Taglines, Victorian Spotify & Indulging Weirdness

Hey all,

Now might be a good time to tell our new subscribers a bit about the company behind this newsletter. We’re Storythings. We help good people develop content formats that audiences come back to. People hire us because they need help with audience strategy, format development or content production. We also own two other newsletters; which is about our obsession with audience attention, and which is all about what makes great formats so successful.

Speaking of which, here’s my unpacking of Traitors. Officially “the best TV show in donkey’s”. For fans of the show, the US version has just dropped on iPlayer and features Alan Cumming playing the part of Claudia Winkleman.

What are you all up to? Do you have any projects you think our subscribers would be interested in? Drop me a line to let me know what you’re doing.

OK. Enjoy this week’s stories. There are some crackers in there.

Hugh

How to Write a Great Tagline (4 min read)

Creativity and the In Between (4 min read)Scroll Stoppers Part 3 - Everything All At Once (7 min read)The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions (6 min read)Umlauts, Ice Cream and What’s In a Name (13 min listen)We Should All Talk Less and Say More (4 min read)Steaming in the Victorian Era: Early Synthesizer Sent Tunes by Telephone (4 min read)Why Do British People Love to Abbreviate Things? An Investy G (6 min read)Miriam Margolyes Reads a Letter From a Disgruntled Care Home Resident (2 min watch)

The Reason Why Morgan Freeman and Sailors Wear Two Earrings (Tweet)

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and production company based in Brighton, London, Bristol, Berlin, and Ibiza. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas. Here are 3 reasons to get in touch. 

1. Audience Strategy - Do you struggle to understand constantly changing audience behaviours, and what strategies you need to reach them?2. Content Format Development - Do you want to develop and test content formats that give you a direct relationship with your audience ? (eg newsletters, podcasts, publications, or video series).3. Production - Do you need help developing and running an existing or new content format, and growing loyal audiences around them?We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch. 

How to Write a Great TaglineIn this week’s Brands and Humour, Paddy Gilmore looks at what it takes to write a good tagline using humour. Using a pasta brand, a V&A museum advert by Saatchi & Saatchi, and songs by Victoria Wood, he examines how important specifics can be in taking something from funny to really funny. (4 min read)

Creativity and the In BetweenFaris Yakob on the space in which creativity flourishes and why some people fear it: “We don’t like too much risk, especially when the world seems uncertain and scary. Indeed, creativity itself seems scary to many people, because it is about change and we have an implicit belief that the status quo is safe, even when it’s been pretty unsafe of late. ‘People actually have strong associations between the concept of creativity and other negative associations like vomit and poison.’”(4 min read)Scroll Stoppers Part 3 - Everything All At OnceIn the third part of our report on audience attention, we look at why people have been using subtitles to watch TV, leaving episodes of The Office playing in the background while they work, and consuming audio content in place of reading. If you like up-to-the-minute research on audience behaviour subscribe to our Substack.(20 min read)The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat ObsessionA great piece from Clive Thompson on the power of curiosity and the importance of perseverance. It’s the story of how a trip to Yellowstone’s hot springs led to the PCR method that enables accurate Covid testing. I got this via Jason Kottke who is blogging again after a break. It is so good to have you back Jason. I’ve replaced a lot of my social time with reading blogs. It’s great to see more people returning to it. Feel free to leave any interesting blogs you’re reading in the comments. (6 min read)Umlauts, Ice Cream and What’s In a NameI’m enjoying this new podcast series from Richard Shotton and MichaelAaron Flicker. Together they launched the Consumer Behavior Lab, an R+D unit that brings the benefits of behavioural science to companies and brands. This episode looks at the tricks used by Häagen-Dazs to put their ice cream into a new ‘luxury ice cream’ bracket. (13 min listen)We Should All Talk Less and Say MoreI’m a big fan of Jim Carroll’s blog. He spent years working on strategy in advertising for BBH. Every week he draws insights from culture, be it a trip to an exhibition or the watching of a 1970s documentary about design. In this piece he takes inspiration from ‘lorem ipsum’ and reminds us that less is often more. (4 min read)Steaming in the Victorian Era: Early Synthesizer Sent Tunes by TelephoneFollowing on from the story earlier about perseverance and following your offbeat obsession, in the late 1800s, lawyer and inventor Thaddeus Cahill patented his “telharmonium,” a machine that would make music and pipe it across Manhattan along phone line. Initially, subscribers could dial in by phone to listen to live music synthesized on his vast contraption. Later, restaurants and hotels would likewise pay to stream these sounds into shared spaces. Whilst he struggled to make the business model work, the idea went on to inspire Italian Composer and intellectual Ferruccio Busoni and a future generation of electronic composers. (4 min read)Why Do British People Love to Abbreviate Things? An Investy GI am a bit partial to well-abbreviated phrases. ‘Platty joobs’ made me smile but ‘cossy livs’ made me wince a little. As this piece points out, it can be comforting and take the edge off some phrases: “‘People elaborate, alter or abbreviate words in order to make them less cumbersome, alien or threatening, to make them more familiar and to add a reassuring element of humour,’ he explains. ‘All of this enables people to take ‘ownership’ of words – for fun, to express their identity (knowing the latest slang formulations makes you an insider rather than being left behind) or to try to exert some control over otherwise overwhelming influences.’”(6 min read)Miriam Margolyes Reads a Letter From a Disgruntled Care Home ResidentI’m working on a project for BBC Sounds about great speeches and oratory so I’m finding lots of lovely gems like this. This short video perfectly captures the joy of Miriam, the genius of the format, and the wit of the Irish. (2 min watch)

The Reason Why Morgan Freeman and Sailors Wear Two EarringsA great little “I never knew that” story. (Tweet)

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

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