Inspiration, Communities, and How to Write

Hey all,

We had our annual Storythings get-together this week in Brighton. It was great to spend time in the same room, restaurant and gallery with the team. For all the advantages of hybrid work, I still love a good work conversation over a cup of tea in the office. We’re always interested in how other teams are replacing physical get togethers. If you’re doing something that is working really well tell us about it in the comments.

One thing that we have been doing is Proper Fancy – a team show-and-tell that we open up to everyone. Join us on the last Thursday of July if you’d like to listen or chat to a bunch of people about creative projects that spark joy.

Finally, I’ve not had time to write a Formats Unpacked for some time. I've a half-written Chicken Shop Date unpacking that I hope to get out next week. Do you have a format you’d like to unpack? Get in touch.

OK. That’s it from me. Here are some stories for you all. Have an excellent weekend.

Hugh

Elizabeth Gilbert on Inspiration (4 min read)

Eight Out of 10 Millennials Know Demographics Are Horseshit (6 min read)

“Advertising works best with the consent of people” (1 min read)

10 Tips From Neuroscientists to Survive Work Days (4 min read)

Scriptnotes: How to Write a Movie (45 min listen)

How to Evaluate Your Team’s Strengths and Weaknesses (7 min read)

Products With Community At Their Core (8 min read)

Winners of the 2023 Drone Photo Awards (3 min read)

How Cereal Transformed American Culture (6 min read)

Trailer: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (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. 

Elizabeth Gilbert on InspirationI’ve finally got around to reading Elizabeth’s Big Magic and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a great read on how to live a creative life, full of great quotes and stories from other creatives. This piece from Maria Popova includes some quotes from the book, and people she spoke to, on the subject of inspiration.(4 min read)

Eight Out of 10 Millennials Know Demographics Are HorseshitThere are a bunch of good reasons for paying less attention to demographics. Here’s a very good one: “Which brings us to a final, ultimately damning point about demographic segmentation – it is abhorrent from an ethical, DEI perspective too. If I told you I would not be targeting Scottish people with my champagne marketing plan because they are “too tight” to spend on luxury, or mentioned that I was only targeting men for season tickets for a football club because women “aren’t really into sport that much”, you’d be right to take offence.”(6 min read)

“Advertising works best with the consent of people”I’m a big fan of Alex Morris’ Strat Scraps newsletter. It’s a great format. Every week he shares a bunch of strategy ‘scraps’ in the form of screen grabs, quick notes, or slides. There’s always something that catches my eye among it. The longer version of this quote came from his “Important set of (hopefully) familiar reminders.”(3 min read)

10 Tips From Neuroscientists to Survive Work DaysWhen we shifted from office work to hybrid work the opposite of what many thought would happen happened. Instead of working less, it became apparent that people were spending more time in front of their screens. These 10 tips will help you, and your team, get the right balance in your workday between deep work and light work, meetings and rests, light tasks and specialised activities.(4 min read)Scriptnotes: How to Write a MovieI’m a big fan of the Scriptnotes podcast. Hosted by the writers of shows and films such as Last of Us, Chernobyl, Big Fish, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it’s a must-listen for anyone interested in screenwriting. This episode from its archive was doing the rounds last week and having listened I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard or read on the subject. As all the listeners say in the comments, there’s more packed into this 45 minutes than all the books they’ve read and courses they’ve taken. (44 min listen)

How to Evaluate Your Team’s Strengths and WeaknessesSteve Bryant is one of those incredibly generous strategists who frequently shares the tools they use for doing the thing they do. This simple chart he uses with clients is really simple to use and useful for assessing the strength of a team by seeing the individual strengths of the team players in one chart. (7 min read)

Products With Community At Their CoreThis is from Sarah Drinkwater on the value of putting communities at the heart of your product. It’s really useful for anyone considering investing in a community. It touches on how thinking of community as a growth tactic is limiting, how product evolution is tied to community evolution, and why the next wave of great companies will be powered by communities. Thanks to Neil Perkin for sharing. (8 min read)

Winners of the 2023 Drone Photo AwardsWe all love a bit of drone photography, right? Check out the winners and immerse yourself in categories like People, Urban, Nature, Abstract, and Wedding. (3 min read)How Cereal Transformed American CultureMore than a century ago, Christian fundamentalists invented cereal to promote a healthy lifestyle free of sin. Little did they know, their creation would eventually be used to promote everything from radio and cartoons to Mr. T and tooth decay. (6 min read)

Trailer: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower MoonI don’t know if I can wait until October to see this. It looks fantastic!(2 min watch)

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

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