Strands of Genius: Marketing Metaphors, Paper People, Can't Get Out of Bed-itis
plus: our thoughts on authority and authors (is it a long-winded rant?)
WRITING FROM | Greenville, SC
WORKING ON | finalizing a contract with a new client in Puerto Rico
LOOKING AHEAD
July 29: Integrated Brand Models | for the School of Stolen Genius
(PDF is already live, presentation + Q&A for Apprentices)
Aug 7-14: Beersheba Springs, TN
Aug 14-17: TBD
Aug 17-21: Nashville, TN
Aug 21-28: Beersheba Springs, TN
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Happy Tuesday! As mentioned, we’ve moving Strands to Tuesdays & Thursdays, and this is our first Tuesday. Well, [actually] long time subscribers will remember that Strands grew out of Rosie’s Tuesday Ten newsletter nearly a decade ago - hi there long time readers! We love you.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Rachel&Mike&Stella&Chase, socially distanced river tubing, Saluda Outdoor Center, homemade daiquiris on the river, Hamilton, Sunday roasts, Doom Patrol [HBOMAX], Love on the Spectrum, Palm Springs [Netflix], homemade pizzas, lemon raspberry pistachio cake, summer weather, and freshly grown tomatoes.
THE SCHOOL OF STOLEN GENIUS PRESENTS
INTEGRATED BRAND MODELS :: TOMORROW
Wednesday, July 29th: 9a PT / 12p ET / 5p GMT
The PDF is available for download, and Faris will be presenting the deck tomorrow. The live presentation/webinar is included for Apprentices, and the recording will be made available to all Members. If you’d like to buy a single pass to the live recording, email ashley@geniussteals.co (Don’t forget: We’re hoping that if you work for someone else we can help you expense this.)
:: THE LINKS ::
THE CONSUMER JOURNEY IS A METAPHOR
The founder of Lumen Research has penned this interesting take on the notion of ‘wrong term thinking’ as the recently mooted solution to the naive binary of long vs short term thinking. Both are necessary because they interact with each other over very different time scales, which creates mismatches when coupled with the idea of ‘consumer journeys’. In general, it’s important to understand the metaphors we use, especially in marketing and communications because there are so many nested ones we use all the time, to understand what they do, how they work, AND their limitations. The consumer journey metaphor is useful but the “logic of the metaphor has patterned our thought, and subtly weighted the terms of debate” and their research shows how direct response incrementality [an advertising metric that looks at increased conversation rate of sales in response to advertising] is a function of brand activity. (Lumen Research)
PAPER PEOPLE BY HARRY BAKER
If you need 3 minutes of inspiration, this poem by slam champion Harry Baker captures something profound about the present moment, in society and media and individual action and hope.
CAN’T GET OUT OF BED?
Some people leap out of bed, bright and early, raring to go. [Young people, says Faris]. [Also those of us with pesky morning anxiety, adds Rosie.] Others finding getting a day started harder, and some find it hard, or impossible, to get out of bed. If that’s you, it is called dysania, and whilst it isn’t a recognized as a standalone condition it can indicate others, especially depression. Those of us with *ahem* milder cases, especially on a Monday, that don’t require medical interventions might be better suited to experimenting with their sleeping routines, if you have managed to maintain one of those in recent months. (BBC)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: AUTHORITY AND AUTHORS ::
Where does authority come from? From whence is it derived? What is it?
Authority, like any single word, cannot be defined by itself, only in relation to [and thus with] other words.
Authority as currently defined has two distinct flavors built into it, since it is used variously to indicate both power and influence [authority: power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior. Merriam -Webster], which are very different things.
We can trace the notion of authority back pretty directly to concepts of media, persuasion and text thanks the art of rhetoric, and we can see an example in the previous sentence. I wrote a loose definition of a word, picked from several definitions because it most suited my purpose, and then supported it with a carefully extracted textual reference from a recognized authority in that specific domain, the dictionary. I invoked the ‘authority’ of the dictionary.
In rhetoric, the argument from authority is a persuasive device that uses the opinion of recognized ‘authorities’ as evidence to support an argument by quoting writing, or other extant speech.
It’s complex because it’s variously understood as a tool or a fallacy because it is persuasive but isn’t the same thing as, say, actual evidence supporting your point. It’s more a reference to someone else you are implying has the evidence or, more usually, we should generally believe because they have some kind of mutually recognized status.
The word we use today started out simply meaning: “passage or statement, book or quotation that settles an argument, passage from Scripture." Later, it was defined as “author whose statements are regarded as correct." Here we can see the textual foundation of the notion of authority. It’s the conversion of speech into objects like writing that allows ideas to gain broader attention, spread and then become accepted as ‘correct’. This is why authority is inherently related to orthodoxy. Orthodoxy being the way of thinking that is accepted as true or correct, which of course means it’s an aspect of power. Who gets to be an author, and who gets authority, in both senses, are a function of the same thing.
It’s the conversion of speech into objects like writing that allows ideas to spread and, and that spread is why Marin Luthor nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saint’s Church. Textual authority became extremely important when what could be understood as the beginnings of liberal thought emerged during the Reformation. In general, the liberal project is about freeing individuals from arbitrary authority, be it kings, despots, oligarchs or the Catholic Church.
