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Hello folks,

How was your week? Another Friday has arrived!

The winner of the 2025 Tiny Awards is Fifty Thousand Names, a very deserving win for a site made to commemorate every single man, woman and child killed in Gaza from October 2023 till March 2025. Related: next week the Together 4 Palestine concert is happening in Wembley, London. Tickets are sold out, but you can buy merch designed by some of the best artists of our time, or donate to Palestinian-led organisations at the frontline of the crisis.

On a different note, Storythings’ favourite children’s book author and illustrator Holly Swain has an exhibition about Colin and Duck at the Discover Story Centre in London for 6 weeks - take your family and head over there if you’re based in London!

Lastly, if you are or know of a client looking to tell compelling stories about the work your company is doing on a regular basis, we can help 🙂 

Moving on to the links - that’s why we’re here!

Anjali

Russell Davies’ Presentation Club (2-min read)

The Alchemy Of N Of 1 Consumer Companies (5-min read)

15 Years Of Dishoom: 15 Years Of Learning (8-min read)

Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out Of Date (interactive story)

How San Francisco’s Zinesters Are Fighting AI Slop, Surveillance Capitalism, And Corporate Media (4-min read)

Ramp Economics Lab (new Substack B2B publication)

The Best Brands On Social Media According To Link In Bio Readers (spreadsheet)

The 11 Types Of Relationship That Journalists Have With Audiences (6-min read)

The Last Days Of Social Media (25-min read)

‘Between the Lines’ Showcases the Subversive Traditions of Art-Making While Incarcerated (3-min read and photo gallery)

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.

Russell Davies’ Presentation Club (2-min read)
Friend of Storythings Russell Davies has launched Presentation Club online, for people who want a safe, supportive, welcoming space to try out a presentation. I remember how nervous I was when I first started giving presentations - this will hugely help those who want to test their thoughts on a willing audience.

The Alchemy Of N Of 1 Consumer Companies (5-min read)
A look at what makes today’s consumer companies successful. From product edge, cult following, distribution strategy and pricing advantage, these companies are creating cultural shifts, not following them. They also “do more than win categories. They introduce entirely new ways of living in and seeing the world.”

15 Years Of Dishoom: 15 Years Of Learning (8-min read)
I don’t think I know anyone who isn’t a fan of Dishoom in the UK, but I also have friends who come from all over the world to the UK to make a pilgrimage to Dishoom, because they’ve been told they must. And there’s a reason: Dishoom has got so much right in what they do, what they make, where and how they serve customers, how they treat their teams and build community. In this piece, and the accompanying video, learn about why they’ve become one of those N of 1 companies in the food and beverage industry.

Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out Of Date (interactive story)
In the New York Times, a piece for all the astrology lovers: input your birthday and see how and why your zodiac sign might have changed over the years. Very fun to learn as you scroll.

How San Francisco’s Zinesters Are Fighting AI Slop, Surveillance Capitalism, And Corporate Media (4-min read)
We all need stories like this. The organisers of the recently concluded San Francisco Zine Fest speak about the resurgence of zines: “With screens and algorithms now such a dominant part of our daily lives, zines are serving as a kind of rebuke to the insatiable corporate appetite for AI and the loneliness of life online.”

Ramp Economics Lab (new Substack B2B publication)
Emily Sundberg calls it the best B2B newsletter on Substack, so of course I was curious. And I can confidently say that for a newsletter by a relatively small fintech startup (Ramp), this really is a solid move. Ramp Economics Lab is written by Ara Kharazian, an economist at Ramp. From his first post which was about a data-driven approach to launching on Substack, to a more recent one looking at how San Francisco’s tech employees are working on Saturdays, the posts are accessible, short and based on interesting stats rooted in what they do: finance. I like it.

The Best Brands On Social Media According To Link In Bio Readers (spreadsheet)
Via Friend of Storythings Steve Bryant, a spreadsheet of brands that are doing well on social media, by Rachel Karten who runs the Link in Bio newsletter. She runs a survey every year to ask her readers what the most popular brands are. Though, as Matt said to us on Slack, there are hardly any B2B brands on that list.

The 11 Types Of Relationship That Journalists Have With Audiences (6-min read)
We publish a lot of content here at Storythings, and are in fact currently working on a very exciting one which should launch towards the new year. So this piece was interesting for a lot of reasons. The very role of journalists has changed over the years, but so has the nature of the audience, and understanding both is key to producing compelling stories: “…because there is no unifying journalist–audience relationship, we should expect journalists to modify the relationship forms they employ as a kind of ever-evolving repertoire, in a highly context-driven way. This calls up questions about when it’s best, say, to think and behave like a mass broadcaster reaching distant citizens/consumers compared with engaging like a community builder — or when the best course is to disconnect from audiences entirely.”

The Last Days Of Social Media (25-min read)
Yes this is a long read, so save it for when you’re lounging on the sofa or on a long-ish commute, but there is so much that makes sense. Many of you will likely say ‘I feel seen’, or ‘this is absolutely true’ or similar as you go through it. Social media is seeing reduced engagement across platforms, helped by extremist politics, AI slop and toxic content. James O’Sullivan delves into why this is: “Engagement is now about raw user attention – time spent, impressions, scroll velocity – and the net effect is an online world in which you are constantly being addressed but never truly spoken to.”

‘Between the Lines’ Showcases the Subversive Traditions of Art-Making While Incarcerated (3-min read and photo gallery)
Here’s something nice to end with: art made by incarcerated artists as part of an exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Really quite lovely.

Thanks for reading all the way till here. Trivia time: on September 12th, in 1981, the animated series ‘The Smurfs’ was first broadcast in North America. In 1910, Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony "Symphony of a Thousand" premiered in Munich with 1,028 musicians. And in 1959, the Luna 2 was launched by the Soviet Union, becoming the first spacecraft to impact the moon.

Have a great weekend and see you next week!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh and the rest of Team Storythings

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