Strands of Genius: What's the Big Idea, Marvel Changed Movies, Analogies Are Superpowers
plus, our thoughts on: abortion & music, flying canoes
WRITING FROM | London, UK
WORKING ON | Materials for TWO in-person meetings this week (WOWZA)
LOOKING AHEAD
May 1-28 | London, UK
June 1-June 6 | Northern Portugal
June 6-24 | London, UK
June 24-27 | New York, NY
June 27-July 12 | Wingdale, NY
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
We are staying with Faris’ dad at his new house, enjoying the currently lovely weather in England, catching up with friends and prepping for some client meetings this week. Rosie complained about the weather before she arrived, but she’s been doing yoga in the garden in shorts and a tank top… So this is one of those rare instances where she’s feeling thrilled to have been wrong ;)
This week we have two in-person meetings - one, a planning session for an in-person conference in June and the other a workshop with 9 marketing leaders. Our in-person work still feels minimal and that’s part of what makes it exciting. The other part that makes it exciting is, ya know, meeting our clients in person :) This week we’ll meet some clients that we’ve been working with since January for the first time! In June, we’ll meet clients that we have been working with for nearly 2 years, also for the first time.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
alllll the moms out there, and all they’ve done for us, Sam&Lizzie&Mia&Florrie, homemade bread from Barnes Bakehouse, Dave&Frances&Willow&Elliot, Uber, Smarty, corned beef sandwiches, Berna, all the delicious Arabic food she made us, Judy&Lillian, Abdulla, & YOU.
S C H O O L O F S T O L E N G E N I U S >> H I G H L I G H T S
COMMUNITY MEET UP!
Weds 18th May 10AM ET / 2PM GMT
On Wednesday, May 18th, we’ll host a community meetup for all members of the School of Stolen Genius.
During this community meetup, we’ll spend the time getting to know some of our other members, sharing learnings, and connecting with everyone. We look forward to seeing you there :)
More details for members on School of Stolen Genius.
:: THE LINKS ::
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
Ever since Mr D. Ogilvy wrote that “It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers” about seventy years ago people in advertising have been trying to find big ideas - without any clear idea of what they might be. This piece assembles lots of evidence and points of view to construct a workable definition of an abstract concept: “Big ideas are ‘big’ because they spread in three directions. They go long, they go wide and they go far.” (Alex Murrell)
MARVEL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CINEMATIC INNOVATION OF 21C
“Yes, really.” Staid broadsheet newspaper comes out with full-throated praise for the extraordinarily ambitious, interconnected movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - often maligned, seemingly formulaic, “But it’s a formula that hasn’t been successfully replicated in almost 15 years. Isn’t that weird?” (Independent) (BONUS: Here’s a podcast Faris did years ago discussing the Universe IP strategy).
ANALOGIES ARE SUPERPOWERS
Tony Fadell is the inventor of the iPod and iPhone (Wikipedia) and in this excerpt from his new book he relates some tips from his old boss. Steve Jobs always said “analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others.” (Fast Company)
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:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: ABORTIONS::
Hiya. Rosie here. There are so many people who have written about the US Supreme Court possibly overturning Roe v Wade in much more thoughtful ways than I ever could. See: Meg Conley in her pieces “Eve & Pandora & Abortion & Me” and “An unedited rant about anti-abortion activists and white feminists.”
But still, it feels weird to not mention it, considering it’s, ya know, a pretty big fucking deal.
I don’t know if this was the first time we discussed this, but I do remember learning in 8th grade about rape. I remember the statistic being 1 in 4 women, but the internet tells me that 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. When I mentioned this to my mom in the car ride home, she told me about the rape of someone in our family, someone I was very close to. She also told me about abortions. And she spoke to me about someone I knew getting an abortion. I remember being surprised that someone I knew, who I loved very much, had gotten one.