Protestantism had to replace the spiritual authority the church claimed exclusive access to and it did so by placing the authority back into God, not the church, which meant into the Bible. That’s why common language translations of the Bible were such a big deal, and why the emphasis on the Bible being the actual, literal word of God is a both crucial foundation of all ‘protesting’ christians and inherently confusing, considering how much gets lost in translations. The Church had created a monopoly on access to the divine and were monetizing it very effectively, through innovations like papal indulgences, which let the wealthy buy their way into heaven, and were famously one of the biggest issues that Martin Luther had with the church.
In subsequent centuries ‘authority’ acquired the meaning of ‘legal validity’ [i.e. it has been authorized, it is written, inscribed in law] and it has balanced both the right to control people and the ability to influence ever since, although arguably the meaning of institutionally legitimate power over others has taken dominance, as in ‘the authorities are looking for a person of interest’ etc.
In sociology, authority is made distinct from power through legitimacy, which is derived variously from above [the law] or below [the audience]. We are legally bound to obey the police in certain contexts, and we choose to listen to certain people more than others and let what they say influence us. We give them authority.
Historically this exchange has been brokered by various gatekeepers of culture which established ‘academies’ in education, art and science that determine the Overton Window of what is published, celebrated, analyzed and thus given authority through authorship and attention - or at least given a chance to acquire it with the consent of the audience.
This inherently creates forces in which the status quo replicates itself, culturally, by arranging the economic forces of culture and academia— and by leveraging the authority derived from tradition.
This means that those in power have excluded others from power, which is why we have and know so many books written by men throughout history.
Women contributing to literature was literally, and then socially, and now economically marginalized, for example. This absence of other voices in literature throughout history is why critical theory shifted to concerning itself to the reader, allowing for colonial or feminist readings of texts, de-positioning the inherent assumptions of a white male reader as the normative audience of the cultural canon.
However, the academy also created peer review conditions that meant authority was domain specific. Expert gatekeepers kept out patently ridiculous or dangerous ideas and throttled their ability to get attention at scale for the right reasons. This sometimes suppressed important ideas and voices but it usually also meant stupid and dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism were removed out of the popular discourse.
Authority has always been a function of power, of controlling ideas and who gets to create, distribute and access them. Equally, ideas shouldn’t be evaluated solely by their general popularity, especially in highly specific domains. Today especially it is literally dangerous to your health not to listen to and act upon the advice of health authorities. But many people do not because they have been coaxed into accepting a different definition and source of authority that have supplanted the previously recognized medical establishment within their own domain of expertise.
Jane Newman brought account planning to the US in the mid-1980s. She was the first planner to have the title in America, and was hired by Jay Chiat, who was a copywriter. (Someone pointed out how it’s interesting that there are the Jay Chiat strategy awards, rather than the Jane Newman strategy awards. Hmmmm.)
She didn’t write a book with her thoughts or theories, but that doesn’t mean that we should exclude her from a list of impactful individuals. We often look to historical texts, and forget that history hasn’t been kind to women sharing their thoughts, and god forbid that woman should recognize her own authority on the topic.
In the 80s, women knew that they were mostly not allowed that authority by the gatekeepers. Things haven’t much changed, even with regards to the strategy we developed to deal with this unsavory issue:
“Sheldon, author of Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978), wrote under the name James Triptree in order to publish her work in the male dominated literary genre of science fiction.
Before her death in 1987, Sheldon expressed her reasons for choosing an alternative name: “A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.” (Phillips 47).
However, [years later] Joanne Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was urged to change her name to 'J.K.' Rowling by her publishers. The publishers claimed that Rowling would not attract enough young boys—who were the target audience—if they knew a woman had written the series.
Although roughly two centuries have passed since the Victorian era, it is clear that women writers still struggle for recognition and acknowledgement, especially in the literary genres where men appear more dominant than women.”
There are a lot of compounding factors.
So, what’s the point?
To challenge you to consider the historical significance and implications of culture that create that of that which you consume.
To consider the dynamic relationship between authority, attention and media.To remind you that just because women aren’t included in history written by men, doesn’t mean their contributions haven’t been valuable.
To ask you to think about your perspective on authority: How do you determine who is allowed to have an opinion or perspective worth sharing?
To remind you that authority is influenced by cultural perceptions, and access, and attention and that just because someone doesn’t share the same credentials doesn’t mean they aren’t worth listening to.
To beg you to consider your own biases around gender, and to think critically about why we don’t read more perspectives from women.
To urge you to bring diverse opinions to the table, to spotlight others, with voices other than yours, especially when you’re in a position of power.
To challenge your own thinking, and ours.
:: AND NOW… A CASE STUDY FROM A CANNES VIRTUAL PARTY #LOL ::
Slide 4 for the ridiculous(ly fun) case study video.
Sizzer is a dutch music studio and Sehsucht are an animation + post production studio, who had to move their Cannes celebration to the virtual world. We particularly loved hearing about all the things lost at Cannes, and perhaps unsurprisingly ‘dignity’ topped the list ;)
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.
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