Good Narrative Strategy, How to Change Minds, and YouTube's Culture and Trends Report

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

Illustration of Frida Kahlo. She has brown skin and black hair with red flowers in it. She has a green band holding the flowers in place. She is wearing a dark green top and red, circular ear rings.

Illustration by Kamo Frank - Work with her

Hi All,
The latest ReThink Quarterly - an online publication we produce for ADP - is out. This month we look at the rise and fall of the paper paycheck, five infographics about work and holidays, and how six people in Las Vegas earn their dollars. Once again, it's a fantastic set of stories about what happens before and after the paycheck. Give it a read and share it with friends.

Regular readers will know that we've just kicked off a piece of research about how we find, use, and share stories in this hybrid work landscape. In the next month, we're going to be conducting interviews about people's media habits. Do you work in communications? If so we'd love to talk to you. Get in touch.

That's enough from me. Enjoy this week's stories and have a great weekend.
Hugh

The Short Story

YouTube Culture and Trends Report 2022
(8 min read)

What Good Narrative Strategy Looks Like
(10 min read)

Why Beauty Matters and How It's Destroyed by Usability
(Twitter thread)

How to Change Minds in 10 Steps
(10 min read)

Formats Unpacked: A Guy Walks Into a Bar...
(5 min read)

Where You Learn Is as Important as What You Learn
(3 min read)

These Synchronised Swimmers are Redefining Perceptions of Disability
(10 min watch)

Visible Women: Can Playgrounds be Sexist?
(35 min listen)

Susan Sontag: "The Writer Must Be Four Things"
(Tweet)

A Book of Colour Shades Depicted By Feathers
(1 min read)

A girl with Downs syndrome wearing a grey t-shirt stands with her arms above her head and fingertips touching. She has black hair. In the background is a blue sky.

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and content company based in Brighton and London. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas.

Here's 3 reasons to get in touch.

1. You want to talk to us about content production: podcasts, videos, animations, illustrations, editorial.

2. You want to talk to us about content strategy or format development.

3. You want to create a brand or an identity that makes it easier to communicate your message.

We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch.

The Full Story

YouTube Culture and Trends Report 2022
If you're interested in finding out what has been making people click on videos this year then you'll enjoy this. YouTube's Culture and Trends Report is one of the annual reports I look forward to reading and watching. This year's report summary says: "In short, the ways to forge meaningful relationships with Gen Z (and anyone else) are through their communities, formats, and moods." The disappointing thing about this report is the actual format itself. Previously they've made great use of video. This year it's reduced to a PDF. We really like helping people develop interesting formats for reports, so if anyone from YouTube is reading, come speak to us about next year's report.
(8 min read)

What Good Narrative Strategy Looks Like
Vicky Gu outlines her four tenets for good narrative strategy and how narrative strategy fuels competitive edge. The part about us all being B2C by virtue of being human chimes with a frequently used Storythings phrase - don't make comms, make culture: "Because technology doesn't move people; poetry does. The most effective narratives paint a portrait of who your customer or reader or viewer could be, covering their insecurities with grace, redeeming their failures with hope. I call this editorial marketing. It's storytelling the way journalism does it: not to overtly sell, but to pitch in ways so truthful and compelling that you can't help but want more. The NYT has over 10 million subs not because they sell subscriptions; they tell stories that sell subscriptions." (via Content Technologist)
(10 min read)

Why Beauty Matters and How It's Destroyed by Usability
This is such a great and important thread on the importance of beauty. It also asks the question: What's the danger of a world without beauty? If everything is simply functional, simply useful, then life becomes a mere conveyor belt. It turns humans into machines of consumption, labour, and reproduction. Aren't we more than that?
(Twitter thread)

How to Change Minds in 10 Steps
David McRaney has put together this discussion guide to promote his new book, How Minds Change. It simplifies some of his ideas around persuasion, such as cognitive empathy, the affective tipping point, and assimilation and accommodation. He also provides 10 really useful tips for engaging in conversations that change minds.
(10 min read)

Formats Unpacked: A Guy Walks Into a Bar...
I really liked Jamie Gower's chassis metaphor in this unpacking of a classic joke format and how formats really help to build context quickly: "Let’s face it, this setup is old. Like possibly Ancient Sumerian old. Its survival secret? Stability and adaptability. Because it’s more than a joke setup: it is a humor chassis. It doesn’t just carry person + action + location, it bolts them together, putting them in a relationship to quickly build context."
(5 min read)

Where You Learn Is as Important as What You Learn
There are a couple of fascinating studies in this article that show how our capacity to remember and recall is influenced by where we learn. It also looks at how mood when learning can also impact our ability to remember.
(3 min read)

These Synchronised Swimmers are Redefining Perceptions of Disability
This short film from The New Yorker is definitely worth ten minutes of your time. Rocío lives at home with her mum. Like many people her age, she wants to have a relationship, she wants to live by the sea, and she wants more freedom. She finds solace with a synchronised swimming team whose members also have Down's syndrome.
(10 min watch)

Visible Women: Can Playgrounds be Sexist?
Caroline Criado Perez has a new podcast that continues the theme of her book Invisible Women. In each episode, Caroline looks at how the gender data gap has resulted in a world designed for men. In the second episode, she returns to the playground, a place where girls are pushed to the corners as boys dominate the space.
(35 min listen)

Susan Sontag: "The Writer Must Be Four Things"
How many are you?
(Tweet)

A Book of Colour Shades Depicted By Feathers
Thanks to Messy Nessy for sharing this delightful book of colour charts from the Science History Institute's digital archive.
(1 min read)

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 here and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading and see you all next week,

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the team at Storythings

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Good Narrative Strategy, How to Change Minds, and YouTube's Culture and Trends Report

10 stories we've enjoyed this week

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