Award-wining Creative Director at Common Vision.
Common Vision is an EA aligned creative agency that provides creative services to human and non-human advocates. We aim to inject creativity into advocacy and longtermism using the deep creative skillsets the world's top brands and entertainment companies use.
Previous experience includes: Apple, Google, Nike, Walt Disney, Toyota, Lexus, Jeep, LVMH, Moët & Chandon, Red Bull, Scarlett Johansson, Duran Duran, Marc Newson and many more.
I often hear this argument, X animal would not exist if they were not intensively farmed for human products. However why wouldn't they exist? I think they would exist but in much smaller healthier numbers and their genetics would be able to recover slowly. Many people love animals and would keep them just like many keep cats and dogs. They can be good for the land etc as well. There are also many vegan farm animal sanctuaries that would keep them. Post farming they would only stop existing over time if breeding was strictly outlawed or they were outright banned. Same for many other intensively farmed animals. Some vets thought horses would go extinct when the automobile was first mass produced.
Cleverly crafted, strategic and creative mass media can be very effective and become cultural. It is overlooked in philanthropic circles and is largely captured by big business. The elite skillsets behind great campaigns is also greatly under appreciated outside the agency world where top talent is sort after and paid a premium.
Having produced many mass media campaigns myself a great many things must align to achieve great results.
The other big problem with mass media campaigns is strategy. Too often organisations focus on the negative which can be valid but they lack aspiration or a clever story to connect with. You can show kids in need and show them suffering or you can craft an aspirational story that shows what donors money can do to make them thrive or an impactful story about how a single child saved from malaria went on to do great things. You can show endless chickens in cages suffering or you can show how much chickens love being outside with some humour to make it land well with a general audience. If the focus is coming from the negative then it needs to be creative and clever like Save Ralph.
Mass media is a blank canvas and just paid time and space what really matters is the creative.
It was an attack from Binance that caused the entire episode. CZ chose the nuclear option of dumping FTT, which he knew would hurt people and most of all Sam. This started with the Bankless interview, CZ and others didn't like SBF's pragmatic approach to regulation and this was the response.
He could have gone to Sam and given him options and made it clear that if he didn't change course both on regulation and the use of FTT then this is what he would do. However he didn't, he went nuclear too soon.
Sam should have been more sensitive to the situation and prevented it before it got to this point.
In terms of bad faith, it's very much in EA reasoning that he could have thought. I'm taking X risk and the probability of massive failure is very low and the benefit is high. Therefore I can do more good but taking X risk. This fits his profile more than complete bad faith. If I do X over 10 years I can give more than if I didn't do X.
Personally I think what Sam did is reckless and he shouldn't have used FTT the way he did and he should have been the leader of merkle-tree proof-of-reserves.
However I think the probably of complete bad faith is very low.
Good explanation here: https://twitter.com/jonwu_/status/1590099676744646656?s=46&t=Oui5JuTdhGbt1Cql2OfAbQ
A sad and unfortunate turn of events that isn't good for anyone. I wish Binance had sat down with Sam and worked it out in the background. Without the bank run Sam could have corrected and worked towards a merkle-tree proof-of-reserve model and none of this would have happened.
SBF might have made some mistakes, taken risks and used funds when he shouldn't have but I don't think he did anything in bad faith and we have lost a great philanthropist.
Great article, this is how to reach people. Use the tools of creativity to shine the light on the reasoning. For example Max Tegmark is concerned about slaughterbots. The Back Mirror slaughterbot episode gave everyone who saw it an emotional shiver down their spine. The deep creative skillset large brands tap into should be used on the world most pressing problems. I've been working on this for the last few years and have started a creative agency to do exactly that.