Hello!

Like Anjali, I was at SXSW for most of last week, and I think I’ve just about recovered. There’s lots of ideas and, pleasingly, optimism I’ve taken away from Austin, so that feels like it’s charged me up with creative fuel for a while. If you need creative energy, getting together with people IRL is absolutely essential, so try and do that in whatever way you can.

Over on our sister newsletter Attention Matters, I finished our seven part series on how to avoid becoming a B2B Zombie. The series has had a great response, and we’re now taking a few weeks to decide what our next series should be. There’s a poll on the page linked above if you’d like to vote.

We’ve had a couple of requests to do a workshop based on the series, so if you want us to come and help with your team’s B2B storytelling, hit the button below or hit reply!

Right then - it’s Friday, so here’s your 10 inspirational links for the weekend!

Matt

Formats Unpacked: Rhythm Roulette (5-minute read)

Conversations Are The New Unit of Culture (5-minute read)

Erin Doherty on Making Adolescence Ep 3 (8-minute read)

How Adolescence Filmed its One-Shot Episodes (5-minute read)

Evan Shapiro: Sizing The Content Economy (30-minute watch)

WTF is Attribution Modelling? (5-minute read)

Behind The Scenes of Chris Burden’s Metropolis II at LACMA (5-minute watch)

The Lost Tradition of Queer Matchbooks (5-minute read)

How To Write a Brand’s Story (8-minute read)

Shopping For Superman (2-minute trailer)

Don’t become a B2B zombie. STAY HUMAN.

Storythings is the content marketing agency that helps you STAY HUMAN in a sea of marketing slop. If you think you’re at risk of becoming a B2B zombie, we’ve got the antidote. Click the button below for your free guide.

Formats Unpacked: Rhythm Roulette (5-minute read)
For the latest episode of our Formats Unpacked newsletter, Storythings’ very own audio maestro Chris Mitchell unpacks one of his favourite formats, where hip hop producers pick three records blindfolded, then have to make a beat with them. I love this format, although maybe give the Timbaland one a miss - I can’t believe he’d never heard Gil Scott-Heron’s Lady Day & John Coltrane!

Conversations Are The New Unit of Culture (5-minute read)
I really try to not link to Kyle Chayka articles when its my turn to do the newsletter, but the problem is, he’s so damn interesting. I love this interview with novelist Tope Folarin on why conversations and podcasts are the driving force of culture right now: “A conversation provides a way for you and your interlocutor to co-create meaning, to achieve understanding (of a kind, anyway) of complex issues, and to impose order on chaos, simply by talking things through.

Erin Doherty on Making Adolescence Ep 3 (8-minute read)
I also really tried not to make all 10 links in today’s newsletter about the new Netflix series Adolescence. I won’t give you any spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet (you really should) but Episode 3 is a remarkable piece of art, with incredible acting from Erin Doherty and newcomer Owen Cooper. In this interview Erin describes what it felt like to make that episode, one of the most intense and immersive hours of TV I’ve watched in years.

How Adolescence Filmed its One-Shot Episodes (5-minute read)
So I managed to limit myself to just two Adolescence links this week (you really really should watch it). The first link dives into the craft of the actors, but the craft of the production crew, shooting every episode in just one take, is equally extraordinary. BAFTAs all round, please.

Evan Shapiro: Sizing The Content Economy (30-minute watch)
I really enjoyed Evan Shapiro’s sessions at SXSW, and he went straight from Austin to host a panel at MIP London. There’s some fantastic data in here about how audience viewing patterns are changing, and what this means for traditional broadcasters.

WTF is Attribution Modelling? (5-minute read)
I’m not an expert in performance metrics, but this is a great read from Digiday on how advertisers have moved from last-click attribution to tools that measure further up the marketing funnel as well. At one SXSW session on B2B influencers, I heard that post-purchase surveys showed that influencers were the core driver for purchases that had previously been attributed to last-click platforms like Google or Meta. So any model that gives more credit to real humans and less to platforms sounds good to me.

Behind The Scenes of Chris Burden’s Metropolis II at LACMA (5-minute watch)
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about US artist Chris Burden earlier this week. His work often involves incredible machines or structures, like the fantastic Metropolis II at LACMA - a mesmerising toy model of a city with cars, trains and trams running constantly through it. I didn’t realise until watching this video that LACMA has four conservators dedicated to keeping the work running!

The Lost Tradition of Queer Matchbooks (5-minute read)
I absolutely love examples of vernacular culture - objects that are created to be ephemeral, but end up saying a lot about the community and history they exist in. This new photo-book Cruising from Darian Newman collects examples of matchbooks from queer bars and clubs across the US. Their designs, and the phone numbers sometimes inscribed inside, hint at the lives and stories of the queer community at the time.

How To Write a Brand’s Story (8-minute read)
WeTransfer has consistently been one of the best examples of how to make great branded content part of culture. They’ve worked on collaborations with artists like Bjork, Little Simz and Marina Abramović, as well as supporting hundreds of up and coming artists. Ex-WeTransfer Creative Director Andreas Tzortzis shares some insights from his new book about brand storytelling, called Not A Playbook.

Shopping For Superman (2-minute trailer)
This feels like it’s going to be relevant to a lot of our readers - a forthcoming documentary about the history and future of local comic book stores, and how they have shaped our culture. Already bookmarked this one to watch when it comes out!

So that’s the weekend started then. I hope you are going to get out and find some creative inspiration and energy this weekend. If you end up doing something awesome, hit reply and let us know! We love hearing about the things that inspire you all!

Have a great weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings