The Return Of The Essay, Streets Of Minneapolis, And The Era of Desocialized Media

👋🏼 Hi everyone!

🔔 This week some of the team at Storythings continued to get an important project ready for public release in a few weeks’ time. If you know anyone who might be interested in covering the launch for this publication, drop me a line by replying to this email. It’s an editorial project about alternative futures - work by individuals and communities in fields that improve our overall standing as a society: human rights, climate, border abolition and the huge universe of related subjects.

Separately, I attended a webinar by B2B Marketing on the evolving B2B buyer. One of the speakers made an interesting point about how audiences no longer move through a traditional funnel; instead imagine the funnel on its side and people coming in and out of different parts of it.

💻 The research we’re looking at today comes from PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey, the results of which were released this week. AI is of course the subject du jour: close to a third (30%) report increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months and a quarter (26%) are seeing lower costs, but more than half (56%) say they’ve realised neither revenue nor cost benefits.

📕 The Short Story

Finally, The Return Of The Essay (6-min read)

What (Digital) Audiences Want In 2026 (12-min read)

An Inflection Point (7-min read)

Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis (4-min listen)

Friction Reloaded (Online 90-slide report)

The Quiet Magic Of Cast Recordings (6-min read)

Instagram Reels And The New Era Of Desocialized Media (6-min read)

10 AI Images Posted By The White House And What They Teach Us (10-image gallery with commentary)

Julia Fernandez Hand Paints 300 Ceramic Tiles To Create A Mesmerising Stop-Motion Music Video (3-min watch)

📣 Payroll in Hong Kong (39-min listen) 📣

📚 The Long Story

Finally, The Return Of The Essay (6-min read)
A lovely read by John Peabody that lauds the power of the well-written word in the form of an essay - a form that is seeing a resurgence thanks to newsletters (yes, a number of them on Substack). They’re Making People Read Again! “These essays are forcing PR people to draft crisis comms plans on their iPhones. They are driving normal people insane enough to stay up at night, writing their replies in their heads as they struggle to fall asleep. These essays are inspiring people who never comment to suddenly create an account just to sign in and comment! Essays that are driving conversations, ideas, and thoughts. Essays that are driving subscriptions and culture, again.”

What (Digital) Audiences Want In 2026 (12-min read)
Long but very scannable (pun intended!) read from the nice folks at Scan Club. Learn about what young, online audiences want from content in 2026 and how that is manifesting in current trends.

An Inflection Point (7-min read)
Matt shared this on our Slack channel, and the minute I read it I heard echoes of the project we are currently working on (the aforementioned editorial project about alternative futures) and I am sure Polly Mackenzie will enjoy it when it launches. That aside, in this piece she asks some powerful questions of us all, as citizens and activists, coaches and volunteers. We are indeed at an inflection point.

Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis (4-min listen)
By now, many of you might have listened to this - a tribute to Alex Pretti, Renee Good and the brilliant citizens of Minneapolis who are coming out in droves to, as Polly Mackenzie said in the link above, ‘be brave and join in’, doing what needs to be done. Long live Bruce Springsteen.

Friction Reloaded (Online 90-slide report)
Last year we shared Florian Schleicher’s first marketing trends report, and he got in touch with us to let us know he’s just released his second one. Titled ‘Friction Reloaded’, it’s based on conversations with 9 strategists from across the world, and his perusal of 60 trend reports. Learn about the key sub-trends he’s pulled out in his detailed slides with tons of examples: Algorithmic Escape, Search for Meaning, IRL Is The New Gold and Green Inside.

The Quiet Magic Of Cast Recordings (6-min read)
Newsletter subscriber Michael Newberry recommended this insightful and beautiful read by Matt Rodin on how musical theatre cast recordings are made, and why there is magic in them: “…the very things the artist feels most vulnerable about are often the things the listener responds to most deeply. What feels unfinished from the inside lands as honesty on the outside.”

Instagram Reels And The New Era Of Desocialized Media (6-min read)
Though a number of pieces in today’s newsletter are very different from this particular one, I feel there's a common thread connecting them: the fact that we need to understand our usage of social media as, in fact, desocializing us: “A lot of intuitions about what might have been wrong with social media, or at least what effects it might have been having on the world around it, feel less applicable to the systems that emerged in its place, where a vision of social and parasocial connection has been supplanted by a program of systematic desocialization.” 

10 AI Images Posted By The White House And What They Teach Us (10-image gallery with commentary)
This is a thought-provoking curation of AI-created images shared by the current White House - and there’s a lot to think in what the images collectively say about the current American government.

Julia Fernandez Hand Paints 300 Ceramic Tiles To Create A Mesmerising Stop-Motion Music Video (3-min watch)
Thanks again to Matt for sharing this very beautiful music video created by artist Julia Fernandez for musician Emory. A very calming way to end the week, reminding us of the beauty in hand-made things.

📣 Payroll in Hong Kong (39-min listen) 📣
The latest episode of our Payroll Around The World podcast for ADP looks at payroll in Hong Kong. Territorial taxation rules, mandatory retirement contributions, and a highly mobile, cross-border workforce that connects the region with mainland China make the number of things to balance on one plate very significant.

💌 Humans of LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, Charlotte West, Vice President - Global Corporate Communications at Lenovo, highlighted a Female Quotient panel she was on while at Davos recently. Featuring leaders from Nestle, Deloitte, Lenovo, TikTok and Meta, the group talks about creativity as the connector between audiences and driver of loyalty across the world.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE →

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