Strands of Genius: Taco Bell's Live Mas, NYT’s Job Listing: A NEW type of Media Reporter, Our Beloved Reddit is Going Public, Adam Curtis
Krista Freibaum + Zoe Turnbull, Co-Founders of Serious Business
Each year we aim to highlight 50 creative thinkers that have inspired us by giving them the opportunity to guest curate this newsletter, Strands of Genius. This edition is guest curated by Krista Freibaum + Zoe Turnbull, Co-Founders and Managing Partners at Serious Business.
:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATORS, KRISTA FREIBAUM + ZOE TURNBULL::
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, NY
We’re Krista and Zoe - co-founders and managing partners of Serious Business, a creative communications consultancy. We’ve been running SB for nearly 15 years and, before that, worked as a team, doing PR in-house at two different creative agencies.
We went out on our own in 2009 to have more control over our projects and the people and brands we work with. Today our goals are: to work with people who share our values, are doing interesting and imaginative things, and who are kind!
Working with other creative and empathetic minds is what makes our work super fun and rewarding; a nice byproduct is that we also get to destigmatize the negative archetypes of the publicist as being conniving, elitist and vapid. 😑
Finding sincere and enduring ways to look at our perpetually-changing media landscape is a challenge that we invite and enjoy, but it’s pretty wild out there these days.
Working together for such a long time means that we get to offer our clients the added value of our social capital as a team. In work, as in life - relationships are everything.
Editor’s Note (Faris): I met Krista in the heady party scene that existed at the INTERSECTION (yeah I said it) of technology, media and advertising in NYC between about 2009 and 2012. Believe me, it was a TIME and the people we met then are all still doing awesome stuff, all over. Krista and Zoe have been in business for longer than we have - nearly 15 years! - which is impressive in its own right, and when I saw they had worked with A24 I actually felt a tinge of client jealousy that I thought was no longer possible. Their excellent newsletter just relaunched after a hiatus, it’s very on top of culture and the Internet and that - subscribe! Thanks so much for an excellent edition. I feel similarly about Adam Curtis.
:: THE LINKS ::
TACO BELLS LIVE MAS
We covered this in our newsletter - I HOPE THIS EMAIL FINDS YOU WELL - but still cannot stop thinking about Taco Bell’s E3-style press conference for their new menu items. In an era where fast food is not really that affordable anymore, it’s cool to see a brand innovating and tapping into the zeitgeist when it comes to what people want. (KOTAKU)
NYT’S JOB LISTING: A NEW TYPE OF MEDIA REPORTER
This job description or NYT’s “new” type of media reporter was making waves recently as obviously the media landscape has changed and continues to implode seemingly every day now! As more and more key editorial stakeholders jump ship and start their own newsletters or go in-house for your favorite lifestyle brands, it’s certainly vital that we have a media reporter covering this new and developing landscape. (NYT)
OUR BELOVED REDDIT IS GOING PUBLIC
Last week Reddit announced its plans to go public and will reserve shares to offer their most “prolific” users at the IPO price. As one of the last bastions of the democratized internet of yore, it’s exciting and scary to think about what going public will look like and the path of Reddit’s future. (NYT)
ADAM CURTIS
BBC documentarian-artist Adam Curtis is our wise oracle god-king (our Taylor Swift, if you will) whose poetic , humorous films on global media, politics, finance, fame and technology, we find ourselves banging on about on a daily basis to anyone who’ll listen. His documentary films like Hypernormalisation and Century of the Self are absolutely required viewing for anyone who works in media or advertising. Now, the trailer for his fictional directorial debut - Michael Sheen’s 3-part mini-series The Way - has just dropped. Anyway, it’s just out on BBC Iplayer only for now but it’s getting rave reviews already:
And here’s a link to his films on Thought Maybe (an independent online library of films challenging modern society, industrial civilization, globalization and dominant culture). (The Guardian / Thought Maybe)
Looking for more from Krista & Zoe? Coming Friday, look for an interview from them in your inbox!
:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::
:: Game ::
KRISTA: Throw Throw Burrito and Black Jack are my faves. Just discovered the domino game, 42 which I love to play with my fam.
ZOE: I’ll play kid games like Uno and Old Maid to win - bluff and strategy all the way.
:: City ::
KRISTA: This is probably a cliche’d answer but Paris is one of the few cities for me that really lives up to the hype of what we build it up to in our minds.
ZOE: Brooklyn - it only took 15 years of residency and a global pandemic, but I finally understand why everyone loves Brooklyn so much and we moved our offices from Manhattan to Gowanus last year.
:: Book ::
KRISTA: I love fiction but am really into self-help books and my faves are Letting Go by Richard Dawkins; and The Tools by Barry Michels and Phil Stutz, absolute life changers.
ZOE: Female fiction only; Audio non-fiction books on tape - politics, history, business - so much smarter than podcasters whose opinions are all shaped by these books.
:: Podcast :: Can we both say Howard Stern… I mean really if I had to take one podcaster on a desert island…
:: Song ::
KRISTA: at the moment I am loving the theme from the animated sci fi series Scavengers Reign by Nicolas Snyder.
ZOE: I hate to say it but My Tears Ricochet by Taylor Swift is my fave song this week… it’s about corporate revenge.
:: BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER ☺️❤️::
Thanks for being here!
- Krista & Zoe
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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 :)