B2B Content Marketing for brands that want to STAY HUMAN
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Happy Friday!
It’s been a busy week at Storythings as we picked up a very exciting new client, and discussed new format ideas with one of our oldest (and most lovely) clients. We love building teams who really get to know our clients’ worlds. That means we can constantly develop and tweak new formats and build really effective workflows. If you want to work with us to build an expert B2B content format team, get in touch!
💻 DATA POINT: Muck Rack have released their 2026 report into what AI is reading. Lots of good stats in there about the kind of sources referenced for LLM search results, but the key insight is about recency: “More than half of all citations observed were published in the last 12 months. The highest citation rate occurs within seven days of publication. (The remaining 50% in the long tail cover an additional three years.)”
If you don’t already have a strong regular pipeline of content, we’d love to help!
📕 The Short Story
David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge (72-min watch)
Process Pamphlets (online and physical zines)
PaperCamp is back in September! (1 day event)
250 Docs About 250 Years of America (250 1-min watches)
Who Would You Have Been In Early Modern Europe? (short quiz)
BFI Archives Early Online Videos (5 min read)
Tiny Awards Are Back! (small website competition)
Share Your Own Black Mirror Story (research project)
📣 Bottlenecks and the Focusing Illusion (10-min read) 📣
One mental trick I use for when “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it." I do a little time travelling. I imagine myself a month in the future or a year in the future, then look back. Incredibly, the most important thing stops becoming the most important thing.
📚 The Long Story
David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge (72-min watch)
Just as I was writing today’s newsletter, the news came in that David Hockney had died aged 88. When I was art school in the late 80s and early 90s, his restless innovation was hugely inspiring, particularly his photo collages and his later iPad and digital works. But more than all that, I loved the clarity of his line and how he could capture light. His work was dedicated to exploring the art of looking, and the link above is to his documentary on how early modern artists used the camera obscura and other technologies to revolutionise their art.
Process Pamphlets (online and physical zines)
Hugh shared this absolutely lovely project - short physical zines (with online versions) from designers and artists, walking you through their sketchbooks and process notes to show how they make their work.
PaperCamp is back in September! (1 day event)
And talking of zines - the excellent one day conference PaperCamp is back in London on Saturday September 19th. It’s a wonderful celebration of all things paper, so if you’re looking for creative inspiration, get a ticket now!
250 Docs About 250 Years of America (250 1-min watches)
Forget the truly awful sounding events that the US government is trying to organise, and celebrate the imminent 250 year anniversary of US independence with this wonderful series of short films curated and produced by historian Heather Cox Richardson.
Who Would You Have Been In Early Modern Europe? (short quiz)
As someone who was subjected to the ridiculousness of Myers-Briggs and other personality type quizzes when I worked for a big UK Broadcaster, I think they’re all bunk. But I love satirical ones, such as this quiz that works out exactly what kind of fringe philosphy nut you’d have been in the middle of the last millenium. I’d have been a ‘Virtuoso’ apparently. I’ll take that!
BFI Archives Early Online Videos (5 min read)
I used to be on the board of the National Media Museum back in the day, when it was starting to think about how it could collect examples of early internet culture. It’s an important, but technically challenging project. The BFI have started with this collection of early internet video, including Charlie Bit My Finger, BADGERS BADGERS BADGERS and Online Caroline, produced by friend of Storythings (and speaker at our first The Story conference) Tim Wright.
Tiny Awards Are Back! (small website competition)
Friend of Storythings Matt Klein is launching his annual Tiny Awards competition for 2026. It shines the light on tiny, perfectly formed websites that are the antithesis of bloated platforms and AI slop.
Share Your Own Black Mirror Story (research project)
Anjali shared this really interesting research project, asking you to send in Black Mirror-esque stories about generative AI, as a way of mapping the way we think about these technologies. I look forward (or am dreading) the results.
Interview with Pooja Tripathi from Brooklyn Coffee Shop (8-min read)
Anjali also shared this great interview with Pooja Tripathi, the writer and comedian behind Brooklyn Coffee Shop. It’s a great interview about how Instagram and other platforms provide a way for creators to hone their craft outside of tradtional TV. The episode with my Taskmaster hero Kumail Nanjiani is my fave.
📣 Bottlenecks and the Focusing Illusion (10-min read) 📣
It’s been a while since I linked to Hugh’s must-read newsletter OK Brain. This week’s episode focuses on bottlenecks, and how the thing we think is most important is often not the thing that is actually the most important. I love Hugh’s newsletter, because I always feel a little bit smarter when I’ve finished reading.
💌 Humans of LinkedIn
I’ve known Matt Webb since the early 00s, and he is consistently one of the most creative, surprising and inspiring people I know. I love the way he thinks by making, and this post is a great example. He’s currently exploring AI embedded in tiny devices, and in this video he demonstrates a speech-to-code interface that builds an actual working app in just a few minutes!
Drop us a line if you have anything you’d like us to share in a future edition of this newsletter, or of course if you have any comments or suggestions for us!
Have a great weekend!
Matt, Anjali, Hugh, and the team
B2B Content Marketing for brands that want to STAY HUMAN
