Hey all,

If you’re not sure why your content isn’t delivering the results you need then we have a product for you. Our Content Audit Workshop will help you analyse what content works for your audience and identify gaps and improvements. We’ll help you understand what to save, erase, or revise. If you have a little bit of budget left over that you need to spend before the end of the financial year this is a brilliant way to spend it.

We’ve been at SXSW this week, presenting and taking in brilliant talks from smart people. We did a series of daily insights which you can find on our LinkedIn page. Give them a read and follow us.

Don’t forget to sign up for the next Proper Fancy which takes place at 1 pm (UK) on Thursday 28th March. Hang out with us and a bunch of smart freelance creatives from around the world and find out what’s tickled our fancy this month.

Thanks for reading you lot. We really do appreciate the love you send our way. Enjoy the newsletter and have a fantastic weekend.

Hugh

Is Curiosity a Leadership Superpower? (7-min read)

Screen Theories: Principles of Structure (6-min read)

Formats Unpacked: Sesame Street (7-min read)

Olivia Coleman’s Amnesty Homelessness Campaign (2-min watch)

Gen Z Broke the Marketing Funnel (8-min read)

Watch the Oscar-Winning Short Doc The Last Repair Shop (39-min watch)

The Everyday Supercommunicators That Get Everybody in Sync (6-min read)

No Algorithm For Culture: How Humans See What AI Can’t (50-min listen)

Why Brands Should Think Like Place-Makers (7-min read)

Why You Should Always Check the Address of Your Amazon Deliveries (1-min read)

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. If your content isn’t getting the results you need, let us help you understand why. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Research – We help B2B brands understand modern attention patterns and how they can get more engagement with content.2. Content Strategy – We use our bespoke process to develop unique content formats that hold audience attention, build community, and increase brand salience.3. Content Production – We craft beautiful and diverse stories of impact that capture and hold attention using podcasts, videos, editorial, and newsletters. We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. Friends of Storythings - Semafor

Friends of Storythings - Semafor

In an era of global crises and diverging audiences, journalism must bridge divides more than ever. Semafor, the world's first news platform tailored to this reality, offers unparalleled transparency and diverse perspectives. Their Flagship newsletter, a trusted source for CEOs and industry leaders, distills key global narratives into a sleek, insightful, and comprehensive format. It strikes the elusive balance between keeping readers informed without overwhelming them, all while fostering global awareness amidst busy lives.

Is Curiosity a Leadership Superpower (7-minute read)I attended a talk on curiosity at SXSW hosted by Paul Barnett and Hannah Singleman. Their company, Now What, helps large organisations ask better questions. Paul’s favourite question is “What would you do if you were not afraid?” I loved this because as Ash Mann from Substrakt points out, fear is often a big reason for not experimenting. This excellent piece is filled with some great examples of how you can improve your process for experimentation and recommendations for new approaches to decision making.

Screen Theories: Principles of Structure (6-minute read)In part 2 of Ian Edgar’s excellent series on the four principles of making hit video formats (primarily for YouTube), he looks at the importance of structure and how there is more than just the few story structures that get the most attention: “Really take a moment to consider successful structures you’ve encountered or enjoyed - there’s deepening rabbit-holes, structures that unfold with surprises, that compare and contrast, go back and forth, structures that use a process of elimination, a straight line to goal or multiple perspectives on a point of focus. There are structures that take the shape of diaries or encyclopedias, spirals or concentric circles, line-ups or parades, that follow a single linear transformation in all its nuance and detail or examine a thousand subjects through the same lens.”

Formats Unpacked: Sesame Street (7-min read)Formats Unpacked returns with a look at how Sesame Street changed children’s TV forever by doing one thing differently: “If you work in communications, you’ll know that your audience’s needs aren’t always aligned with your client’s goals. Like Elmo and his friends, good communication is about empathy and cooperation. Any communications project will stand a better chance of landing with your target audiences if they are indistinguishable from a piece of culture—something that immediately appeals to their interest, and only then reveals a deeper structure.”

Olivia Coleman’s Amnesty Homelessness Campaign (2-minute watch)Olivia Coleman is joined by Adrian Lester in this well-done mock trailer for a new TV series about homelessness in the UK. It’s written using composite stories of real families who have suffered terribly as a result of the housing crisis.

Gen Z Broke the Marketing Funnel (8-minute read)This is a really interesting and beautifully presented story on how Gen Z has rewritten the consumer path to purchase. Shopping is no longer a linear path and the traditional Awareness/Interest/Desire/Action model of marketing is built for a world in which Gen Z (and beyond) no longer lives. Consumption today is less of a funnel and more of an infinite loop of inspiration, exploration, community and loyalty.

Watch the Oscar-Winning Short Doc The Last Repair Shop (39-min watch)On Sunday, Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers picked up the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Their film, The Last Repair Shop tells the story of a shop, and the people who work there, that maintain and repair 80,000 musical instruments for students. This is the second time Ben has picked up an Oscar in the category having won in 2021 for the superb The Queen of Basketball.

The Everyday Supercommunicators That Get Everybody in Sync (6-minute read)I’m enjoying Charles Duhigg’s new book, Supercommunicators. In this piece he looks at what it takes to get a group of people in sync and how you can align with someone else through conversation. Whilst there maybe assumptions that supercommunicators are the loudest in the room, Duhigg points out via an interesting experiment that it was the people that asked good questions and created space that were better at getting alignment: “They didn’t necessarily stand out as particularly talkative or clever, but when they spoke, everyone listened closely. And, somehow, they made it easier for other people to speak up. They made conversations flow. Sievers began referring to these people as high centrality participants.”

No Algorithm For Culture: How Humans See What AI Can’t (50-min listen)This was one of my favourite sessions at SXSW which you can now listen to. Drawing on his expertise at TBWA's cultural intelligence unit creativity and AI, Toygun Yilmazer gives some wonderful examples of where humans have the edge over AI when it comes to creativity. Toygun gives the example of the public reaction to Apple’s AirPods were when first announced. Without any cultural relevance, they were quickly ridiculed and dismissed online. Fast forward to few years and they alone have a higher revenue than Spotify, eBay and AirBnB. Good advertising changes culture and behaviours. Culture is unpredictable. It is something humans understand, but hard for AI that relies on predictability to understand.

Why Brands Should Think Like Place-Makers (7-minute read)As brands fight for attention, relevance and creative cut-through online, ‘place’ can be a powerful domain for making meaningful and lasting relationships with audiences: “We can use ‘place’ as both an inspiring framing for cultural strategy and a physical channel for meaningful brand communication and activation. Thinking like a place-maker calls brands to consider time-tested criteria for cultural relevance that can be lacking in our digital-first era; community participation, long and short term thinking and the balance of authenticity and progress.”

Why You Should Always Check the Address of Your Amazon Deliveries (1-minute read)This Thread made me laugh. Especially as my wife does this sort of thing all the time!

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you all next week.

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