Hello!

Welcome to Friday! I hope it’s as sunny where you are as it has been in Brighton. It’s lucky we’re doing lots of interesting projects at the moment, as the temptation to hit the beach is strong.

Hello to everyone reading this who attended the workshop we did for a new client on Tuesday - it’s always a bit nerve wracking when you give a workshop about how to create great formats, and then you know they’ll be reading the next newsletter you write. Hopefully I’m following the advice we gave in the workshop!

If you’d like us to come and help your team create better content formats, we’ve got a few different workshops ready to go that we can adapt for your needs. Hit the button below and we’ll get a time in for a chat.

In the meantime, here’s the links. Have a fantastic weekend wherever you are!

Matt

Vystery - a fun new new image reveal game (1-min play)

The Article Will Die, But Storytelling Will Not (5-min read)

Have We Hit Peak Media? (5-min read)

28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing (20-min read)

How WhatsApp Made an F1 Doc For Netflix (5-min read)

Where Does Our Stuff Come From? (15-min read)

Stories From Scientists Sacked by the US Government (Multiple Stories)

BBC Creates AI Agatha Christie Writing Masterclass (4-min read)

You Wouldn’t Steal A Font… (3-min read)

Absolutely Incredible Indoor Sky-Diving Routine (5-min watch)

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.

Vystery - a fun new new image reveal game (1-min play)
I have a morning routine of online daily games, all on NYT (Wordle, Connections, Strands and Tiles, in that order). The daily habit they create is incredibly valuable, so there’s always lots of people trying to find new ones. Most of them don’t get a big enough audience to be acquired by a big publisher, but I think this one might - it’s simple, elegant, and the game mechanic is perfectly tuned.

The Article Will Die, But Storytelling Will Not (5-min read)
Great report from Nieman Lab on how EU news organisations are experimenting with AI, both in storytelling, but also understanding how it will drive users to their sites. There’s a really important point at the bottom about how US government policy is causing EU orgs to consider moving off of US hosted tech stacks. This is something we looked at back in 2020 with our Public Media Stack project, but the idea is gaining a lot more momentum right now.

Have We Hit Peak Media? (5-min read)
Analysts are predicting that the amount of media we consume will drop in 2025, which is interesting, but the factors behind it are very interesting - fears of recession will drive down consumers buying new tech, and that will have an impact on media consumption. But don’t worry - 2026 is a World Cup year, so it’s likely to go up again. It’s fascinating to see these patterns of economics, culture and technology mapped out like this.

28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing (20-min read)
I absolutely loved this list (thanks to friend of Storythings Steve Bryant for the link!). Although its a list format, as it goes on it forms a cogent argument about what makes writing hard, and why AI writing is so unsatisfying: “lots of people think they need to get better at writing, but nobody thinks they need to get better at thinking, and this is why they don’t get better at writing.”

How WhatsApp Made an F1 Doc For Netflix (5-min read)
This is really ambitious branded content, involving three huge brands. But the real lesson is how integrated the product is into the storytelling. Mercedes’ F1 team pretty much runs on WhatsApp groups, so the story naturally reveals the brand without it being forced. As the producer Brooke Stites says “Stories involving brands already exist in culture that are really actually very interesting, and people are willing and wanting to engage with them. Tell a story that people are going to care about, versus starting from a place of ‘Let’s tell a brand story.’”

Where Does Our Stuff Come From? (15-min read)
I absolutely loved this long investigation from Spencer Wright into where the products around him came from. It starts from his own experience of making goods with Chinese manufacturers, and then goes down rabbit holes to find out how the global shipping of bottled water, whiskey and canned tuna reveals a lot about our economy and society. And how the US Gov’s ridiculous tariffs will reshape it.

Stories From Scientists Sacked by the US Government (Multiple Stories)
Whilst we’re talking about a certain orange autocrat, this is a great project commissioning artists to tell the stories of the scientists and their research that have now stopped because of US funding cuts. It’s an absolute tragedy, and the US (and world) scientific community will have to spend years repairing the damage.

BBC Creates AI Agatha Christie Writing Masterclass (4-min read)
I feel more than a little icky about this one. For the BBC’s Maestro project (their version of Masterclass) they’ve worked with the Agatha Christie estate to pull together her lessons on writing, then use AI to create audio and video as if she was presenting it. It looks very good, and sensitively done, but I fear that other people copying the idea won’t be as ethical.

You Wouldn’t Steal A Font… (3-min read)
Talking of stealing, this is a hilarious story about the notorious anti-piracy ads from the 90s and 00s. Turns out, they weren’t above a little piracy themselves.

Absolutely Incredible Indoor Sky-Diving Routine (5-min watch)
Thanks to my wife Holly Swain for sending me this just as I was looking for something delightful to end the newsletter. Sometimes you see something that you didn’t realise was a thing, but people have clearly spent years elevating to an art form. This example of indoor sky-diving is just that. Make sure you keep watching till the end to see how they exit the routine!

Hey hey hey! It’s a bank holiday weekend in the UK, and I live in Brighton, so ice-creams on the beach are in my plans. If you’ve read this far, you’re clearly slacking off work already, so let me know- what is your favourite thing to do on a sunny weekend?

See you next week!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings