B2B Content Marketing for brands that want to STAY HUMAN
👋🏼 Hello!
🔔 Matt, Luisa and some of the ADP team are in Prague this week for ADP’s ReThink event - we help ADP with podcasts, webinars, working with their team on their analyst presentations through the year…a lot of stuff! Let us know if you’d like help developing stories from or for the many teams within your business (like we do for BCG), for your live B2B events (like we do for ADP), or taking stories from reports and events into other digital formats to get more value from them (like we have done recently for data.org).
💻 DATA POINT: The second NextGen News report from The Financial Times, the Knight Lab and Google found that next gen news consumers consciously tailor their news, adding and removing stuff so they get an ‘ideal mix of sources and notifications’.
📕 The Short Story
The Best Books On Big Projects (25-min reading list + interview)
How AI Engines Index Content For Searches (2-min read)
1924us: Inspirational Goth-inspired Graphic Design (Instagram account)
Maison Margiela’s House Codes (Dropbox folders)
The 5 AI Tools You Need (To Build A Personal Brand) (24-min watch)
AntiRender: Reality Hits Different (AI tool)
Printing Films: A Collection Of Films About Print, Design And Typography (Website/Resource)
📣 How I Fell In Love Through BlackBerry Messenger (3-min read) 📣
“If these publications survive, they might offer a blueprint for how companies can meaningfully contribute to culture – not by exploiting it but by embracing it. That’s a future worth rooting for, even if it arrives with a logo on the spine.”
📚 The Long Story
Not Just ‘A F**king Magazine’: The Unexpected Renaissance Of Corporate Publications (5-min read)
Matt shared this and it is so very Storythings-aligned! Pretty much the whole Storythings team loves publications of all kinds, print and digital. In the past, we’ve produced physical versions of some of our digital publications for clients, and we’re even producing a digital publication right now for a large foundation client. So this Monocle piece on the renaissance of corporate magazines really resonated.
The Best Books On Big Projects (25-min reading list + interview)
I was interested in this format because it is similar to the popular reading list format, but combines it with an interview. Jonathan Simcock has advised large government projects for 16 years. Here he recommends 5 books that explain why large projects go wrong, and how to do better.
How AI Engines Index Content For Searches (2-min read)
Via friend of Storythings Steve Bryant’s newsletter, a LinkedIn post by Ryan Law from Ahrefs, with plenty of data points on what types of content get referenced by AI search engines. He’s also linked to the studies he references in the comments. TL;DR: YouTube content, posts under 1000 words, fresh content, and of course Wikipedia.
1924us: Inspirational Goth-inspired Graphic Design (Instagram account)
Credit for finding this goes to our very own Darren Garrett at Storythings. Yes, his artistic taste is not easy to mimic! A nicely done page with inspirational posters, but in an unlikely twist, with a Goth theme that serves as a reminder of our mortality.
Maison Margiela’s House Codes (Dropbox folders)
A very neat experiment. Maison Margiela gives us a sense of the ideas and values that shape them as a brand by showcasing their archival materials, split into four houses: “Artisanal, our couture line; Anonymity, the concealment and creativity through our masks; Tabi, our split-toe shoe collected by a global community; and Bianchetto, our white overpaint technique part of our creative language”. In an unusual move, it’s all accessible via Dropbox (some files yet to be uploaded, as they will be brought into focus with a series of events and exhibitions across China this year).
The Origins Of One Of The Most Beloved Video Games Of All Time (13-min read)
There’s something in here about what it takes to make something that stands the test of time: “Something I’ve heard from every Mario developer I’ve ever spoken to over the years is this: Whenever you press a button, something fun should happen. Whenever your curious human mind goes, “I wonder what’s over there?,” the answer should be: Something fun.” I also highly recommend this piece for the beauty of the language itself. It’s a book review, but beautifully written.
The 5 AI Tools You Need (To Build A Personal Brand) (24-min watch)
I’ve met Nishma a couple of times now and one thing that srikes me is how generous she is with her time - exemplified in this YouTube video on her own channel (she’s got more, so don’t forget to subscribe) which explains the best AI tools she’s come across in her work - particularly relevant if you want to build your brand or business.
AntiRender: Reality Hits Different (AI tool)
A tool that takes architectural renders and tells you what they will actually look like: “cold, honest, depressing reality”.
Printing Films: A Collection Of Films About Print, Design And Typography (Website/Resource)
To end on a more positive note (!), via Kottke, this gorgeous set of vintage films that will bring joy to the hearts of all the design and typography fans in here.
📣 How I Fell In Love Through BlackBerry Messenger (3-min read) 📣
Chris Mitchell, Storythings’ Executive Producer, wrote this piece for BackMarket about the role the iconic BlackBerry Messenger played in his love story with his now wife. Just in time for Valentine’s Day!
💌 Humans of LinkedIn
Tom Loosemore from Public Digital did some AI experimentation, as you do. Using a burner Mac, he played with OpenClaw and Claude Cowork. He recommends that governments work out how their public services should respond, because these tools ‘let you do exciting new things precisely because they push the boundaries of security beyond the acceptable’.
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
