Hello!

Roll call for next Thursday’s Proper Fancy. Who’s in? Come and join us and a bunch of creatives from all around the world to share and discuss creative tidbits that have tickled our fancy. It’s free, fun, and will fill you with creative inspiration for another month. Sign up now.

Are you staring at a bunch of cash you have to spend before the end of the financial year but don’t know what to spend it on? Well! Let me tell you something! We’re full of ideas! You can use it on a content audit to help you understand what content you should do more of or less next year. You can use it on some audience research to help you understand how to engage customers more effectively. Or you can use it on a 14-day prototyping sprint to help you test a content format before committing to it. If you’d like help with any of these things hit that button below and let’s talk.

OK. Enough of this sales talk. You’re here for the links so here they are. Have a great weekend.

Hugh

Benedict Evan’s Big Presentation (long read)

1000 Questions to Save Wisdom (list)

How to Build More Human Personas (6-minute read)

Why You Should ‘Pattern-Break’ and Not ‘Pattern-Match’ the Algorithm (4-minute listen)

Rory Sutherland: Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent (12-minute read)

Strategic AI Sobriety (5-minute read)

How Digital Communication Can Impact Age-Gap Relationships (7-minute read)

Everyone’s Favourite Film Studio A24 Now Has Its Own Chocolate (1-minute read)

How Football Clubs Got Their Colours (interactive)

The Seven Reactions to Every Major Rebrand (3-minute read)

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 want to tell better stories” – 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 help making things” – 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. 

Benedict Evan’s Big Presentation (long read)
Every year, analyst Benedict Evans produces a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. For 2025, his 90-page deck is titled ‘AI eats the world’. If you’re at all interested in understanding the impact of AI then bookmark this and give it a read when you have a moment.

1000 Questions to Save Wisdom (list)
This is interesting. The Save Wisdom Project has a goal “to preserve wisdom, for you, your family or the world.” The idea is to record yourself answering these questions as a way of passing on your wisdom to future generations, whether through audio or your own local private AI model. The questions are on a wide range of subjects including relationships, adversity, inspiration and creativity. Questions include Whose love, kindness, or belief in you transformed your life? What fears or resistance arose as you nurtured your creativity, and how did you overcome them? And What do you most want to pass on to your children about life, meaning and relationships?

How to Build More Human Personas (6-minute read)
The biggest mistake we make in B2B marketing is assuming we’re targeting a single individual who makes a decision. But this is hardly ever the case. Purchasing decisions are made by a group, and the emotions and dynamics of a buying group are far more complex than an individual. In fact, these emotional dynamics are far more important in decision-making than technical and product specifications. Here, Matt Locke gives three simple tips on how to build more human personas that will give you more insight into the underlying human emotional context in a customer’s buying behaviours.

Why You Should ‘Pattern-Break’ and Not ‘Pattern-Match’ the Algorithm (4-minute listen)
In the last few minutes of this episode of People Vs Algorithms on persuasion, Brain, Alex and Troy discuss why this video went viral. Alex makes a great point about the big mistake people make about the algorithm. Everyone is so obsessed with pattern-matching the algorithm for attention. But it’s pattern-breaking that really catches.

Rory Sutherland: Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent (12-minute read)
As ever, a fascinating and very entertaining read from Rory Sutherland. It’s packed with stories on the problem of reducing everything to a number, how our perception of time is misunderstood, and why the opposite of a good idea can be another good idea: “I owe this insight to my colleague Colin Nimick, a brilliant copywriter at Ogilvy who said, ‘In New York, people speak fast. In the American South, they speak slowly. Both of them are a form of politeness, understood in a different way. In New York, you speak quickly because you respect the value of the other person’s time and you don’t want to take up too much of it. In the South, you speak slowly because you want to respect the person by showing how much of your own time you are prepared to give to them.’ These are two behaviors, which, depending on cultural context, are intended to attain the same end while being completely opposite.”

Strategic AI Sobriety (5-minute read)
This week it was Jaguar’s rebrand catching heat. Last week it was Coke for their AI Christmas ad. At Storythings, we frequently find ourselves in conversations about the use of AI in how we work. Our AI policy will continue to evolve as tools and perspectives shift. Our line-in-the-sand is that as an agency that specialises in human storytelling, our creative output will always be human-generated. So I enjoyed this week’s Ideas We Love newsletter, which is a love letter to embracing moderation in the AI era. It gives three interesting creative approaches brands have taken in their use of AI moderation.

How Digital Communication Can Impact Age-Gap Relationships (7-minute read)
According to data from the dating app Bumble, age-gap relationships are on the rise. Which is all good until the gap between digital communication preferences kick in. El Pias looks at how the many ways we communicate across generations, from the use of gifs to actually calling someone, have created challenges in relationships. (via Ash Mann)

Everyone’s Favourite Film Studio A24 Now Has Its Own Chocolate (1-minute read)
Of course, I’m buying a bar of A24 chocolate next time I’m at the movies. Why wouldn’t I? Look at the packaging! Look at those flavours! Look at their movies! It’s gotta be good, right?

How Football Clubs Got Their Colours (interactive)
Did you know Barcelona’s famous kit was inspired by a rugby team from Merseyside? Or that a fondness of cockfighting inspired the famous crest on Tottenham Hotspur’s shirt? This scrollytelling interactive is packed stories of how 50 of football’s most popular clubs around the world got their colours, documenting the rich histories and shirts worn during their most iconic moments. If you’d like a lovely scrollytelling interactive of your own let’s talk. We’ve just finished this fantastic interactive for Lenovo.

The Seven Reactions to Every Major Rebrand (3-minute read)
I don’t have an opinion on the Jaguar rebrand other than how tickled I am to see certain parts of my network meltdown when something like this comes along. Rob Alderson over at Design Week nails it with these seven observations.

There you go - 10 links to take you into the weekend. Have a great time wherever and whatever you’re doing, and if you see something you think we should share in the newsletter, send it over by hitting reply.

Till next week!

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the rest of Team Storythings