Hi all,

Roll call for Proper Fancy. Who’s in? Come and join the Storythings team and a bunch of creatives from around the world, sharing links and talking nonsense at lunchtime. It’s fun. It’s all happening next Thursday, 27th Feb, at 1 pm (GMT). Sign up and we’ll see you on Thursday.

Before the stories, we just had a quick question for you. Storythings is a B Corp and we wondering if many of our readers worked for a B Corp. Hit reply and let us know.

OK. On with the stories. Have the most fabulousest weekend.

Hugh

Gen Z Teens on Why They Stopped Trusting Experts in Favour of Influencers (7-minute read)

How to Cure Your Corporate Voice Affliction (5-minute read)

Why Every Brand is Trying to Be Your Cool Friend™ These Days (LinkedIn carousel)

Richard Shotton on How Social Proof Can Have the Opposite Effect (5-minute read)

I Thought I Was Someone Else. Someone Good (8-min read)

Zoe Scaman: Navigating New Creative Rhythms (7-min read)

Formats Unpacked: How to Fail (6-min read)

This OK Go Video is Breaking My Brain (3-minute watch)

A Love Letter to the Barbican (2-minute watch)

Pentagram’s Rebrand of the Roald Dahl Story Company (3-minute read)

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.

Gen Z Teens on Why They Stopped Trusting Experts in Favour of Influencers (7-minute read)
If your brand is trying to get the attention of Gen Z (or all the other Gens for that matter) you face a real struggle in the battle of authenticity. This piece on why Gen Z put so much belief in influencers boils down to the power of authenticity, which is difficult to achieve when you speak as an organisation. As it points out, influencers don’t have to be right. They just have to be interesting. This is why we focus so much of our work with large organisations on finding and telling human stories that customers connect with.

How to Cure Your Corporate Voice Affliction (5-minute read)
If your thought leadership content isn’t connecting with audiences the way you hoped it would, you might be suffering from Corporate Voice Affliction. Have you ever started a LinkedIn post with “We are delighted you announce…”? Or maybe you were “excited” or “thrilled” to announce something? Don’t worry. We all do it. Thankfully there’s an antidote to help you STAY HUMAN.

Why Every Brand is Trying to Be Your Cool Friend™ These Days (LinkedIn carousel)
This is excellent. It looks at how many brands replaced their Corporate Voice Affliction with Your Cool Friend™ tone of voice. As it points out, it’s great to have personality, but when your personality is exactly the same as everyone else then you will not stand out.

Richard Shotton on How Social Proof Can Have the Opposite Effect (5-minute read)
If you are interested in behavioural science you should follow Richard. His posts, books and podcast are full of brilliant stories on our irrational behaviours when it comes to decision-making. Here he writes about how some brands that use social proof to save the plan are reinforcing the behaviours they hope to change.

I Thought I Was Someone Else. Someone Good (8-min read)
This is a really lovely read from Kevin Maguire on the subject of fatherhood, the film Perfect Days, and radical contentment: “The word "radical" has been weaponised by our generation's productivity industrial complex: Radical Candor promises that optimising our management style will help us climb the ladder, whilst Radical Focus explores how to hack our approach to goal-setting and the almighty OKRs. But Wenders, through the sparingly used voice and wonderfully expressive face of Kôji Yakusho, shows us something different: this is what Radical Contentment looks like—a quiet rebellion against the endless striving that defines our era. While we’re here A/B testing our way to enlightenment, Hirayama has found peace in the simple dignity of doing ordinary work extraordinarily well.”

Zoe Scaman: Navigating New Creative Rhythms (7-min read)
On a similar note to the above, Zoe Scaman writes about how new counterintuitive rhythms in her life have given her a creative surge. She calls these new rhythms The Noetic Spiral and like the creative process it’s made up of four phases: ”Each cycle through this spiral builds on what came before. Your next Gathering is shaped by what you've already created. Your Rest becomes more productive as you learn to trust it. Integration draws on an ever-deeper well of experience. And each Expression benefits from all the cycles that came before.”

Formats Unpacked: How to Fail (6-minute read)
Anna Faherty makes a return to Formats Unpacked. This time she gets to the heart of what makes Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail such a wonderful listen: “Though the format stays consistent in every episode, the conversations meander far away from the failures that prompt them. It makes me think that the ‘share three failures’ structure is simply a MacGuffin – a device that sparks discussions we’d never hear otherwise. In Day’s capable hands, How To Fail is less about failure and more about navigating the complex, unexpected reality of life. And it’s all thanks to being vulnerable...”

This OK Go Video is Breaking My Brain (3-minute watch)
A big clapping hands emoji to OK Go who continue experimenting with the music video form. This video is shot and displayed on 64 phones. Look. I won’t bother trying to explain it. Just watch it.

A Love Letter to the Barbican (2-minute watch)
You’ve got to love The Modern House. They sell houses in the most fascinating ways. Here, spoken word poet Rhael ‘LionHeart’ Cape writes a love letter to one of London’s favourite brutalist homes, Lauderdale Tower in the Barbican.

Pentagram’s Rebrand of the Roald Dahl Story Company (3-minute read)
In 2021 Netflix acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company with a plan to bring the classic stories and characters to life in exciting new ways. Pentagram have done a nice job in creating a new identity.

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