Video Trends, Ad Hierarchy, and the Greatest Ever Piece of Content Marketing

Hey all,

Yesterday was our third Proper Fancy. For the uninitiated, Proper Fancy is a team show-and-tell that we open up to everyone. If you don’t have a team to discuss creative ideas with, or that isn’t in the culture of your team, feel free to join us on the last Thursday of every month. And if you’d like to host/curate a session get in touch.

Have a fantastic weekend all.

Hugh

Lessons From the Greatest Ever Piece of Content Marketing (thread)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Advertising (3 min read)

What the Science Museum Group is Doing to Understand Its Audience (4 min read)

Passengers: the Faces of the Mediterranean Migrant Crisis (3 min read)

YouTube Culture and Trends Report 2023 (4 min read)

Matt Locke on Vice, Buzzfeed and the TikTok-ification of Everything (1 hr listen)

An Exploration of Rhythm or Grooves That Break the Rules (7 min read)

How Flight Attendants Changed the Airline Industry (11 min watch)

The Password Game (short play)

Down Home: A Film that Celebrates Joy and Togetherness at a Summer Camp for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (11 min watch)

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? (e.g. newsletters, podcasts, publications, or video series).3. Production - Do you need help creating 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. 

Lessons From the Greatest Ever Piece of Content MarketingYou’ll love this story of the birth of the Michelin guide and how it is the perfect example of two timeless rules in content marketing. (thread)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of AdvertisingDave Trott on why advertising needs to focus on the basics: “Just like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Unless we build the first levels properly, making sure everyone has food, shelter, and safety, the other levels are irrelevant, our audience won’t be around. Which is where advertising and marketing are just like most governments. We spend all our time concentrating on the trivia instead of the important stuff.”(3 min read)

What the Science Museum Group is Doing to Understand Its AudienceIf you make content and want to understand how large organisations are learning from their audience, then you really should subscribe to our Attention Matters newsletter. This current series is fascinating and incredibly useful. This week the Digital Director at the Science Museum Group, John Stack, talks about the tools he uses to understand his audience, what changes he’s noticed in their behaviour, and what he’d really like to know more about them.(4 min read)

Passengers: the Faces of the Mediterranean Migrant CrisisLast week two tragedies happened at sea. One received more media attention than the other. There were a lot of reasons for this. According to the news, one vessel contained 5 humans whilst the other contained large data. That’s why projects like this matter: “In 2016, working aboard a German rescue ship, César Dezfuli took portraits of 118 people rescued from their adrift boat on the Central Mediterranean migration route. Noticing that stories around refugees so often reduce humans to numbers and statistics, Cesar set out to track down some of the people he photographed that day to learn more about their stories, and find out where they are now.”(3 min read)YouTube Culture and Trends Report 2023I always enjoy this report because they break it down into multiple formats really well. The headlines are that formats are becoming more important to creators (which we’ve been saying for many years as regular readers will know), content made by fandoms is being watched more than last year, and unsurprisingly AI is working its way into video production. You can watch a short video summary, a longer interview, or read the full report. (4 min read)

Matt Locke on Vice, Buzzfeed and the TikTok-ification of EverythingOur very own Matt Locke joined the Unofficial Partner podcast to talk about the diminishing importance of the like button and how the most important numbers now are not the big ones, but the long ones - it's all about how long something keeps your attention, not if it inspires you to click a button.(1 hr listen)

An Exploration of Rhythm or Grooves That Break the RulesThis is a really nice piece of visual and audio storytelling from The Pudding. Using audio tools you can play with and pieces of music broken down, it tells the story of how Questlove’s music and life changed when he heard a tune that sounded ‘wrong’: “I’d just never heard someone not give a fuck, and that to me was the most liberating moment. Like, oh, so all this pleasing my father, being perfect… Now I've got to undo all the education and all the hours of preparation that I did.”(7 min read)

How Flight Attendants Changed the Airline IndustryThis is a story I didn’t know. For decades, airlines exclusively hired young, single, unmarried, white women and enforced strict policies — like weight and age requirements. Airlines sold stewardesses as sex objects. But in the 1960s and ’70s, stewardesses mounted an organized push against their employers' discriminatory labor practices. They became one of the first groups in the US to fight discrimination in the workplace. And they won. As part of their Missing Chapter series, Vox tells the story of how the change happened and speaks to the women involved. (11 min watch)The Password GameCome up with a password. It may take longer than you think. Be prepared to get angry. (short play)

Down Home: A Film that Celebrates Joy and Togetherness at a Summer Camp for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental DisabilitiesThis wonderful short film is packed with warmth and joy, you really should find some time this weekend to watch it. Down Home tells the story of a sleepaway camp in Texas that gives adults with developmental disabilities the opportunity to escape societal barriers and have a good ol' time dancing, loving, and feeling free.(11 min watch)

We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

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

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