BlackBerry the Movie, Distinctiveness is Dead and the Say/Do Gap

Hey all,

We have a new thing starting soon. It’s called Proper Fancy. It’s like a team show and tell but for people without a team. It’s a chance to get some proper fancy inspiration whilst you eat your lunch, or breakfast, or dinner, depending on where you are in the world. If you’d like some inspiration for your film, illustration, animation, graphic design, podcast, or whatever, then join us. We’ll post all the details next week.

Myself and Anjali are going to be talking at a thing. A comms thing. It’s called simplyIC and it’s happening May 22-23. We’re going to talk all about the findings of our Scroll Stoppers report and with a little bit of audience participation, we’re going to use it as inspiration to develop a new content format - all in an hour. Come along all you comms people.

OK. Enough about us. Time for stories. Have a wild weekend.

Hugh

Formats Are the Workhorse of Publishing (7 min read)

Orson Welles on Creativity From Ignorance (1 min read)

How to Fix the Curse of Knowledge (6 min read)

How a Hidden Narrative Explains the Say/Do Gap (5 min read)

BlackBerry - The Movie: Official Trailer (3 min watch)

What Marketers Can Learn From Comedians About Finding Insights (5 min read)

Two Comedians Talk About Their Mental Health (90 min listen)

IKEA/Shelter Highlight the Housing Crisis With in-Store ‘Real Life Roomsets’ (2 min read)

Distinctiveness is Dead - Welcome to the Age of Average (22 min read)

Cat Royale - No Cats Were Harmed in Trying to Make Them Happier (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? (eg newsletters, podcasts, publications, or video series).3. Production - Do you need help developing 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. 

Formats Are the Workhorse of PublishingBrian Morrissey wrote this week about the importance of formats to publishing and gives some great examples of how formats became intertwined with a brand, for example Axios’ Smart Brevity, BuzzFeed’s listicles and the Vox explainers. In this week’s Formats Unpacked I talk about why formats work. (7 min read)

Orson Welles on Creativity From IgnoranceOrson Welles talks about how he was able to create a masterpiece like Citizen Kane despite having no prior experience of filmmaking at all.(1 min read)How to Fix the Curse of KnowledgeStill on the subject of the problem of knowing too much, here are six signs that your communications are suffering as a result and six suggestions on how to fix it. (6 min read)How a Hidden Narrative Explains the Say/Do GapDavid Ogilvy is been credited with the quote ‘People don’t know what they feel, they don’t say what they know, and they don’t do what they say’. The Say/Do gap is what happens between what people say and how they actually behave. This piece points out a bunch of reasons and explains how good storytelling can close that gap. (5 min read)

BlackBerry - The Movie: Official TrailerThey’ve made a movie about BlackBerry and it kinda looks really bad and really good at the same time. Looking forward to watching it. (3 min watch)

What Marketers Can Learn From Comedians About Finding Insights Insights are becoming synonymous with data. They are becoming bland. The interesting is not the observation. It is the interpretation. Comedians are experts at finding the interesting. It’s where the funny is. They make the same observations as everyone else, they just interpret them differently.(5 min read)

Two Comedians Talk About Their Mental HealthI’m completely new to Blindboy, an Irish musician, comedian, author and TV presenter. His work has delighted me in so many ways this week. He’s an incredibly beautiful storyteller, he’s very funny and he makes important issues for young men relatable. This interview with Irish radio presenter PJ Gallagher, who suffered severe mental health issues, made me laugh and cry and hope that more people get to hear PJ talking about coming out of the other side. It’s a wonderful passage in a great episode. Give it a listen and then try some of his story episodes. (90 min listen)

IKEA/Shelter Highlight the Housing Crisis With in-Store ‘Real Life Roomsets’The charity’s new campaign aims to raise awareness of the housing emergency in the UK and highlight the real living conditions of those who are forced into temporary accommodation as a result. The roomsets in their stores highlight the cramped, dangerous, and unfit spaces that an increasing number of people who are homeless are forced to experience when living in temporary accommodation.(2 min read)Distinctiveness is Dead - Welcome to the Age of AverageThis is worth bookmarking and reading over the weekend. From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become dominated and defined by convention and cliché. Distinctiveness has died. In every field the writer looks at, from coffee shops to cars to cinema posters to architecture to book covers, he finds that everything looks the same. (via Neil Perkin)(22 min read)

Cat Royale - No Cats Were Harmed in Trying to Make Them HappierAn experiment to see if AI can make cats happier: “From 22nd March – 2nd April 2023, three cats – Ghostbuster, Pumpkin and Clover – will visit a utopia created by the Blast Theory artists. The cats’ every need is catered for. They have dens to curl up in, high platforms to pounce from and curved walls to explore. And at the centre of the room, a robot arm trained by an Artificial Intelligence offers games to make the cats happier.” (1 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.