Audience Insight, YouTube Truths and the Value of Shares

Hey all,

I love discovering things and sharing them with the world. I guess it goes back to my days as a DJ. You can’t beat that feeling of finding a brilliant tune and playing it to a room full of people. We have a good culture of sharing inspiration at Storythings. Whether it is through our newsletters, team meetings, or on the company Slack channel.

But I’m aware not everyone has a company Slack channel, so we created a space for you lot to share the things you love too. Or to simply listen to people sharing their inspiration. So join us for Proper Fancy on Thursday 25 May at 1 pm (BST). You’re all invited. The first one was a lot of fun. Some really interesting links were shared by a really brilliant bunch of creatives. If you want to join the Zoom call drop your details here and we’ll send you a link.

Looking forward to seeing some of you on Thursday.

Hugh

All Success Is a Lagging Indicator (6 min read)

Shares - So What Do These Numbers Really Mean (7 min read)

Accessing the Riches Of Your Creative Mind (5 min read)

Marathons Aren’t About Running (3 min watch)

Television, Time, and Constraint (5 min read)

The Socrates of San Francisco (57 min listen)

Three Truths About Why People Visit YouTube (4 min read)

Rediscovered Photos of the 70s Hollywood Skate Scene (5 min read)

Why You Always Put the Audience First (Tweet)

A Smart Use Of Data That Helped Low-income Women Become Entrepreneurs (2 min watch)

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and production company based in Brighton, London, Bristol, Berlin, and Ibiza. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Strategy - Do you struggle to understand constantly changing audience behaviours, and what strategies you need to reach them?2. Content Format Development - Do you want to develop and test content formats that give you a direct relationship with your audience? (e.g. newsletters, podcasts, publications, or video series).3. Production - Do you need help creating and running an existing or new content format, and growing loyal audiences around them?We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch. 

All Success Is a Lagging IndicatorI’m a relatively new subscriber to Billy Oppenheimer’s brilliant Six at 6 newsletter. Each week he shares six stories on a theme, often based on storytelling or craft. This week his theme is based around this wonderful phrase in the title and includes stories from Paula Scher, Pharell Williams, and Pablo Picasso. (6 min read)

Shares - So What Do These Numbers Really MeanOur very own Matt Locke is back with another piece that looks at the metrics we use to measure audience attention. This time he’s looking at the value of a share: “The last two decades have seen the power to shape culture shift from traditional gatekeepers (e.g TV commissioners, music label bosses or newspaper editors) to diverse and unruly digital networks driven by social sharing. But we might be on the cusp of another shift, as the organic behaviours of communities sharing content are atomised, analysed and then reconfigured by algorithms that obscure our ability to see who is sharing what. At the same time, we’re moving more social behaviour into private groups and spaces. The era of public sharing, and the participatory culture it generated, might be ending.”(7 min read)

Accessing the Riches Of Your Creative MindThis is a really brilliant read on how the brain functions during the creative process and how some creatives use running to get their brain in peak state for coming up with new ideas. I loved this quote from painter Philip Guston on letting go and trusting the brain: “When I first come into the studio to work, there is this noisy crowd which follows me there; it includes all of the important painters in history, all of my contemporaries, all the art critics, etc. As I become involved in the work, one by one, they all leave. If I’m lucky, every one of them will disappear. If I’m really lucky, I will too.”(5 min read)Marathons Aren’t About RunningThis fell into my stream this week and really caught my attention. People run for a bunch of reasons, as discussed in the article above. In just three minutes, this video sums up why a million people line the streets of London every year to watch the marathon better than anything I’ve ever seen before. If you’ve never quite got it, or are thinking about taking up running, give this a watch. You’ll love it. And whilst we’re on the subject of running, my wife is going to be doing a 48-hour run starting on Father’s Day. (3 min watch)

Television, Time, and ConstraintAustin Kleon has a good take on the restraints of the 22-minute sitcom. I like this quote about the problem of having too much time and freedom when writing for a streaming service: “Are you already thinking about ways to avoid your show getting stuck in ruts?. I am, but the difference is, with the 22-minute sitcom, the basics are ‘situation’ and ‘comedy.’ It’s in the name. We don’t have to do much. I was tuning into ‘The Fresh Prince’ to see Will do something that Uncle Phil yells at him for and to see Jazz get thrown out of the house. Whereas with most of the streaming comedies, you’re expecting a certain amount of development from these characters. If you don’t get it, you feel a little let down, because you’re expecting this high art. I simply want to make people laugh. That’s all I’m here for. Which is the beauty of the 22-minute sitcom: It can only do so much.” (6 min read)

The Socrates of San FranciscoA great documentary about Howard Gossage, one of the advertising industry’s most inventive innovators and astute prophets. He was also one of its greatest critics. He believed advertising could be used for more than just selling things. It could build communities and drive change too. (57 min read)

Three Truths About Why People Visit YoutubeGoogle partnered with a research agency to get to the heart of why young people watch YouTube over other platforms. The findings are useful for anyone developing a YouTube strategy. The way the report is presented is also useful for anyone thinking about interesting approaches for showing the results of your research. (4 min read)

Rediscovered Photos of the 70s Hollywood Skate SceneOver the course of three years in the mid-70s, photographer Hugh Holland took thousands of photos of the Hollywood skate scene as it changed from an unruly after-school activity to a professional sport, complete with competitions, endorsement deals, and helmets. These wonderful images sat unsorted in boxes at his house for decades but are now to see the light of day in a new book. (5 min read)Why You Always Put the Audience FirstAnd why it’s unthinkable to do it any other way. (Tweet)

A Smart Use Of Data That Helped Low-income Women Become EntrepreneursThis award-winning project helped unbanked women in Mexico build up a credit score by collecting data from a small group of people who had been giving them credit for years - their local shopkeepers. This reminds me of our financial inclusion series, Identities of the World, which includes films and animated stories from Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.(2 min watch)

We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.