Nostalgia, Inspiration and Borrowing Ideas

Hey all,

This week we launched another format we produce for the Rockefeller Foundation. Accompanying the Bellagio Bulletin, which is almost a year old, Bellagio Perspectives features interviews with influential leaders who the Foundation is supporting through its residency program. Over the year, Bellagio Perspectives will cover 3-4 subjects that the Foundation believes are of seismic importance right now. The first Perspectives is on the subject of racial and economic justice and features conversations with leaders doing incredible work discussing what keeps them up at night.

OK. There are some great stories in this week’s newsletter for you to enjoy and share. Go get ’em!

Hugh

NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive (30 min read)

100 Different Visualisations of One Data Set (5 min read)

Which B2B Marketing Strategies Generate the Highest ROI? (2 min read)Nostalgia For Health and Wellbeing (5 min watch)The Origins of White Collar vs Blue Collar (8 min read)Instagram Account About Artists Borrowing From Other Artists (Instagram account)The Film That Inspired a White Lotus Storyline (1 min watch)Movie Trailer Editor Deconstructs Iconic Trailers (11 min watch)“Write a bio of a woman searching for a date in the style of Nora Ephron” (12 min read)

Movie Theatres Aren’t Dying, They’re Evolving (7 min read)

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. 

NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory ArchiveIf you’re looking for a long read for the weekend, I highly recommend this. Between Spring 2020 and 2022, researchers recorded three waves of interviews with New Yorkers. We hear a wide range of predictions, revelations, anecdotes, anxieties, blind spots, big ideas and weird ideas about the future. It’s fascinating to be reminded of our evolving mindsets at the time and how three years in we are still not sure how to talk about it: “‘The future never exists,’ Starecheski, the oral historian, told me. ‘We’re always imagining it.’ The interviews in the archive allow us to look back on the pandemic in that spirit, reconnecting us with an atmosphere of uncertainty. They encourage us to linger here in the middle of the story; to stop rushing ahead to an end; to recognize that we are no different from the people in the archive, after all: locked down in a single moment, not knowing what will happen next.” (30 min read)

100 Different Visualisations of One Data SetThis is so good. A design agency sets itself a challenge to find new data viz solutions by using creative restrictions. The results are excellent: "Every time we turn a set of data into a visual depiction, hundreds of design choices have to be made to make the data tell the best story possible. Many of the choices are unconscious, often resulting in similar solutions. The obvious and uninspired. This project goes beyond common solutions and best practice. It demonstrates how even the simplest dataset can be turned into 100 proper data visualizations telling different stories, using very limited visual properties and assets."(5 min read)Which B2B Marketing Strategies Generate the Highest ROI?In a recent piece of research, B2B marketers were asked to select which three strategies produce the leads with the highest ROI. Find out what came top of the list and what came bottom. Also, find out which social channels are delivering the best results. (2 min read)Nostalgia For Health and WellbeingIn this short video, Dr. Clay Routledge, a leading expert in existential psychology, talks about the health benefits of looking back. It’s fascinating to hear how nostalgia improves self-esteem. These are our stories so it gives us clarity on who we are. And even though we experience nostalgia through our own lens it is social in that it is a great connector. (5 min watch)

The Origins of White Collar vs Blue CollarI enjoyed this story from ReThink Quarterly, a publication we produce for a payroll and HR client ADP. Each quarter we tell the human stories behind payroll — what happens before the paycheck and after the paycheck. This piece looks at the collared divide of occupations that emerged in the 1930s, following more than a century of changes in the nature of work and clothing. Our clients are finding publications like these brilliant for engaging their customers or communities over long periods of time and at a much deeper level. Get in touch if you’d be interested in hearing more about the benefits formats like this can bring to your organisation. (8 min read)

Instagram Account About Artists Borrowing From Other ArtistsLuxxury is an artist, producer, DJ and storyteller. His Instagram account is full of fascinating videos that deconstruct songs and sniff out interpolated melodies and samples. He does it in a really respectful way though. There are no 'gotchas' here. This video is a great example. He breaks apart the classic Blue Monday and finds the 5 inspirations and interpolations within it.(Instagram account)

The Film That Inspired a White Lotus StorylineOn the theme of where ideas come from, this short video provides some nice insight into the origin of the Aubrey Plaza storyline in White Lotus including a side-by-side comparison of a scene. (1 min watch)

Movie Trailer Editor Deconstructs Iconic TrailersMovie trailers have to do a lot of work in capturing attention using sound, editing and great storytelling, all in a very short space of time. It’s a problem lots of content makers face today when trying to make an impact in the short consideration spans of their audience. In this film, trailer editor Bill Neil talks us through a short history of movie trailers, looking at some classics as well as some of his own.(11 min watch)“Write a bio of a woman searching for a date in the style of Nora Ephron”This is an entertaining read on what happens when a friend helps another friend get a date using Chat GPT to write a bio and chat messages. (12 min read)Movie Theatres Aren’t Dying, They’re EvolvingIt would appear that cinemas are bouncing back after a disastrous few years. Many predicted the pandemic to be the death of cinema but latest figures show ticket sales are not far off 2019 numbers. This piece looks at how cinemas are evolving to get people back in front of a big screen. (7 min read)

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.