Hola everyone!

We recently finished a piece of audience research for Genomics England, a global leader in enabling genomic medicine and research focused on creating a world where everyone benefits from genomic healthcare. The project was a fairly quick turnaround piece of work that involved really getting to know their various stakeholders, defining a clear value proposition for their content based on audience insight, and helping the client understand why and how content formats could make a difference to them. This is on the back of similar audience work for The Francis Crick Institute and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. If you’d like us to help you understand what kinds of content will stand out from the crowd for your audience, get in touch!

Speaking of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, last week they released a toolkit to help anyone working to make the Earth a better place, called the Collective Imagination Practices Toolkit. Take a look.

Lastly, we realised we probably don’t talk enough about the fact that we do talks on audience research, audience attention spans, how to make your content stand apart in a world of algorithmic & demand-based marketing, and how to develop content formats for brands and organisations that can rival something your audience would watch on Netflix or listen to Spotify. But we do! We’ve spoken at SXSW in Austin, internal conferences for companies like Brandwatch and Experian, and many more. Reach out if you’re looking for a speaker to help teams understand why and how to develop content that resonates.

Tener un buen fin de semana (have a good weekend!),

Anjali

Why Was The Miami Vice Pilot So Good? (22-minute read)

YouTube’s Update To Its TV App Is Significant For The Creator Economy (1-minute read)

Why Story Finding Is As Important As Storytelling (3-minute read)

We Play With Our Dolls. Then They Play With Our Minds. (19-minute read)

The Wild Influence of Leigh Bowery and London Subculture Club Taboo (11-minute read)

A Relatively Brief, Entirely Incomplete History of Online Fashion Fandom (timeline)

An Amusing Parody About A CAPTCHA Photographer (1-minute watch)

Livestreaming Classic Cinema (7-minute read)

Why Thought Leadership Is A Missed Opportunity For B2B Brands (9-minute read)

The Searchers: Dave Eggers on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (37-minute read or listen)

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. 

Why Was The Miami Vice Pilot So Good? (22-minute read)
I am not even a fan of Miami Vice, but this piece covers why it was such a seminal piece of TV in a way that really makes me want to watch it. Probably even more so for those of you who are already fans! And for anyone scared of being different, as Executive Producer Michael Mann said, Vice ‘seemed radical because TV had been so conservative for so long’: “We haven’t invented the Hula-Hoop or anything,” he said. “We’re only contemporary. And if we’re different from the rest of TV, it’s because the rest of TV isn’t even contemporary.” Another reminder of the cost of being dull.

YouTube’s Update To Its TV App Is Significant For The Creator Economy (1-minute read)
Samir Chaudry shared a LinkedIn post about YouTube’s latest changes to its TV app, which blew up online. Digging further, I found this Hollywood Reporter piece which explains more: YouTube creators get functionality that allows them to organise their shows around episodes and formats, making it closer to TV, and as Samir says, setting them apart from TikTok-ers and Instagrammers. Christian Oestlien, VP of Product Management at YouTube said of creators: “They’re doing 20 to 40 minute videos, there’s kind of a season arc to it, there’s multiple episodes in it, so we’re giving them the tooling to really create what we’re calling Creator Show Pages so that if you’re a fan of Michelle Khare, you can go to her channel page and actually just kind of go on that sort of binge episodic experience that I think the lean back TV environment really lends itself to.” Episodic content is becoming more important - something we know a lot about at Storythings.

Why Story Finding Is As Important As Storytelling (3-minute read)
Matt Locke, after an excellent series on the B2B attention challenge, breaks down why story finding is important - ahead of a new series starting on our Attention Matters newsletter next week.

