Strands of Genius: Nestle Converts a Nation to Coffee, Waving at the End of Video Calls, Where Branding is Headed Next

Guest Curated by Satish Krisnamurthy

Jul 09, 2020

:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, SATISH KRISHNAMURTHY ::

LOCATION: India
PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: Sideways, Mumbai, India

So, I worked at Naked New York long ago, and this gentleman Faris, who was in Naked London, moved to the NYC office. He seemed very interesting, even though he didn't have the crazy dreadlocks that he has today.

Maybe it was his self-given title of being a Digital Ninja that intrigued me. Maybe it was the process in which he wrote his decks, rough slides one after the other after the other until the thought fell in place and it become slick, or maybe it was just his easy going style. But I am glad we hit it off.

I've been a fan of Faris for a long time since then. I moved back to India, but I still followed his TIGS blog, I marveled at his concepts of cultural latency, recombinant nature of ideas, among others.

And then, Faris + Rosie kept coming to India on work and speaking engagements. And that's how I met Rosie. She is awesome.

I revel in Faris and Rosie's love for India. We've spent some good times in Bombay, not just exploring the city's eating and drinking places, but also taking a weekend lake trip, and hanging out generally, it's been lots of fun. To top it all off, I was grateful they could attend my wedding with Piyali in India last year.

Faris and Rosie have now become part of our friend circle. We look forward to hanging with them again and again.

Editor’s Note (Faris): Satish is [one of] the reason[s] we love India so much! I worked with him at Naked in NYC. It was a crazy time and we were having fun, burning the candle at both ends, trying to shake up the industry and still find time for the occasional long lunch with even more occasional bicycle tricks…but our friendship really turned into something special when we got a bunch of gigs in India over the years and Satish always found time to take us out, show us interesting places, or get us into the agency for a talk, or take us on vacation!

Piyali is amazing [no hyperbole. She’s warm and kind, embraced Satish’s friends as her own, invited us into her family home, and oh yeah she writes and directs plays, and is the founder of the India Festival of Children & Youth Empowerment. Amazing.] and their wedding was magical - that time their families and friends were our only ‘clients’ in India. Indian weddings are such fun - especially this one. They had this wonderful open mic set up on the night before dinner where friends and family performed prepared and off-the-cuff songs, played instruments which generally made it quite a party. One older gentleman sang all 7 verses of Man Smart [Women Smarter] by Harry Belafonte acapella, which has stayed with us. A great mind with a great soul, and now a great wife. We can’t wait to hug y’all soon. <3

:: THE LINKS ::

NESTLE HIRED A PSYCHOANALYST TO CONVERT A NATION TO COFFEE

The importance of emotional branding.
How do you get someone to like something? Simple, by imprinting it. Which means, get into their childhood and become an integral part of it. And when they grow up, they'll have fond memories.
I love this little piece of information on how Nestle made an entire nation drink coffee. If no one knew about coffee, how do you firstly introduce the drink and then make it a mainstay in their daily lives? Well, it took more than a couple of decades to do that, but hey, the coffee was still brewing. (Medium)

WHY WE CAN’T STOP WAVING AT THE END OF VIDEO CALLS

Navigating the new can only happen if old knowledge already exists. We can't start from zero. And this is exactly why I was fascinated with with this question - why we can't stop waving at the end of video calls.
Turns out, it's all driven by social cues of human interaction. In person, there are subtle clues, like checking your watch, closing a notebook, or getting ready to stand up to show that an interaction is coming to a close.
The feeling of completion is an important part of communication, and the hand wave just says, ok we're done here. It's a natural thing we always did in real life. How did we say goodbye? We just waved. (CNN Business)

I STUDIED THOUSANDS OF LOGOS. HERE’S WHERE BRANDING IS HEADED NEXT.

Where is logo branding headed?
What is design moving away from?
What is design moving towards?
Today, design is intriguingly getting clustered at different points, mostly driven by technology and tools. Maybe for no other reason than the fact that we have capabilities to do it. Designers are nowadays exploiting the available tools to create new logo experiences we have never seen before.
If you go through the logos, you'll start to see how starkly similar they all are in clusters. From having particular design styles - counters, mazes, chexmelt, bevel tips (i like this a lot) - to playing with typography - idrops, letter illusions, blackletter - this article neatly outlines various trends in design and where it's headed. (Fast Company)

Looking for more from Satish Krishnamurthy? Those enrolled in The School of Stolen Genius will receive a deep dive from him in their inbox shortly! You can access all our expert interviews for SOSG here.

:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::

:: Game :: Gully cricket with your own bent rules is always a lot of fun.

:: City :: New York City, then Bombay

:: Book :: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

:: Podcast :: Check out Peter Levitan's Advertising Stories

:: Album :: The Beatles - Abbey Road

:: TAXI UPHOLSTRIES ::

I worked a lot on collecting pictures of upholstery kaali-peeli taxies in Bombay. Then I started driving, and taking taxies lesser. But, here's about 255 unique taxi upholsteries in Bombay

Satish Krishnamurthy
email: satishkrishnamurthy@gmail.com
instagram | 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 :)

Strands of Genius