I remember talking to my dad about it, because the whole thing was such a big deal in my head. I don’t remember exactly what he said or what we discussed other than him bringing it back to music. At the time I was (ok fine, I still am) obsessed with Ben Folds Five. He told me that the brought it back to music: “You know that song you love by Ben Folds Five? Brick? That’s a song about Ben’s girlfriend getting an abortion when they were in high school.” Finding that out somehow made me love the song even more, and the story helped me to better understand abortion and how it could fit into someone’s world.
When I was in high school, the country artist my dad was working with, Tim McGraw, released the song “Red Ragtop.” My dad played a demo of the song for me driving around in his car, before it had been released. The lyrics surprised me: “We were young and wild / We decided not to have a child / So we did what we did and we tried to forget / And we swore up and down / There would be no regrets.” We didn’t discuss the song, but I remember feeling surprised to hear those lyrics — and at the same time, loving the song.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, “a previously taboo topic suddenly broke through the airwaves — as long as the singers were men,” writes Tom Joudrey for the Boston Globe.
Why did several music artists suddenly release songs about abortion — and why did these resonate so profoundly in that moment?
The skeleton key is, I think, masculinity. All these songs are about abortion as a threat to manliness. In “Slide,” the singer can no longer imagine becoming a man. In “Brick,” he’s reduced to a state of lonely desolation. In “The Freshmen,” he’s left guilt-stricken and unable to form relationships. In “Retrospect for Life,” he recounts that his maturation into manhood and fatherhood got short-circuited by his girlfriend’s abortion. There’s a feeling of being adrift in all these narratives, as though men experienced abortion as a disorienting loss of control and displacement from their role as guardians of the family. They had come to feel obsolete, downranked, superfluous.
The whole article is interesting, and hindsight is 2020, but at the time I certainly wasn’t thinking about the gender representation. I was just impressed that there were people making art about something that seemed so complicated in my mind. Their art brought me comfort. Their art told stories that helped me make sense of the world.
I also remember during our poetry unit one year in high school, I convinced my teacher to let me do my report on the singer/songwriter Ani Difranco. As part of the report, we had to perform, ahem recite, a poem by the poet we were studying. Still to this day, I can remember the words to Ani DiFranco’s Tiptoe:
I was almost entirely sure that I didn’t want kids from the time I met Faris at 22. At first I told him that I’d reconsider when I turned 30. But when he proposed when I was 27, I brought up the conversation again because I was even more sure that I didn’t want kids, and I wanted to make sure that was something that wasn’t going to be a deal breaker for Faris. Thankfully, we were on the same page. We are big fans of birth control. But knowing how much I don’t want children, I’m also so thankful that in the event of an unintended pregnancy, I have the option of choosing an abortion rather than carrying a baby to full term. And it’s terrifying and sad to me that the option may not be available to other women in the future.
We’ve donated to ARC-Southeast, who are committed to helping women with reproductive care. In their own words:
Every day, Southerners are impacted by financial barriers that prevent them from having autonomy in accessing the reproductive care they need and want. ARC-Southeast provides our community members with funding, information, and the resources needed to be empowered in determining their futures with dignity.
ARC-Southeast works with people in 6 states in the Southeast to support them in accessing reproductive care. We also engage in programs within our communities to bust abortion stigma and provide education in an effort to promote reproductive justice in the South. With your one-time or recurring donations, we can provide the resources and education to support Southerners and their families.
If you’re looking for other ways to make an impact, Esquire has also published a list of links of abortion funds you can donate to here. [It’s worth mentioning that if you’re a dude who has been with a woman who got an abortion, you can also help by speaking up and talking about your experience.]
If you’re reading this and you’re someone who has gotten an abortion, know that you don’t have to justify your abortion to to anyone. You’re amazing. (And here are some other abortion affirmations from Becca, thesweetfeminist on Instagram in case you or someone you know needs to hear them.)
:: AND NOW: FLYING CANOES::
In lighter news… Pioneers of the form since the Lords of The Rings partnership, the new safety video for Air New Zealand plays tribute to the culture, mythology and heritage of Aotearoa. Lovely.
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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 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 :)