We Play With Our Dolls. Then They Play With Our Minds (19-minute read)
Poet Tishani Doshi on the dolls of her childhood, and the murky line between childhood play and uncanny (or bukimi, in Japanese) valley. There’s a lot to think about in this piece, which is a great example of how something seemingly simple (dolls) can have so much meaning and memory: “The opposite of a bukimi valley, it’s a valley of wonder that speaks to our need to begin with the miniature, to scale down the universe to something we can see whole, and perhaps even control, to map ourselves onto time with stories and, by doing this, transform and reshape the world.”

The Wild Influence of Leigh Bowery and London Subculture Club Taboo (11-minute read)
A fascinating account of one year in London’s life (1985-86) through the launch and bust of London subculture club Taboo in Leicester Square, and one of its founders, the ‘Australian emigre, style icon, fashion designer, Abba addict, and unrepentant champion of platform shoes’ Leigh Bowery. If stories are about characters, then this is a character to remember. Oh - and if you like that, spend some time listening to ‘A History of Drag’, an audio documentary we made for Gaydio a few years ago. I think you’ll enjoy it.

A Relatively Brief, Entirely Incomplete History of Online Fashion Fandom (timeline)
As someone who was wholly into reading the early fashion blogs back in the day, this was a refreshing reminder of how fashion writing has been shaped by the history of the internet, and of how fame now has a different meaning: “New platforms emerge, and for better or worse, they allow for new voices to be heard—and new ways to make money. Were online fashion stans—the Youtubers and the TikTokers and the meme-makers and the Twitterati—the ones who ousted Virginie Viard from Chanel this summer? Maybe. The answer’s not “No,” which would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Fashion fans have arguably never been more powerful. They overtook the machine. But they’re also arguably still stuck inside it, trying to blog and post their way through it but never quite out.”

An Amusing Parody About A CAPTCHA Photographer (1-minute watch)
Parodies are a brilliant form of storytelling. This one, by comedy duo Kim & Aliya, is about a CAPTCHA photographer. I was chuckling through it, I admit!

Livestreaming Classic Cinema (7-minute read)
Film aficionados will be familiar with the brilliant Criterion Collection. This post by Chris Erik Thomas about Criterion24/7, their always-on livestream that was added earlier this year, is a fascinating look at an audience habit that always existed. (When we researched audience attention for our Scroll Stoppers report post-pandemic, ambient media came up often as a way of combatting working from home loneliness). But Criterion24/7 is for film fans, who want more - and fans always find a way to get the information they want: “You can’t just build a niche, highbrow art film distribution service that’s been around for four decades, introduce an always-on livestream to your rabid fanbase, and not expect a handful of technologically adept film buffs to build a bot to track it and Letterboxd list to archive it.”

Why Thought Leadership Is A Missed Opportunity For B2B Brands (9-minute read)
An interview with Edelman’s global chair of business marketing, Joe Kingsbury, on why thought leadership is important - and how it can make a difference to B2B brands in particular. We like how he makes a reference to our process at Storythings - why we focus on audience research ahead of content production: “what are people at certain companies consuming? What are they downloading? What kinds of events are they attending? What are they searching for? If you begin to piece that together, then you can start proactively putting certain types of content into the feeds of those B2B buyers, even if they have never explicitly reached out to somebody. And then proactively be in front of what they would call potential hand-raisers before they're raising their hand.”

The Searchers: Dave Eggers on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (37-minute read or listen)
Yes this is a long read to cap all long reads, but it’s the weekend, and if you’re into space, astronomy, or science in any form then you’ll want to read (or listen! there’s an audio version!) to this. One of my favourite writers got access to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and writes about the brilliant work and people behind it. Quite heartwarming to learn that it’s all about the team, despite the attempted focus on a couple of people, and also that 31% of the current staff are women - unusual in that space. This piece is part of a series that the Washington Post are running, called ‘Who is government'?’.

That’s it! We hope you enjoyed our curation of stories this week. Maybe you have a friend, family member or colleague who’d like to get this direct into their inbox. Please ask them to subscribe, we’d really appreciate it!

Thanks for reading. Till next week!

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the rest of Team Storythings

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