Hello everyone,

One of the things we think it’s important to do is to have a finger on the pulse of our audience as often as we can - for our client work and ourselves. In that vein, we recently mused that it’s been a while since we sent out a newsletter survey to see what you all think about this labour of love of ours, and we want to rectify that tout suite: if you could spare 3-5 minutes to fill in this survey completely anonymously, we’d be very grateful.

A quick shout-out to friend of Storythings John Willshire who was on Gardeners’ World on the BBC last week, talking about how he re-wilded his new build garden over 7 years. We’ve just finished a project with the Emerging Futures team at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation ourselves, who are about building the communities and societies we want, and what John did really resonated with us.

It’s August already; who saw that creeping up on us?! We hope you’re having a lovely summer wherever you are. I’m in India for a few weeks hanging with family (and working, very much also working!), and I am NOT complaining about the heat, because I never do (no, I really don’t)! 😀 

Anjali

B2B Newsletter Publisher Without Journalists Exceeds One Million Subs (6-minute read)

Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction (15-minute read)

What We Might Become: A Topology of Sharing (12-minute read)

Formats Unpacked: MasterClass (4-minute read)

Tiny Awards (website)

The Dark Side of Performance (5-minute read)

The Forest Jar (Instagram animated video series)

Why Is This Interesting: The Photo Booth Edition (4-minute read)

Quantum Advertising (6-minute read)

Can an AI Make A Data-Driven, Visual Story? (19-minute read with lots of data visualisation)

How we can help you

Storythings is the content marketing agency of choice for some of the world’s most forward-thinking B2B brands and organisations. Here are 2 reasons to get in touch. 

1. “I don’t know what to do” – You’ve been creating content but it’s not having the impact you need. Talk to us about our Content Audit Workshop.

2. “I need something making” – You know what you want to make, but need an agency to make it. We can help make your podcast, video, publication, animation or newsletter. We do other things too. Get in touch for a FREE 30 minute consultation. 

B2B Newsletter Publisher Without Journalists Exceeds One Million Subs (6-minute read)
Being in the content production business, we’re obviously interested in stories like this. But we noted that even at Trending Now, the newsletter empire referenced in the article, there is still a human element involved in the final tweaking and curation of the multiple industry-focussed newsletters they send. Obviously AI makes a large chunk of their work easier, but as Jacob Donnelly of A Media Operator said, commenting on this piece, “for media companies to survive going forward, our moat must become uniqueness.”

Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction (15-minute read)
As a Nike alum myself, this piece was hard to read, but there’s a reason it became so popular even though it is a LinkedIn post. Massimo Giunco, a 21-year Nike veteran and alum, goes deep into what’s happened to the brand, which has been on the wane recently. It’s a complex story but effectively the hard-headed focus on the main digital property as a sales machine backfired: “….Nike hasn’t made a history making brand campaign since 2018, as the Brand organization had to become a huge sales activation machine.”

What We Might Become: A Topology of Sharing (12-minute read)
Jan Chipchase is one of the OG design gurus, and there is a lot to like in this post about growing as a person and in your career through public speaking. There’s an interesting concept of the Audience Sentiment Arc: as he says, not all audiences are created equal. This is something we think a lot about too.

Formats Unpacked: MasterClass (4-minute read)
Our very own Hugh Garry unpacks MasterClass in Formats Unpacked. We’re passionate about B2B marketing at Storythings and this is a nice reframing of the corporate webinar: “The world of B2B marketing is awash with Webinars. I bet you cringed a little when you heard that word, right? But isn’t a bunch of webinars gathered as a series simply a MasterClass with lower production values?” If you’d like your webinars to be given a makeover, get in touch!

Tiny Awards (website)
For a whizz around some of the most delightful corners of the internet, check out the entries for the Tiny Awards, which shortlist passion projects on the web. We guarantee you’ll lose a fair bit of time, but get a large number of smiles in return.

The Dark Side of Performance (5-minute read)
We’re constantly thinking about how best to position the importance of content format thinking and brand with clients (versus performance and campaigns); one of the best articulations I’ve seen lately is this in Brian Morrissey’s The Rebooting newsletter, by Joe Marchese, a media veteran-turned-VC who sold an adtech startup to Fox (which is why it is particularly noteworthy): "Anyone who relies completely on performance media, their margins will eventually go to zero because someone else will pop up that has more margin to spend on advertising," Joe said. "The only way to reduce customer acquisition costs over time is brand. And you can't measure brand on a short feedback loop."

The Forest Jar (Instagram animated video series)
Another one for those of you looking for some light amusement this weekend: a recommendation from Storythings team member Laura Sterian: a series about humans defending themselves against the dog who created us by learning from the creatures that we ourselves have created. Laura says: “I think it might be my favourite thing on the internet right now. And the characters are awesome!”

Why Is This Interesting: The Photo Booth Edition (4-minute read)
Another one from our team: Matt Locke wrote about the nostalgic beauty of photo booths, prompted by a holiday to Amsterdam recently, for the WITI newsletter.

Quantum Advertising (6-minute read)
Faris Yakob as eloquent as ever, echoing Brian Morrissey and Joe Marchese above on attributing outsized credit to one channel: “Until the interaction of need and availability intersect, possibly influenced by various moments of truth, nothing is decided. Thus, the real work of most advertising is getting into that consideration set, not triggering a purchase right now.”

Can an AI Make A Data-Driven, Visual Story? (19-minute read with lots of data visualisations)
We’re ending today’s newsletter with a story related to the first story we shared, about the role of AI in creating newsletters. One of our favourite publications, The Pudding, actually tried replacing themselves with Claude, an AI from Anthropic. You can see how that turned out.

We hope you've enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Spread the love and forward it on to a friend, relative or colleague. If you’ve received this from someone else yourself, you can subscribe below and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

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