Hey all,

I’ve been poorly most of this week and am writing this from my bed. It feels a bit thrown together based on what podcasts I’ve been listening to or what the YouTube algorithm has passively served me as I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep. Forgive my shoddiness. Normal service will resume next week.

Speaking of next week, we’ll be out in Austin for SXSW presenting a workshop on how to develop content formats from Friday March 8th. We’re also going to be part of UK Advertising’s group of events taking place at UK House. If you’re going to be in Austin and want to meet up get in touch.

One last thing: we’re looking for people to participate in a focus group about how they consume science-related content. If this is you, please fill in this form or tell friends who might be keen.

Enjoy the stories and have a fab weekend on my behalf.

Hugh

Every Story Starts With a Yes (3-min watch)

The Cost of Being Dull (5-min read)

How Taylor Tomlinson Nailed Her Closing Line (Interactive)

Does Subculture Still Exist? (4-min read)

The Brilliant Way This Cannabis Brand Gets Around Ad Restrictions (2-min read)

A Call to Arms For B2B Marketers (3 min read) 

7 Ways to Niche Down as an Entrepreneur (4-min read)

A Beautiful Animation From Diptyque (3-min watch)

A Tool to Help You Make Better Team Decisions (Slack app)

How Prince Became a Creativity Machine and How You Can Too (9-min watch)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. If your content isn’t getting the results you need, let us help you understand why. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Research – We help B2B brands understand modern attention patterns and how they can get more engagement with content.2. Content Strategy – We use our bespoke process to develop unique content formats that hold audience attention, build community, and increase brand salience.3. Content Production – We craft beautiful and diverse stories of impact that capture and hold attention using podcasts, videos, editorial, and newsletters. We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

Every Story Starts With a Yes (3-min watch)"Did you ever sit on a plane, looking around and asked yourself: Where are all these people going? What's her story? Who is waiting for him?” That’s the premise of this excellent short video from Lufthansa.

The Cost of Being Dull (5-min read)When researching how being dull impacts brands, Adam Morgan found that 48% of B2C communications leave their audiences feeling nothing at all, a figure that rises to 78% for B2B. So Morgan partnered with Peter Field to find out how much money brands spend trying to make dull campaigns as effective as interesting ones. Find out what the figure is and dive into Adam’s excellent podcast Let’s Make This More Interesting in which he speaks to people whose job it is to make dull subjects interesting - reality TV show producers, science teachers, and the head writer on Sesame Street. It’s a brilliant listen.

How Taylor Tomlinson Nailed Her Closing Line (interactive)Can changing a word to one with fewer syllables make your jokes much funnier? This New York Times interactive takes a look at how the US comedian workshopped her closing gag for her Netflix special over 9 months.

Does Subculture Still Exist? (4-min read)A good short read from Kyle Chayka, author of the brilliant Filterworld, on the important role of friction in building subcultures: “Friction is lower online and visibility is higher. We are all constantly performing our preferences in public. “Subcultures,” in the sense of aesthetic niches, will always exist. But perhaps the subculture question is better phrased as: How do we seek out and cultivate a sense of real belonging, online or off? Hitting the like button on a TikTok or buying one item of clothing doesn’t constitute belonging. Belonging comes from shared fluency, exchange within a community.”

The Brilliant Way This Cannabis Brand Gets Around Ad Restrictions (2-min read)This is rather clever and pretty funny. Canadian cannabis dispensary Stok'd created ads filled with cannabis references. But the ads promote businesses located “Next to Stok'd” or nearby, rather than the weed brand itself.

A Call to Arms For B2B Marketers (3 min read) We’ve been saying for some time that the time is right for B2B to embrace new marketing opportunities - particularly around serialised formats that suit long-term brand building, as this piece points out: “The old order is crumbling and the rule book is being rewritten, one powerful story at a time. The time has come for B2B Marketing teams to shift their focus from the short-term tactics of the ‘digital age’ and rediscover the power of long-term brand building to drive sustainable business growth. The industry needs to reclaim the power of narrative, emotion and human connections. It’s time to relegate the short-sightedness to the past and make your brand famous amongst current and future buyers by embracing the enduring magic of storytelling.”

7 Ways to Niche Down as an Entrepreneur (4-min read)We love the work and thinking of Category Pirates. Normally known for writing very long guides on Substack about how to stand out in your category, here they keep it nice and short with this advice for anyone wanting to find or own their niche. Last year we wrote about the importance of finding your niche in the new era of content discovery.

A Beautiful Animation From Diptyque (3-min watch)Featuring a soundtrack from James Blake, this dreamy animation is an absolute joy. If you’re wondering why their candles are so expensive, just look at the length of the credits for this. Thanks to the always reliable Video Yes Please for sharing this.

A Tool to Help You Make Better Team Decisions (Slack app)A nice tool to support teams in decision making and to help them become more conscious of their decision making (via Ash Mann’s This Week’s Best Things).

How Prince Became a Creativity Machine and How you Can Too (9-min watch)I loved this short video that identifies 6 lessons you can learn from Prince’s creative process, my favourite being his commitment to making a track a day. Some of his biggest hits were written, performed and mixed in day. OK, so When Doves Cry took 2 days but he spent day two removing most of the music from the over-produced version from the previous day.

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.