Strands of Genius: Youbot, Serious Stupidity, Blurred Reality
Plus: bonus conrtent, prize winners and a humming bird in slowmo
WRITING FROM | Chattanooga, TN
WORKING ON | final workshop prep for Friday’s half day workshop on What Ideas Are & How To Have Better Ones
LOOKING AHEAD
July 29-Aug 13 | Chattanooga, TN
Aug 15-18 | Charlotte, NC
Aug 18-Sept 25 | Chattanooga, TN
Sept 25-29 | New York City, NY | The ARF Creative Effectiveness Conference & David Ogilvy Awards
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Good morning, lovely readers!
Last week we had an absolute banger of a week on the bird front. While we see Baltimore Orioles in Mexico frequently, I’ve never seen them in Tennessee! Earlier this year, I tried to attract them with specific oriole feeders. When nothing happened, I googled to find out that they don’t actually stay in Tennessee in the winters (they go to Mexico, which is why we see them there) and removed the bird feeder. To be honest, I totally forgot about the bird feeder and the possibility of orange birds. So imagine my surprise last week when two Baltimore Orioles started playing in a tree *right in front of my desk.* That same day, we spotted a new, deep blue colored bird. We turned on our Merlin Bird ID app and it turns out it was a Purple Martin! After going down a Purple Martin rabbit hole, we are now in the market for a bird house so that we can attract more, so please let us know if you have one you recommend.
On the work front, we’re excited to head to Charlotte this week to be running an in person workshop with a 40 person team. We’ll be demystifying the creative process, talking about ideas - what they are, and how to have better ones. It’s one of our favorite workshops, and we’re excited to get to work with this agency team. It’s always great when you have clients who are smart AND nice! If you or your team could use help with any strategic or creative training or beefing up your briefs, we hope you’ll get in touch :)
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Marissa, J, neighbor friends, our screened in porch, date nights on said screened in porch, chicken piccata, Asian Food & Gifts, Home Depot, Will & Cory, the cooler temperatures & YOU.
PRIZE WINNERS!
The wonderful, smart and very entertaining book, especially if you work in the advertising business in anyway, “If there’s a Hell Below, We’re all Gonna Go” is Eaon Prtichard’s third book and he kindly offered some to our community. Congratulations to: Will, Chelsea, Mark, Laura, Amanda, Joe, Gabriel, Michael and Wesley! Books are going out to you TODAY and will arrive variously depending on where you live. Thanks for reading and enjoy the book! Many thanks to Eaon to for writing it and sending us some.
Have you got a book? Want us to give some away to our community? Hit us up! We like giving gifts to our lovely readers.
:: THE LINKS ::
YOU AS A CHATBOT
Meta announced that they’re going to let creators build virtual characters, except it’s not like in Second Life. You’re actually using AI to develop personalities, traits, interests — and you can make characters based on yourself. For big time influencers, it’s a way to have your “digital doppelgänger interact with fans in the DMs.” Weirdly, Zuckeberg’s use case that he mentioned during a conference was role playing an argument with a friend and seeing how the conversation might go. Which isn’t really where my mind went. But I’m curious to see how it plays out. (Wired)
SERIOUS STUPIDITY: CASUAL FRIDAYS, PAPER DRESSES AND 3D HUMOR
Faris is hoping that headline is enough to pique your interest…but just in case: “Things like this can seem stupid to some but then so did water in a can. As Andy said: “We'd get on calls and people said ‘no one's ever going to drink water out of an aluminum can. That's insane. No one will ever do that’. That's how it started when I joined. Then a year and a half in, we'd get on calls and people are like, ‘Oh, water in a can. That's so obvious. I wish I had thought of that.’ Everything is so stupid until one day it's not.”
(WARC)
BONUS CONTENT - some artifacts and references from the article.
(Is this interesting / useful? Like how a podcast does links in description and that. Let me know what you think and I will do it again when relevant.)
AND Faris in conversation with Andy, VP Creative at Liquid Death, about 3D humor and various fun things.
AND an article about the JICMAIL research mentioned.
BLAIR WITCH & BLURRED REALITY
This fascinating piece has some awe-some details about the film on its 25th anniversary: e.g. the actors were all improvising, left camping, tracked by GPS and surprised to make it feel authentic (HARDCORE). It also considers how its blending of reality and fiction has come to characterize the entire mediascape. This part seems especially important for brands, which require common knowledge to function effectively:
Now, in a way, that ride never ends. And perhaps most unnerving is the knowledge that each one of us is living in an increasingly unique version of the world, making reality less of a communal experience than ever. (New York Times Gift Link)
Shout out to Mike Monello&co at CAMPFIRE NYC, who was involved in making the Blair Witch Project and his agency does incredible work in entertainment marketing especially.
Want to chat, comment, question, compliment?
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:: HUMMING BIRD IN SLOW MOTION ::
Speaking of bird bangers, we recorded a humming bird in iPhone max slowmo and it is still too fast to see the wings. Amazing.
Bird watchers are sometimes known as ‘twitchers’, which is a fun thing to call yourself or your wife.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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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. We have a distributed team ourselves, an 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.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)