I’m writing this from India, where I am for a few weeks. Last weekend we celebrated India’s Independence Day on August 15th, which meant a riot of green, orange and white across the country. I was also lucky enough to visit Singapore for a few days, which celebrated their own National Day the week before, on August 9th, and got to meet friend of Storythings Gautam Ramdurai, who is doing some cool work with his strategy consultancy Snowbird Global - you should check them out.

💻 DATA POINT: Chartbeat’s report ‘Navigating the new traffic landscape: What’s really happening with search, dark social and AI’ re-confirms a couple of things we’ve been talking to clients about in this age of GEO: 1) AI referrals (which are going up slowly over time) favour evergreen content over breaking news, and 2) as the largest traffic source, your own internal referrals are the channel you control most, so paying attention to things like related content, site speed, and content depth matters. Come and talk to us about creating content destinations with depth!

Football Data Portraits (gallery of data visualisations)

Recognizing The Risk Takers: Eleven Podcasters Making Big Bets (report)

On AI And Writing (6-min read)

The Design Process Behind 20,000 Iconic Album Covers (13-min watch)

On Distance And Place (5-min read)

Azeem Azhar On The AI Economy (1-min watch)

Creators Are Moving Into Brands’ AI Search Playbooks (3-min read)

Without A Theory Of Intelligence (7-min read)

Nearly 1400 Livestreams From Japan (interactive site)

📣 The Three Kinds of Creative Friction: Good, Bad And Hidden (9-min read) 📣

Football Data Portraits (Gallery of data visualisations)
No, football World Cup madness isn’t over yet! For those of you who want more, check out this lovely gallery of data visualizations that reconstructs every match from about 1500 recorded events - ‘every touch, pass, shot and card’. Built by Alexander Bogachev, HT Ash Mann’s newsletter.

Recognizing The Risk Takers: Eleven Podcasters Making Big Bets (Report)
The Signal Awards published this report looking at eleven podcasters doing things differently with their podcasts in honour of ‘the year or risk-taking’ for podcasts. Featuring podcasters, producers and industry builders trying things like creating an agentic production partner, creating an alter ego to drive views, live streaming B2B shows with CMOs, and creating a true crime live show on a cruise!

On AI And Writing (6-min read)
Friend of Storythings Noah Brier on the limitations of AI when it comes to writing, and what to watch out for if you do use it in your writing process. While you’re at it, if you’re in New York, go check out Noah’s BRXND NYC conference on 5th November.

The Design Process Behind 20,000 Iconic Album Covers (13-min watch)
Resident Storythings Southern rap guru Chris Mitchell shared this video, which is an interview with Shawn Brauch, the founder of Pen & Pixel (the graphic design agency that worked on some album covers that will go down in history, including for Master P, Snoop Dogg and Lil’ Wayne). Chris knows what he’s talking about: his company Breaking Atoms with Sumit Sharma produced a podcast episode with Shawn in 2020 that got featured in Pitchfork. Bonus: if you want to see a gallery of Pen & Pixel’s work on Southern rap albums, head here. Thanks, Chris!

On Distance And Place (5-min read)
Emily from the Storythings team shared this, and having read it I agree with her that though it is about the agency that wrote it, it’s also a rather lovely read about the importance of place, and how shared curiosity about a place and shared professional language can bridge the thousands of miles between people working together. Somewhat related: Rosanna Vitiello on how we can create our own love language for places we care for, and Karl Schussig and Benedetta Venturini on how they created a festival as a love letter to Tuscany.

Azeem Azhar On The AI Economy (1-min watch)
What Azeem Azhar of Exponential View fame is saying here about the growth of AI isn’t groundbreaking, but we’re sharing it because, as Matt says, we really like how he’s using motion video and graphics. Worth a quick look.

Creators Are Moving Into Brands’ AI Search Playbooks (3-min read)
We all know that brands are looking closely at how they’re showing up in AI search, but creators now need to too. Zoom has been working with creator-journalist Nayeema Raza this summer to figure out how they appear in AI search as a result, but the biggest problem, as it always is, is measurement.

Without A Theory Of Intelligence (7-min read)
Internet legend, co-founder of Wired magazine and prolific author Kevin Kelly (I’m a big fan of his writing; What Technology Wants is still one of the most in-depth reads on the evolution of technology I’ve ever read) writes about the need for humanity to devise a theory of intelligence if we want to work with AI truly productively. He says such a theory, which we currently lack, is necessary so we can know where the cognitive waste is happening in advance of throwing resources (and tokens) at problems: “We are trying anything we think of to get AIs aligned with our tricky goals: be creative, but don’t do anything stupid or bad. An explicit formula of intelligence, with a sense of its tradeoffs and limits, would give us something to steer by.”

Nearly 1400 Livestreams From Japan (interactive site)
We always put the links most likely to ‘help’ you take your mind off a tough week at the end, and this one is no exception. I can’t read Japanese, but you don’t really need to with this site, where you can zoom in to see live cameras from around Japan. Yes it feels a bit voyeuristic, but also fascinating, especially if you haven’t visited the country yet (like me).

📣 The Three Kinds of Creative Friction: Good, Bad And Hidden (9-min read) 📣
Matt’s been doing some research and writing about workflows, and within organisations that produce content in particular. We work with a lot of companies who in different ways face friction of some kind that needs sorting out before the workflow becomes smooth. From Stanford Business School Professors Huggy Rao and Bob Sutton’s book The Friction Project, he dives into good and bad friction, and elaborates on the ‘hidden’ kind that he sees in our work, and beyond.

Marketing and AI consultant Matthew Kershaw is on form here, writing about how the aerospace industry has a very specific form of English they use to avoid creating any confusion amongst their workforce - because a single mistake in aerospace engineering can be VERY costly. Using a set of rules from them, he runs a brand marketing prompt through ChatGPT to compare and contrast how the same command can result in over-flowery language which harms the main goal if we’re not careful. Hire Matthew!

READ MATTHEW’S POST HERE>

Drop us a line if you have anything you’d like us to share in a future edition of this newsletter, or of course if you have any comments or suggestions for us!

Have a great weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh, and the team