Hi all,

I spent last week in Zurich helping one of our major clients, ADP, with their annual ReThink event. We’ve been working with ADP for nearly 5 years now, and we love helping them find the human stories behind global payroll. For the event, we work with some of their biggest clients to help them become great storytellers. I love seeing people go from being nervous about their talk to absolute smashing it on stage. If you’d like us to help you find and develop great stories for your exec speakers, hit reply and we’d love to talk!

We’re hiring! our Managing Editor (full-time) role closes next week, and Audience Growth Manager (part-time) role closes today! So if you, or someone you know, wanted to apply, get your application in asap.

Matt

‘You’ve Blown a Hole in the Family’: Inside the Murdochs’ Succession Drama (50-min read)

The Wild Story Behind Kendrick’s Half Time Show (9-minute read)

The Anti-SNARF Manifesto (5-minute read)

Lumon Industries’ LinkedIn page (10-minute read)

The Return Of The Timeline (5-minute read)

How Words Divide US Politics (10-min browse)

Give The Algorithm the Crumbs, Not the Cake (5-min read)

The End of TV is Here  (13-minute read)

What Happens When A Whale Dies (5-minute read)

The Future of Dating: Love On Ice (2-minute 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.

‘You’ve Blown a Hole in the Family’: Inside the Murdochs’ Succession Drama (50-min read)
Got some popcorn handy? Because the NYT have a fascinating (very) long read, based on a leak of the files and reports (including text messages) from the Murdoch family trust court case. If you were a fan of Succession, this is like discovering a bonus episode from the last series. Except it’s real.

The Wild Story Behind Kendrick’s Half Time Show (9-minute read)
I love this kind of detailed behind-the-scenes look at how people make something as huge and high profile as the Superbowl half-time show. There were so many great cultural references in Kendrick Lamarr’s 15 minute show, and they weren’t all about Drake.

The Anti-SNARF Manifesto (5-minute read)
We share a lot of articles in this newsletter about how social media is broken, but here’s one about a possible way to fix it. Jonah Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed, has written a fantastic memo against SNARF, the cycle that creators are forced into by AI driven Algorithms: “SNARF stands for Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear. SNARF is the kind of content that evolves when a platform asks an AI to maximize usage”. I don’t know if his new social media project will solve SNARF, but I admire him for trying.

Lumon Industries’ LinkedIn page (10-minute read)
Has anyone coined the phrase ‘Linked-Innies’ yet? If not, I’m claiming it, using the premise of the show Severance to describe the gap between how we present ourselves on LinkedIn, and how we are in real life. I admit to having a Linked-Innie, and he really liked the informative videos and information on Lumon Industries’ LinkedIn page. Maybe yours will too. All Hail Keir!

The Return Of The Timeline (5-minute read)
Another sign that we could fix the problems with social media - we’re seeing the return of apps that take your social networks and build a simple timeline out of them, rather than an AI driven feed. Timelines based on our curated choices, rather than what an algorithm thinks we like, are a much healthier, more valuable way to experience the web.

How Words Divide US Politics (10-min browse)
Bridging Dictionary is a prototype from MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication that analyses how common words are used differently in Fox news and MSNBC. George Bernard Shaw once said "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." It increasingly looks like that applies to just America itself.

Give The Algorithm the Crumbs, Not the Cake (5-min read)
For this week’s Attention Matters newsletter, I wrote about how to create content for humans, not algorithms, and coined this phrase to describe a strategy that I’ve seen a lot of really successful B2B marketers use: “Put your money and effort into something that is absolutely the best thing you can make - a podcast, video, or editorial format - and then create cuts of that format to distribute on social platforms.” If you want help doing this for your B2B content, hit reply and we’ll set up a call.

The End of TV is Here  (13-minute read)
I’ve been predicting the death of the TV schedule for about 20 years now, but according to Hollywood Reporter, the fact The Oscars are being streamed instead of shown in the schedule is the final nail in the coffin. Live events were the last thing that broadcast TV could do better than the streamers, but the technology has caught up, and streamers are now investing heavily in live sports and events.

What Happens When A Whale Dies (5-minute read)|
This is a beautiful piece of writing by Chris Erickson for Why Is This Interesting, explaining what happens when a whale dies and sinks to the ocean. It’s one of those pieces that changes the way you think about the world: “A single dead whale, sinking into the cold, dark silence, becomes a fully functioning ecosystem for thirty years. “We’ll keep this party going,” the ocean says, “No matter how much you wish we wouldn’t.”

The Future of Dating: Love On Ice (2-minute watch)
There is a real art to telling very short stories. You need to build a world efficiently, give the audience a protagonist to root for, and then pull the rug from under their feet. I won’t give away the twist in this short video, but the rug pull is very effective, and chilling.

Well done everyone, we’ve made it to the weekend. It’s Valentine’s day today, and if you’ve read this far down the newsletter, here’s a secret - we love you more than the other subscribers. But don’t tell them!

Enjoy the weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings