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Hi all,

This week, some of our team have been in Zurich working on-site producing content with ADP for their industry event ReThink. We always enjoy the time we get face-to-face with clients, and this particular event is on a scale that is truly impressive, so presents a lot of opportunities for meeting fascinating people. If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you talk to your audience in a human way, give us a shout.

Our Managing Editor (full-time) and Audience Growth Manager (part-time) roles are open for another week. Please share them with folks who might be interested!

We’ve been producing some interesting LinkedIn content around our Stay Human campaign lately, so if you’re not following us on LinkedIn yet, please do.

The links are below, and the weekend is here. Time to clock off, have a lovely one!

Anjali

How This Content Creator Broke The Algorithm By Ignoring It (1-hour listen or watch)

Stop Worshiping The American Tech Giants (5-minute read)

How Trump - and Robert Peston - Broke The News, and Why It's Probably Time to Rethink Your Information Diet (8-minute read)

Why Did Changelings Terrorize the Victorian Age? (10-minute watch)

A New Outlet Covers Climate Policy in the Language Brazil Knows Best (6-minute read)

Idea For News Orgs (1-minute read)

Pinball Restoration Revival (18-minute read with lots of photos)

The Worst Offenders of Internet Ensh*ttification (13-minute read)

As Super Bowl’s Cultural Cachet Grows, Brands Look Beyond In-Game Ads (6-minute read)

Starlings Swoosh Like Brushstrokes Across The Sky (3-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.

How This Content Creator Broke The Algorithm By Ignoring It (1-hour listen or watch)
Jenna Stoeber speaks to Francis Zierer of the Creator Spotlight podcast about how she makes money as a professional content creator. But Jenna isn’t your average content creator: she’s a video essayist, a student of modern creation culture, and an ex-writer on video games and media culture for Polygon. Lots to think about here. I duly had her video ‘I Promise, This Video Is Only 9 Minutes Long’ on loop for an hour, after I heard her rationale. Why not.

Stop Worshiping The American Tech Giants (5-minute read)
Biden administration Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan in an op-ed for the New York Times warns of the dangers of assuming that “certain businesses deserve to be treated as national champions and, as such, to become monopolies with the expectation that they will represent America’s national interests.”

How Trump - and Robert Peston - Broke The News, and Why It's Probably Time to Rethink Your Information Diet (8-minute read)
No surprises here, but still a really good read on the complete insanity of the news cycle in the Trump administration (and similar instances in the past), and why some journalists don’t have much information of value as a result. Think of a DDoS attack, which renders your computer useless till resolved. Why bother with reading information when it adds almost nothing to your life?

Why Did Changelings Terrorize the Victorian Age? (10-minute watch)
PBS Digital Studios’ home for the arts and humanities, Storied, has produced this video about the history of changelings, ‘creatures said to replace humans with eerie, imperfect copies’, and asks why the fear of imposters still interests us.

A New Outlet Covers Climate Policy in the Language Brazil Knows Best (6-minute read)
The way to speak to an audience is always in the language they are familiar with. That’s why at Storythings most of our bigger projects involve speaking to 12-15 stakeholders as audience research, to understand what that is, amongst other things. To make the subject of climate more relatable and emphasise the urgency of the climate crisis, Brazilian NGO Climate Observatory launched a publication called Central da COP, which talks about climate-related policies and politics in soccer terms. Here are some of their formats: “A fact-checking column is called VAR (Video Assistant Referee), a video technology that soccer referees can use during matches to review plays and decisions. The list of the top 10 countries that emit the most carbon dioxide is presented as a table titled “World Emissions Championship 2023,” styled to look like a soccer league’s standings table. That list is then used for a tournament bracket where users can predict which countries they think will “reach the final,” aka meet their climate goals.”

Idea For News Orgs (1-minute read)
RSS pioneer and entrepreneur Dave Winer has an idea for stories for news organisations operating in the world we live in.

Pinball Restoration Revival (18-minute read with lots of photos)
We’re working on a project at the moment where we’ve been speaking to some young Gen Z people, and one thing that often came up was the cyclical nature of events. For example, we’re seeing the return of vinyl - and pinball machines. Some of the best details in these stories are often the simplest, another thing we often say at Storythings: ask the experts.“I’ve learned that about 95% of pinball repair is observation,” Speights said. “The game quits working, and you’re like, ‘Oh no, I have no idea how to fix this.’ But in reality, if you take a moment, slide the glass off, lift the playfield up, look at the area that’s not working, you’re like, ‘Oh, it’s this thing that came off.’ A wire came loose or the spring is off. It’s things that you can observe and say, ‘Okay, I can fix that.’

The Worst Offenders of Internet Ensh*ttification (13-minute read)
Cory Doctorow’s encapsulation of the degrading nature of online platforms is more relevant than ever, and this article profiles some of the worst offenders. ‘Web discourse’ in this list matches the sentiment of our Stay Human campaign perfectly. Journalist Jacob May says in this piece: “I physically cringe when "cringe" is used as a ubiquitous catch-all for anything that people don't like. Every job change posted to social media is prefaced by "personal news." I have asked colleagues what exactly is "quiet" about the verb in their headline. And the corporate jargon on LinkedIn causes me the most despair.”

As Super Bowl’s Cultural Cachet Grows, Brands Look Beyond In-Game Ads (6-minute read)
A look at the many ways brands will be looking outside of TV to make an impact during this weekend’s Super Bowl in America.

Starlings Swoosh Like Brushstrokes Across The Sky (3-minute watch)
Photographer Xavi Bou “condenses time by leaving impressions captured over several seconds as single frames. This process forms images that offer wondrous new perspectives on birds and their behaviours.” It’s a very relaxing watch - may your weekend be that too.

That’s all for now, folks. If you’d like to share this newsletter with friends or colleagues, we’ll give you a virtual high-five - thank you!

Have a great one.

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings

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