How to Spot Trends, Create Metaphors and Become an Ethical Brand

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

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Hi All,
And if you're a first-time reader of the Storythings newsletter a big welcome to you. We've had a few nice mentions this week from people whose work we've been following for years. The brilliant Jason Kottke wrote about Formats Unpacked on his hugely popular, and very brilliant, blog. And the always generous Josh Spector included us in a Twitter thread about his favourite newsletters. We feel very honoured. Thank you all for joining us.

If you enjoy this week's newsletter please share it with your friends, colleagues, or anyone else you think will enjoy it too. We're just about to hit a landmark number of subscribers and we'd love to hit that by next week.

Thanks this week go to Darren Garrett, Deborah Carver, Jason Kottke, Josh Spector, and Laura Olin. They've all made curating this newsletter a little easier. Show them all your love by subscribing to their newsletters, reading their blogs, or throwing a bit of cash their way.

OK, enough from me. Have a great weekend and enjoy this week's stories.
Hugh

The Short Story

Spotting Trends: The Tricks Used By Trend Catchers
(10 min read)

Why is This Interesting: The Key Art Edition
(8 min read)

How to Build a Metaphor to Change People's Minds
(1 min play)

What Being an Ethical Brand Really Means
(6 min read)

Formats Unpacked: Battle Royale
(5 min read)

The Case For Quitting
(5 min watch)

Three Things Audiences Want From Digital Content Marketing
(4 min read)

Reading the Pictures and Chatting the Pictures
(4 min watch)

Demystifying Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand'
(12 min watch)

Balloon World Cup
(1 min watch)

The key art of an exasperated woman lying face down on a bed. Sideways. Half her body is on the bed. The other half is off but still horizontal due to her feet being pressed against the wall. The show's title in the bottom left corner is 'Better Things'

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The Full Story

Spotting Trends: The Tricks Used By Trend Catchers
If you're in any way interested in how to think about the future this is an essential read. Six trend spotters from many different fields give their tips on how they imagine the future based on cues they gather in their research. I particularly liked the avalanche metaphor: "Listen. Listen deeply to what your friends do and what they say, mainly when it's on the fringe of something you don't understand... Pay attention to pain points. What generates complaints? Where is there pain and annoyance? Where does the pain point seem to be compounding on itself? There is often an emerging trend that is the inverse of another long-standing pattern...What I like about the avalanche metaphor is that you look for the minor changes under the surface. Timing is the most tricky part, but you know eventually there is a build-up that will force a major change."
(10 min read)

Why is This Interesting: The Key Art Edition
I've been subscribing to Why is This Interesting for a few years and I read it every day. I've gotta say, this is one of my favourite episodes. Rex Sorgatz writes about why TV thumbnails (or key art) has become so irresistibly good and what memes and remix culture have to do with this. It's an interesting theory. There's also a great set of links at the bottom of the article to all the stories Rex read for research. If you're not already a subscriber to WITI then hit that subscribe button. You won't regret it.
(8 min read)

How to Build a Metaphor to Change People's Minds
At Storythings we spend a lot of time talking about metaphors, thinking about metaphors, and designing metaphors that help clients talk about complex problems. So I really enjoyed this old but fascinating piece in the always brilliant Aeon.
(12 min read)

What Being an Ethical Brand Really Means
I really enjoy Ana Andjelic's Sociology of Business newsletter. This week she's written about how all brands have social and environmental responsibilities and how often it's only when brands mess up they are forced to think differently. In amongst her tips for what being an ethical brand means was this interesting bit on the importance of brands always being generous: "Brands’ survival depends on their ability to package and deliver their expertise beyond their original business model. Even when consumers are not spending, they still seek acknowledgment, inspiration, advice, guidance, education, and entertainment from brands. What once was a value-add is now a brand’s lifeline. There’s a massive opportunity for other verticals to capitalize on the shift from products to content, from events to subscriptions, from transaction to inspiration, from buying to socializing. Consider it a necessary business adjustment."
(6 min read)

Formats Unpacked: Battle Royale
Before there was Squid Game, before there was Fortnite, before there was The Hunger Games, there was a book called Battle Royale. It was made into a film that Tarantino said was his favourite film of all time. This week the format gets unpacked by Darren Garrett. If you'd like to unpack a format get in touch.
(5 min read)

The Case For Quitting
The mantra is "Winners never quit and quitters never win" but as we come out of the pandemic people are starting to make big decisions about how they want their lives to be. Simone Biles and others her age are teaching us not to be a martyr to grit and showing us where the boundaries are. This film from the New York Times looks at the many reasons quitting is often the harder thing to do.
(5 min watch)

Three Things Audiences Want From Digital Content Marketing
This is a really useful summary of a ten-page research report on what makes digital content marketing engaging for audiences. If you're on the fence about digital content marketing or in the early stages this, and the full report, is a really useful read.
(4 min read)

Reading the Pictures and Chatting the Pictures
I really like this format for its simplicity. Reading the Pictures is a website dedicated to visual culture, visual literacy, and media literacy. It does this by analysing news photography. Chatting the Pictures is a format that runs every two weeks. It's a discussion over a slideshow featuring a set of pictures from a current news story. It's a simple, cheap but very effective way of unpacking fantastic imagery. There's an appetite for video in journalism but it can be expensive to make. I think I'd like to see more of this.
(4 min watch)

Demystifying Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand'
This video essay looks at the influence of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' on the song that became one of his most well-known songs after it was used as the theme tune for Peaky Blinders.
(12 min watch)

Balloon World Cup
Does anyone fancy a game? I'd watch hours of this on TV if they broadcast it.
(1 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 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