Strands of Genius: Strategy Starter Pack, Uncreative AI Agency, Hypertext Novel
plus: the signs leaving LIDL
WRITING FROM | Atlanta, GA
WORKING ON | new business onboarding, preparing a workshop program, conference prep
LOOKING AHEAD
Jan 19-Feb 16 | Atlanta, GA
Feb 16-20 | St. Simon’s Island
Feb 20-26 | Nashville, TN
Feb 26-March 10 | Long Beach and New York, NY
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We celebrated our friend Mike’s 40th birthday this weekend with a multiple choice choose your own adventure. Remember those 80s books that were like early paperback versions of role playing games?
“You are a shark” looks pretty interesting.
This week, I’m going to try to consider the decision moments, big and small, where I shift the direction of my life in unknowable ways. You can’t leave your finger in at the last page and then go back and try again in life as we did in the books but we can think about the decisions we are making as life is randomly served up to us and wonder how our choices make us feel about ourselves.
It’s February, Valentine’s Day is around the corner, today is Tuesday, you are doing great and this is Strands. Take a deep breath and exhale.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Mike&Rachel&Chase, Eric&Erin, Colin&Morgan, birthday celebrations, Noodles&Chase, Wakanda Forever, The Last of Us, steak suppers, twice baked potatoes, grits, crispy wings, walks, dogs, & YOU.
:: THE LINKS ::
STRATEGY STARTER PACK
This is perhaps the most extensive version of what has become a kind of curation format, aggregating lots of resources into a single document focused on a specific discipline, in this case strategy, primarily as practiced within advertising and communications planning. This has a lot for anyone, it’s broad and deep. Our friend Mike likes to say that any job is easy when you have the right tool, and part of the strategist’s job is being aware of (and then picking) the apposite tool with which to consider the problem at hand. (Google Docs)
UNCREATIVE AI AGENCY
There is a funny tendency amongst advertising agencies to UN things, as in creating a positioning in contradistinction to the obvious cues of a category, the UnCarrier or the UnBank and so on, and the habit extends to self definition. Agencies brand themselves as unagencies, or anomalies, or new model agencies, and so on, in an attempt to stand out. DDB played with this trope with their newly launched AI powered Uncreative Agency, which takes a brief and spits our a pdf with three concepts, complete with images, for tv spots, stunts or social content. It’s both an interesting experiment, adapting these new tools directly for how the advertising industry communicates, and a cheeky piece of viral marketing. (DDB)
HYPERTEXT NOVEL 253 IS BACK ONLINE
I adored the Philip K Dick award winning novel 253 when I read it in the 90s but I didn’t realize it had originally been written as a hyper-textual novel on the web. The author Geoff Ryan tells the story of 253 people “making the seven-and-a-half-minute journey from Embankment to Elephant & Castle, and published it as a series of linked pages, each one telling the story of a different character in exactly 253 words.” It’s a remarkable work, made all the more resonant by using hypertext to explicitly link how all the people’s lives intersect throughout their different stories. An accident knocked the original web version offline and it has just been restored in all is 90s glory. (London In Bits)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: LIDL EXIT SIGNAGE ::
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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 in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, 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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