned me onto. The rest is pretty much history from there and I met Zoe on a job interview (I didn’t get it) around 2005 and we reconnected 6ish months later and have worked together ever since.
What excites you most about what you do?
KRISTA: PR is really challenging. That is what I like most about it. There is a psychological element, a people element, a strategic element and a creative element to it… Sometimes it probably seems like all I do is sit around typing all day and that probably looks incredibly easy to people on the outside but pitching and landing (unpaid) stories in media outlets is exceedingly difficult in today’s world; it requires a lot of knowledge and usually some level of relationships but not always. If you have a good pitch you can always get a story somewhere.
Zoe and I like to say we are” not rolodex-based” or focused on a single niche like fashion or beauty. We like to work in different niches and have done some crazy projects in robotics, environmental sciences, web3, art and design that really have given us an amazing challenge in addition to producing amazing results.
What beliefs define your approach to work? How would you define your leadership style?
ZOE: Gen Xer’s distrust hierarchies and authority so I think our “leadership” style is more democratic … I’d never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself. We remain intentionally small because we LIKE the work we do which presents growth challenges for the people who work for us but we are very clear with them that the specialized skills they will learn with us can be applied in any other business or industry they go on to.
What has been the most rewarding project you’ve worked on and why?
KRISTA: This is like picking a favorite child but The New Museum’s Carsten Holler EXPERIENCE exhibit was a top 10 for us; getting to drive that project from a PR / comms perspective and develop a ugc (as they say now) visitor “wiki” of experiences was fun + the art was next level. Inviting creators to the museum before and after hours was part of our strategy and one that I’m surprised they let us do lol.
Working with Sir Kensington’s on Fries of New York was great. I didn’t completely understand how much people loved french fries until we worked on that but seeing all the interest and press coverage was wild.
Developing the zine for A24 and running that for 7+ years and 20+ issues was extremely fun. Sometimes we definitely pinch ourselves,that we have clients who trust us and want to do cool stuff and that we get paid to make really cool work with such talented people.
Any projects where we’ve worked with clients for like 5+ years are also incredibly rewarding and usually pretty rare. There is a culture around always soliciting proposals from new agencies every year or few years that sort of makes sense in terms of keeping it fresh but I also think can be self sabotaging for brands where they have a good thing going and a PR agency that media know and love.
We are big believers in diversity -- Not only because we believe in equality, but because we also think it’s better for business. How do you frame these kinds of conversations, both internally and with clients? Is there an emphasis on action, or are the conversations really more about communication?
ZOE: A.B. K. — ALWAYS BE KIND
Switching gears a bit, how do you find time to balance personal interests with your career? Do you believe work/life balance is possible? Anything you’ve implemented that you recommend that others try?
KRISTA: Work / life balance is obviously hard, especially when family and life things get busy. Part of our job is not just to be worker bees in an account exec or project management role, but to come up with creative ideas for clients and it’s hard to do that if we don’t actively take time away for creative endeavors and things that are NOT work. I like to make synth music and take up hobbies whenever I can - which is admittedly not as much as I’d like but every bit counts. We also have a pretty firm rule about not working or emailing on evenings and weekends, unless it’s super time sensitive or we’re on an editorial deadline.
What’s your media diet? Where do you find inspiration?
KRISTA: Having a voracious media diet is our job; I mostly stick to WSJ, NYT, LATimes and then a handful of substacks + Lauren Sherman’s Puck Newsletter LineSheet. In the last few months I’ve been really enjoying going to the movies, especially at all the refurbished theaters in LA like The Vista and The Egyptian. Film has always been something I loved but supporting indie cinema and the theater-going experience has become really important to me.
What’s the best piece of advice/knowledge you’ve stolen, and who/where’d you steal it from?
ZOE: I’ve thought about this RuPaul quote nearly every day for 10 years: “There’s only two kinds of people: those who laugh at life’s grand illusion and those who take it seriously.”
There’s also a flow chart in this random CNBC article on “5 Stages of Life” I’ve shared countless times since the pandemic (especially to younger people who put so much pressure on themselves): https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/20/there-are-5-stages-of-life-what-to-do-at-every-age-to-minimize-regrets.html.
You can keep in touch with Krista + Zoe on LinkedIn.
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