Every quarter, Mad Genius puts all of our geniuses in a room to talk about the various industry happenings across our departments: creative, production, web, and accounts. In each gathering, a single person from each team gathers news they find interesting and shares it with the company.

And then we share it with you.

So, here’s what Mad Genius is looking at as we start the fourth quarter:

Creative Goings-On

Mad Genius has been doing a bunch of tourism lately. We love it. We’re deeply grateful for the opportunities we’ve had. Likewise, we love Halloween. It’s no surprise that our creative team was geeked by a couple of travel campaigns fueled by All Hallows Eve.

Ireland as the “Home of Halloween”

Tourism Ireland’s new campaign, “Home of Halloween,” launched as a collaboration with Publicis London. Celebrating the Celtic festival, Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”), Ireland’s betting big on the crossover between horror and history. Ireland.com is full of stories and sites for those considering an autumn vacation on the Emerald Isle.

North Carolina is “First in Fright”

Visit North Carolina and Luquire launched “First in Fright,” an experiential and integrated media campaign that leans into the state’s relationship with the macabre.

There is a host of media for the campaign, including some very fun videos to go with the posters. The website has a podcast, with episodes scheduled to be released as we get closer to Halloween, and a haunted trail through the state, for those seeking hands-on scares.

Production Goings-On

You know what makes a person get into the film-making business? The money.

Just kidding. It’s a passionate love for film. That’s probably why our production team skipped into our quarterly meeting this year…

Mississippi Movies Are Moving

After a year of complex strikes and negotiations, productions are starting to pop up all over the country. Well, sort of. Not every state is enjoying the return to work. Mississippi, however, is doing great. Our sister company, Eyevox, is working with several films currently filming in the state. (We even had some shoots in our studio last week that we’re not allowed to talk about.)

It’s pretty exciting to see Mississippi bounce back strong from the production drought earlier this year. It’s also exhausting, as many of our employees, contractors, and friends are working non-stop to keep up with the very high demand. These are good problems.

Web Goings-On

It’ll likely shock nobody to learn that our web team spends a lot of time on the internet. So, you can understand why they were drawn to the following headlines.

Going Nuclear

Constellation Energy and Microsoft reached an agreement of $1.6 billion to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power data centers for AI. We’re sure that’ll be fine.

OpenAI o1

ChatGPT released OpenAI o1-preview. These models rely on reinforcement learning to perform complex reasoning. This means they produce a chain of “thought” before providing an answer. Also, probably fine.

Laravel Levels Up

Accel invested $57,000,000 into Laravel Products and Open-Source Framework. Laravel also announced Laravel Cloud, a cloud platform designed specifically for hosting and deploying Laravel applications. It provides an easy way for developers to manage their applications without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure.

Meta’s Orion

Meta launched Orion, one of the most advanced augmented reality glasses to date. Orion combines the feel of a regular pair of glasses with the immersive capabilities of augmented reality. They also look really cool. (That was sarcasm. Sorry, it doesn’t always come through in text.)

WordPress v. WP Engine

WordPress & WP Engine have beef, and it’s complicated. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg is centering on accusations of trademark misuse and inadequate contributions to the open-source project by WPEngine. The dispute has escalated to legal threats and temporary service disruptions.

S-E-Oh, No

The SEO landscape is in flux as websites like Explee.com exploit Google AI’s SERP features for higher rankings. Google’s recent crackdown on Forbes’ long-standing tactics has led to a drop in their organic traffic, highlighting the ongoing battle between search engines and manipulative SEO practices.

Accounts Goings-On

Our accounts team brought some nostalgia to the table this quarter, focusing on the unexpected impact viral videos can have on agencies.

Slaying Viral Videos

Almost ten years ago, our friends at Merit/Andrew had a bit of a viral hit on their hands when they decided to help their employee, Jake, sell his car. Know what? Just check out these videos and you’ll get it:

First, for a bit of background, watch this one:

Remember that? Love us some McConaughey. Cool, now watch what Merit/Andrew did for Jake:

Fun, right? Not as fun as what happened next:

That series of YouTube videos brought Merit/Andrew some well-deserved attention, and continues to work as a beacon for new business. 

That’s it! Those are the things we’re thinking about as we approach the end of the year. What’d we miss? Which of the above was your favorite? Drop us a line and let’s chat about the things you’re thinking about this holiday season.