Some briefs arrive at exactly the right moment. When National Geographic approached Pereira & O’Dell to create a campaign around Ron Howard’s anthology series GENIUS about the life of Albert Einstein, I was on the pitch team that won the account. And I had a personal reason to go deep.

My great-grandmother, Margarita, had a relationship with Albert Einstein. That connection sent me into research, digging through Einstein’s lesser-known stories, his contradictions, his passions beyond physics. What emerged was a portrait of a man who was as much an artist as a scientist, someone who believed imagination was more important than knowledge, who lived his daydreams in music, who found relativity in the most human of moments.

The constraint was unusual: we couldn’t use any assets from the GENIUS series itself. Everything had to be original. So instead of a conventional campaign, we developed the concept of a short film festival — ten films, ten Einstein quotes, ten different interpretations of genius.

To kick off the festival, and to inspire a community of filmmakers, we have created two short films:

1. The Instrument

Einstein’s mind was filled with more than just equations – as he himself said, “I live my daydreams in music.” Take a vivid look at the musical ingredients of Einstein’s imagination in this short film, “The Instrument.”

2. The Mirror

What if you could ride a beam of light across time and space? How far would you go? What would you discover? Watch this Genius-inspired short film, “The Mirror,” for an imaginative journey to the great unknown.

The result was a campaign that couldn’t have been made any other way. Films about a Taiwanese-American daughter reconnecting with her father through dance. A female physicist travelling back in time. Relativity explored through a microwave timer. Genius, it turned out, looks different to everyone.

The 10 Days of Genius Film Festival lived across National Geographic’s digital and social platforms: the GENIUS homepage, VOD, YouTube, and Facebook. Reaching an audience of millions at the peak of the series.

CREDITS

Agency: Pereira & O’Dell NYC
Director: Sam Spiegel
My role: New business pitch, concept, creative development, art direction, design, pre-production, post-production.

PRESS

Fast Company
Adweek
Creativity Online
Market Watch
The Imaging Alliance
The Drum
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