Hello everyone,

Welcome to the dog days of summer - I hope it’s sunny where you are. Thank you to everyone who filled in our survey to help us understand how we can make this newsletter even better. If you have 5 mins, please give us your feedback. One comment we had was that the newsletter was too expensive - just to confirm, this newsletter is 100% free and always has been. I think when we were on Substack there was a screen in signup that asked what you would pay if we decided to start charging, but we’ve never taken a penny from any of our subscribers.

Also - it’s SXSW panel voting time! After the extraordinarily successful format designing game show we did at SXSW this year, we’d love your vote for our next session - Boring to Brilliant - B2B Storytelling the Hollywood Way.

If there’s a theme in the links this week, which was not intentional, it might be that finding ways to connect with each other as humans is really what we need right now. I hope you get to put down your screens and get out to enjoy the real world this week. It’s pretty awesome.

Matt

Was Blair Witch The Moment We Started Questioning Reality? (11-minute read)

Why I Finally Quit Spotify (9-minute read)

Formats Unpacked: Diagnosis (4-minute read)

How to be a safe place for dangerous ideas (1 hr podcast)

The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument (2-minute video)

Why Your B2B Content needs to go beyond the funnel (5-minute read)

The Dancers of Stud County (11-minute video)

Join Or Die - a film about Robert Putnam (3-minute trailer)

I Went To A Movie Theater To Watch 73mins Of Cat Videos (5-minute read)

Why We Love Brighton (1 great photo)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. Here are 2 reasons to get in touch. 

1. “I don’t know what to do” – You’ve been creating content but it’s not having the impact you need. Talk to us about our Content Audit Workshop.

2. “I need something making” – You know what you want to make, but need an agency to make it. We can help make your podcast, video, publication, animation or newsletter. We do other things too. Get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

Was Blair Witch The Moment We Started Questioning Reality? (11-minute read)
25 years ago, The Blair Witch Project introduced the first ‘viral’ internet campaign, in an age that really wasn’t ready for the internet’s potential for misinformation: “In 1999, the gray area between truth and fiction, where the person seated to your left believed the opposite of the person seated to your right, was contained safely with the movie’s run time. And as we all left the theater, we collectively realized it was all a ride. Now, in a way, that ride never ends.”

Why I Finally Quit Spotify (9-minute read)
We’re huge fans of Kyle Chayka’s book Filterworld at Storythings (in fact, we gave it as a present to attendees of a recent client dinner). He’s now convinced that Spotify is the latest platform to undergo what Cory Doctorow has termed ‘enshittification’: “In 2012, Spotify launched its slogan, “Music for everyone.” Now it may as well be “Be grateful for whatever music we give you.”"

Formats Unpacked: Diagnosis (4-minute read)
My wife and I recently started rewatching House, and I didn’t realise that it was partly inspired by a brilliant NYT column about medical mysteries by Dr Lisa Sanders. So thank you to Storythings’ own Grace Dobush for unpacking this great format.

How to be a safe place for dangerous ideas (1 hr podcast)
Hugh strongly recommended this podcast interview with Greg Hahn, the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of the agency Mischief. It’s a great deep dive into why the biggest financial risk is not taking risks.

The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument (2-minute video)
Teenage Engineering makes cult electronic products, and they’ve gone deeply cultish with their medieval sampler. But best of all, they’ve made a fantastic promo video that is part Wicker Man, part Midsommar, and part Anton Corbin’s video for Joy Division’s Atmosphere.

Why Your B2B Content needs to go beyond the funnel (5-minute read)
I wrote an edition of our sister newsletter Attention Matters this week, all about why we need to think beyond performance driven campaigns with B2B marketing. At the end, I call out 5 common B2B problems that you can use content strategy to solve. I’ll be going deep into all 5 of them over the next month or so on Attention Matters.

The Dancers of Stud County (11-minute video)
This was in my ‘to watch’ file after seeing it in the brilliant Video Yes Please newsletter, but I’ve only just got around to watching it. It’s a lovely short doc about a community of LGBTQ+ line dancers that has been going for 50 years. Through some fantastic archive material, it shows how important inter-generational connections are to keeping communities alive.

Join Or Die - a film about Robert Putnam (3-minute trailer)
Talking of which, I really need to see this film about Robert Putnam, the author of the seminal Bowling Alone, and the man who coined the term ‘social capital’. He argues that the single most effective thing we can do to increase social cohesion is join a club. I started playing baseball again in Brighton 6 years ago, and now coach a team, and 100% agree. Clubs are awesome. Join one or start one now!

I Went To A Movie Theater To Watch 73mins Of Cat Videos (5-minute read)
I really really want to go to Cat Video Fest. And I’m not even a cat person. Will Braden, who curates it, sounds like the kind of person Robert Putnam would approve of: “The videos are painstakingly sourced and curated by Braden, who says he watches 15,000 cat videos per year and selects about 200 for the reel. He knows the experience has to be enticing enough to claw people out of bed and into the cinemas. “Plus, when you watch cat videos at home, you’re probably not raising any money for shelters,” he adds.”

Why We Love Brighton (1 great photo)
The last week has seen some of the worst elements of the UK, but thankfully, also some of the best. Brighton was one of the cities in the UK that had shops shut early and boarded up because of threats of far-right violence last Wednesday. What actually happened was beautifully summed up by this image - 5 protestors surrounded by thousands of counter-protestors who wanted to let them know Brighton is a welcoming city that stands for diversity and inclusion. As one of my favourite counter-protest signs said “If you turned up for Pride, you’re 3 days late!”

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Thanks for reading. See you next week!

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.