Strands of Genius: The Visual Candy Shop For Filmmakers, To Ad or Not To Ad, Redefining Adulthood

This edition of Strands of Genius is guest curated by Felipe Franco, Executive Creative Director & Film Director at FF&Co Creative Consulting(Faris and Rosie will be back soon!)

LOCATION: Barcelona, Spain

Hi, beautiful geniuses of the world.

Felipe Franco here. Executive Creative Director, Film Director, AI Artist and Founder of FF&CO Creative Consultancy.

Born in Brazil, I brewed most of my creative career in Germany, seasoned it in China and now preserve my heart and mind with wine and olive oil in Barcelona. I’ve worked with many of the big players and collected clients, awards and, mostly, friends around the world for over 20 years now.

I’m a culture lover and mixer, spreading ideas in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese. When words fail, I make films, photos, prompts and code.

Storytelling believer. Visually obsessed. Automotive aficionado. Style apasionado. Sci-fi. Realistic optimist. Virgo perfectionist. Samba and soccer are in my blood, sadly not in my feet.

Last year in Cannes, I met Rosie and Faris through my partner and cultural strategist, Nicole Ingra. They were two of those “you need to meet them” people, and they didn’t disappoint. These incredibly warm and generous people have now handed me the keys to their newsletter for the month.

I’m now based in Barcelona, but my connections are spread across the surface of the Earth. I love building cultural bridges between brands and audiences but, most importantly, between people. Hopefully, this is a chance to connect with some of you as well.

Everyone is trying to be louder. But louder doesn’t mean better—and attention doesn’t mean impact. In today’s economy, attention is currency, but most of us are spending it like we’ve got unlimited credit. Marketers know this dilemma intimately: how to capture attention without cheapening it. As creators and consumers, we’re all asking the same question—what’s worth watching, reading, listening to, and sharing? This theme dives into the tension between visibility and value, and the challenge of earning attention in a world where everything is shouting.

What’s the most attention-grabby thing you’ve ever done—and how did it work?

It was a project called “St. Pauli Peeback” that we created for the neighbourhood of St. Pauli in Hamburg, Germany. It is Germany’s most popular party district, and with that come loads of consequences, including people urinating on the streets. Back then, we had a solution that felt extremely original and, not to mention, super fair. If drunk people pee on the streets of St. Pauli, St. Pauli has the right to pee back on them. Reciprocity. Payback. Or, as we called it, “Peeback”.

The idea was relatively simple: we chose some of the most “used” walls and applied a superhydrophobic spray. So, whenever someone used the wall as a public toilet, their own urine would splash right back at them.

It was a simple idea that took over the internet, was copied by city councils around the world, featured in the news and was even discussed on TV shows. It brought loads of attention to the topic worldwide in an era when social media wasn’t the force it is today. Still, it spread to every corner of the world. It has now been over 10 years, and every now and then, I still see articles or videos about the idea circulating on the internet.

What brand (or person) has your attention right now—and why?

I have two. Completely different people (and also brands), but coming from the same place: Bad Bunny and Aileen Gu.

Both manage to transcend cultural borders and create bridges between their respective cultures and the rest of the world.

What Bad Bunny is doing for Puerto Rican and Latin culture is, in my opinion, unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. He proudly presents it to the rest of the world on its own terms, without an underdog syndrome or seeking validation from Anglo-American pop culture. In the past, musicians who wanted to become global stars and gain recognition in the US would release songs in English and move closer to mainstream pop. What he is doing is the opposite: instead of moving closer to global pop culture, he is bringing global pop culture closer to him.
Then there is Aileen Gu. Besides being the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history, with three gold and three silver medals, she has become one of the most fascinating figures at the intersection of the US and China. There is, of course, an ongoing debate about which country she should compete for, but I honestly believe that decision should largely be hers, just as it is for many football players.

What I really see is someone who brings cultures together through her sport. She has positioned herself at the centre of the US-China tension without allowing herself to be reduced to it, building a personal brand at the intersection of sports, fashion and global culture. Incredibly smart, educated, on point and media-trained, she is becoming one of the most powerful ambassadors for those who believe in a world with more bridges and fewer borders. And some of the world’s biggest brands have already recognised that power: Porsche, Red Bull, IWC, Louis Vuitton, Anta Sports and Luckin Coffee, just to name a few.

EYE CANNNDY: THE VISUAL CANDY SHOP FOR FILMMAKERS

• For me, one of the most useful websites for filmmakers. Beautifully organised, it feels like a candy store for visuals: a visual library where you can discover, learn and draw inspiration from hundreds of filmmaking techniques. They have it all.

  Also a great place if you just like visually impressive GIFs for your presentations.

  [EyeCannndy]

TO AD OR NOT TO AD: AI VERSION

• I love Nicole’s takes on cultural changes, and this article is no different. Again, she delivers a smart and very human take on what advertising might become in the age of AI and what AI companies are really selling us. She analyses Anthropic’s campaign, which feels unsettlingly similar to a Black Mirror episode, making us reflect on the state of AI through these ads. [Substack; Nicole Ingra]

DATA STORIES: REDEFINING ADULTHOOD

• I came across Cecilia MoSze Tham’s work in futurism and Futurity’s data-based stories at an event organised by a friend here in Barcelona.This one, for example, is a fascinating, data-packed look at how adulthood is being rewritten, as the old checklist of job, house, marriage and kids no longer quite fits the way people actually live today. I love how they use data to predict future scenarios based on different circumstances and play out these different futures. Their overall approach to futurism and Cecilia’s work are something I’ve been keeping an eye on ever since. [Futurity.Science]

• Game :: Backgammon. I used to play it with my dad as a child. Now, my partner and I take a portable version with us wherever we go. Of the “new” ones, I love Dixit and recently discovered Magical Athlete. I love the graphics and how relatively simple rules can keep us entertained for hours.

• City :: If I need to pick only one: Barcelona. My love for it goes back a long way, to my childhood. But my heart will always have a place some of the cities I’ve lived in: Shanghai, Hamburg, Prague and Fortaleza.

• Book :: I love WHAT IF scenarios and sci-fi. So, I will leave you with one in each category:

  • Classics: Brave New World. A brilliant and terrifying classic, mostly because the future it imagined is starting to feel disturbingly like the society we live in today.

  • Novel: Death with Interruptions (PT: "As Intermitências da Morte") by the 1998 Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago. A clever and funny read about what happens when death takes a holiday. It's a brilliant and absurd roast of society, politics and religion.

  • Chronicles: Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. An imaginative and provocative little gem from a neuroscientist with a surprisingly wild imagination. 40 clever, funny and weird afterlives that make this one look even stranger, funnier and, probably, more meaningful.

• Song :: My heart is too big for just one favourite. But there’s this Brazilian samba called “Conselho” that always makes me smile and brings me home, wherever I am in the world. A true Brazilian ode to moving on in life.

This edition was guest curated by Felipe Franco, who you can find on LinkedIn and on Instagram! Your regularly scheduled hosts, Rosie & Faris Yakob, will be back next week!

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 :)