Offal, The Value of Likes, and the End of Content

Hey all,

We hope you’re having a fantastic Easter break! For those of you still checking your email, we thought you might like some light reading/watching/listening for the long weekend.

Just a couple of things from us before we get into the stories. We have a new Formats Unpacked about an opera podcast called Aria Code. If you want to know how to talk to a broad audience about a challenging subject then this is for you.

And secondly, as mentioned previously, 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. Or even for people with a team that doesn’t do this sort of thing. Sign up and join us for some inspiration.

OK. Story time. Off you go…

Hugh

Facebook Likes: So. What Do These Numbers Really Mean? (6 min read)

The Bitter End of Content (7 min read)

Me, My Autism & I (3 min watch)

Tone Knob: Deadpan Cards (8 min read)

Cotton Capital: How Slavery Changed the Guardian, Britain and the World (Multiple articles)

If You Want To Launch Something Disruptive Take a Tip From Edison & Jobs (4 min read)

The Rise and Fall of Innovation Labs in International Development (4 min read)

Is it a Podcast? Is it a Radio Show? No! It’s Offal! (10 min listen)

What Do You Actually Want?  (4 min read)

How Stop-Motion Animation Movies are Animated at Aardman (8 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. 

Facebook Likes: So. What Do These Numbers Really Mean?Our very own Matt Locke kicks off this new format for Attention Matters that looks at common audience attention metrics and unpacks the history and meaning behind them. He kicks the whole thing off telling the story of one of the most ubiquitous, and misunderstood, metrics of the last few decades – The Like.(6 min read)

The Bitter End of ContentAn enjoyable read on the scourge that is “content” without any “content”, designed solely for monetizing attention: “Unfortunately, advertising has been ingrained into the internet as the basic model for so long and to such an extent that it’s hard to envision online life without the systematic manipulation of attention and all its evils. So we’re bound to wind up here, at the bitter end of “content.” Which is a good excuse to withdraw deeper into books, movies, albums, and art, stuff that was created for a deeper purpose than mining fleeting bits of attention for fractions of a penny. The question is whether generations who have grown up immersed in these platforms can imagine life without them, and whether we're cursed to live with them ourselves.”(7 min read)Me, My Autism & IThis is a really good advert from Vanish which recently won Channel 4's Diversity In Advertising Award: “Through sharing clothes stories, we aim to help all autistic girls & non-binary people feel seen, heard, and supported. Because right now autistic girls are three times less likely to receive a diagnosis than boys.”(3 min watch)Tone Knob: Deadpan CardsRegular readers will know that Tone Knob is one of my favourite Substacks. If you work in comms or branding and haven’t subscribed then do that now. It’s so good! In this issue, Nick Parker takes a look at Deadpan cards whose tagline is “If you can’t say something nice, say something factually accurate.”(8 min read)

Cotton Capital: How Slavery Changed the Guardian, Britain and the WorldIn the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, the Guardian commissioned some research to examine its own history regarding transatlantic slavery and colonialism. Cotton Capital explores the findings of the research and reports on how transatlantic slavery shaped Britain and the world. It’s an absolutely fascinating piece of work. It’s a great example of how research and reports can be presented in ways that bring people into the story. (Multiple articles)

If You Want To Launch Something Disruptive Take a Tip From Edison & JobsDisruptive ideas both excite and scare people. This was something Edison and Jobs understood. So when sharing their disruptive technology with the world they both used a simple trick to alleviate some of their public’s fears. (4 min read)

The Rise and Fall of Innovation Labs in International DevelopmentInnovation has become a hugely popular word in the humanitarian and development sectors over the last 10 or 15 years with many NGOs and UN agencies setting up innovation “labs”, “units”, and “spaces”. But in the last 5 years they’ve lost their shine for a bunch of reasons. Including this: “It is important to recognise the role of innovation as a “magic concept” – an idea that has powerful appeal but which is also highly ambiguous in its meaning. Everyone can easily be a supporter of “innovation” – which allows lab initiatives to flourish – but it is not always clear to everyone what “innovation” actually means.”(4 min read)

Is it a Podcast? Is it a Radio Show? No! It’s Offal!And it really is wonderful. Distributed via WhatsApp only, Offal is a “mass-effect auditory hallucination, best experienced alone then spread from phone to phone like a virus. You are now a carrier. You are become Offal.” Go on. Get Offaled!(10 minute listen)What Do You Actually Want? If you’ve landed upon the realisation that you don’t know what exactly it is you want to do with the rest of your life these simple exercises should give you a little clarity. (4 min read)

How Stop-Motion Animation Movies are Animated at Aardman“The magic of stop motion is that it’s all this craft condensed into these frames that you are watching altogether and there’s a level of magic and intensity to that that we love.” The tech to make stop-motion redundant has been around for years, yet there’s no denying the value that comes with the craft that goes into these kinds of movies. Films about stop-motion often focus on the frame-by-frame mechanics of filming but here we get to see so much more about the creative process that goes into making Aardman movies look as good as they do. And here’s a lovely clip of Karel Zeman’s vintage ground-breaking effects. (8 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.