Strands of Genius: Morning Pages, Around the World, What Makes a Great Client-Agency Relationship
Guest curated by Waithera Kabiru
This year we’re aiming to highlight 50 creative thinkers that have inspired us, by giving them the opportunity to guest curate this newsletter, Strands of Genius. Rosie and Faris met Waithera back in 2014 at a Coca-Cola workshop in Istanbul and re-connected over Twitter.
:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, WAITHERA KABIRU ::
LOCATION: Kenya
PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: East African Breweries Ltd.
I am the Media Futures Lead at East African Breweries Ltd | Diageo Plc, connecting a portfolio of over 25 brands to consumers including our local gem, the world famous Tusker Lager! I work with an in-house creative agency called DigiTribe which has enhanced our ability to work with speed and simplicity. I have been fortunate to live and work both in sub-Saharan Africa (I spent 6 years at Coca-Cola running media/digital in 15+ markets), and I kicked off my career in the US at a telco after completing my Undergrad and Master's program there. My other hats include being the PR Director of our local Rotary International chapter, (Rotary Club of Lavington Jioni) that supports projects in the community on education, health and water. Together with six of my friends we run a cancer charity in Kenya called The Second Chances Foundation, to provide hope and financial support to individuals and families battling cancer. This is close to me as I am a breast cancer survivor.
I first met Rosie and Faris in 2014 in Istanbul at a Coca-Cola workshop on social enterprise and connections. I reconnected again with Faris on Twitter (no surprise) which ended up getting an invite to join the jury of The New Category at LIA which they had put together. I secretly envy their nomadic (creative) lifestyle and have been a keen follower of this newsletter.
Thanks for the opportunity to curate this weeks' newsletter. I will focus on productivity particularly navigating work and life during this pandemic.
Editor’s Note: We were excited to work on a global training & inspiration program for Coca-Cola and especially when we met and immediately hit it off with Waithera. She brings deep digital and consumer insight from a continent we just don’t hear enough from in our industry globally. This is especially important because ‘leapfrog’ digital economics - that go online mobile first - show remarkable innovation. We were delighted she was willing to sit on the NEW jury at the LIAs, since award juries for ‘global’ shows too often don’t have adequate global representation. Waithera is a flash of insightful passion and enthusiasm, and she even brought us delicious coffee to taste. Her experience on both agency and client side is now converging at Diageo, where she is both a client with agencies, and manager of an internal one. This is particularly salient for our increasingly hybrid working world which sees roles and responsibilities, individually and for agencies, becoming more fluid. [an important part of how The Great Blur is impacting agencies]. One of these days, we’re going to meet up again! Thanks, Waithera!
:: THE LINKS ::
MORNING PAGES - DO THEY REALLY WORK?
On a recent session with my therapist Annie, she recommended I start doing morning pages, a daily log of my thoughts, brain dump first thing in the morning, three- A5 pages, long hand written. Morning pages are a tool that author Julia Cameroon put forward in her book, "The Artist's Way- A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self". Annie recommended this tool to help solve the challenges I was having getting focused, thanks to all the clutter in my brain each morning. She described my situation as one where there were so many tabs open (like a browser) in my brain, and this was reducing my processing speed and ability to think clearly.
It has been 3 weeks of writing Morning Pages and so far, so good! Actually, quite great as I have been able to focus on priority projects and dive into hours of deep work uninterrupted, (not worrying for hours what I will make for dinner that evening!) Thumbs up for morning pages and therapists with practical solutions! (Morning Pages)
AROUND THE WORLD IN….
It has been X@#$?* days since COVID struck and sent some of us to work from home, limited our travel and basically disrupted our worlds. A silver lining to being home bound is that I am reading a lot. At the start of 2020 my goal was #20Booksin2020. I am proud to have already completed at least 15 books with most of this reading occurring in the last 3 months. But that is no mean feat. My book champion is Sunny Bindra, Kenyan author, business consultant and the king of reading! Sunny's 2020 goal was #50Booksin2020! He says, "I have already surpassed my target of #50booksin2020 long before this year of isolation is done. Why waste a crisis, after all? In this journey I have revisited some wise old classics; I have learned lessons afresh about human nature; I have understood more deeply what artificial intelligence might hold for us in the future; I have been taught the ins and outs of remote working by those who have been doing it for a decade; and I have been newly schooled in the flaws of my university education."
So there, time to get your read on! (Sunwords)
WHAT MAKES A GREAT CLIENT-AGENCY RELATIONSHIP?
I have had the experience on working on both sides of the table. Earlier in my career I started up a digital creative agency within a media house (Capital FM Kenya), and then moved to Coca-Cola and now Diageo where I am the client and work with several creative, pr, media and experiential agencies. However, I am now also running an in-house agency within Diageo that focuses on connections led creative for a wide portfolio of alcoholic beverage brands. This means I now wear two hats simultaneously - the client and the agency! As the saying goes, you can't serve two masters, hence my mantra is to always put the brand first (note, I didn't say the client!). This means that when working with people, briefs, brands, budgets, we need to put egos aside and decide what is best for the brand. In this blog I mention 3 things that have helped me grow over the years in working for the success of the brand 1) Stay Focused on the end goal; don't get distracted by egos 2) Friendship is important, we are not strangers to each other so nurture them 3) Why do the work if you won't have Fun? Work smart, play hard!
As the saying goes "Clients get the work they deserve" - Perennial Agency Belief! (Waithera Kabiru)
Looking for more from Waithera Kabiru? Those enrolled in The School of Stolen Genius will receive a deep dive from her in their inbox shortly! You can access all our expert interviews for SOSG here.
:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::
:: Game :: Scrabble - a favourite of our family including my 70-something year old mum who is the reigning champion!
:: City :: Anywhere close to a beach!
:: Book :: The one I will write soon!
:: Podcast :: Chop Maoni by two afro-urban women, Sophie and Wangari
:: Album :: “Midnight Train” by Sauti Sol
:: LIA AWARDS 2019 ::
LIA Awards 2019
Waithera Kabiru
waitherak@gmail.com
the digital diva | linkedin
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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 :)