How to Leverage Influence, 1000+ Creative Case Studies, 4 Nonfiction Writing Principles

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

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Hi All,
I've been writing this newsletter for almost a decade. I really enjoy writing it and it provides value to myself and Storythings in a number of ways. Though it has a pretty good number of subscribers, I always want more. So, if you're a long-time reader but have never shared it with your friends or colleagues, maybe today's the day. This week's stories are great. I'm sure they'd like at least one of them.

In the spirit of sharing newsletters, I think a lot of our subscribers will like Lauren Pope's excellent 10 Things: eclectic links for purposeful procrastinatio n. Have a peep and if you like it subscribe to it.

OK. Enough from me. As I've already said, there are some cracking stories waiting for you below.

Hugh

The Short Story

Interactive Essay About (Mis)Representation of Women in the News
(Interactive)

A Curated Collection of the Most Inspiring Creative Brand Activation Ideas
(Resource)

Oliver Burkeman's Trick to Help You Get Better at Making Decisions
(4 min read)

How to Leverage Influence to Win Hearts
(4 min read)

Formats Unpacked: A Life in the Day
(6 min read)

Your Strategy is Showing
(7 min read)

8 Year Old Sneaks His Handwritten Book on to Library Shelf
(5 min read)

Rory Sutherland: Habit, Social Norms and the Shopping Trolley
(2 min read)

Mr. Blog and the Vanishing Art of 'Folk-Branding'
(7 min read)

4 Principles For Great Nonfiction Writing
(4 min read)

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

Interactive Essay About (Mis)Representation of Women in the News
This is a brilliant (though predictably depressing) piece of work by our favourite visual essay producers, The Pudding. It looks at the frequency of words used in headlines about women and how sensationalised headlines about women are compared to other topics. Towards the end, there is an interesting section that looks at events that have encouraged less gendered and more empowering headlines. Thanks to Deborah Carver for sharing this.
(Interactive)

A Curated Collection of the Most Inspiring Creative Brand Activation Ideas
If you're looking for inspiration for a campaign, dive into this wonderful collection of case studies. Dani Comar started the platform back in 2010, to inspire his teams in OgilvyAction. Dani left Ogilvy but continues to update it every week. It now has over 1000 case studies. You'll want to bookmark this. It reminded me of Deck of Brilliance, something you should all have in your collection of tools.
(Resource)

Oliver Burkeman's Trick to Help You Get Better at Making Decisions
If you've been trying to get a project started or are in a bit of a rut you may want to read this. Thanks to Oliver Burkeman's simple advice, I've just made a decision on something I've been pondering for over 2 months. Thanks to Lauren Pope for sharing this.
(4 min read)

How to Leverage Influence to Win Hearts
A short but high-impact interview with Zoe Chance, author of 'Influence is Your Superpower'. I particularly liked her final point about ease. At Storythings we talk a lot about the value of investing the time at the beginning to make life easy for your audience or users.
(4 min read)

Your Strategy is Showing
Noah Brier's piece on the problem with brands' obsession with purpose features one of the most awful ads I think I've ever witnessed - all the evidence you need to see why it's a problem. But not leading with purpose doesn't mean you don't have purpose. It's just that you don't have to shout about it.
(7 min read)

Formats Unpacked: A Life in the Day
The classic Times Sunday Supplement format gets unpacked by Nick Parker, who you may know from the often featured Tone Knob substack (see his excellent folk-branding piece below). Nick explains what the magic is in the format which asks celebrities to describe their day, then links to a few classic interviews with a couple of Toms - Tom Baker and Tom Hollander. If you haven't read them before you're in for a treat.
(6 min read)

8 Year Old Sneaks His Handwritten Book on to Library Shelf
It went on to become one of the library's most in-demand books. A great lesson about why you really should share your creative work. Even if you're just eight years old.
(5 min read)

Rory Sutherland: Habit, Social Norms and the Shopping Trolley
A great story on the difficult beginnings for the shopping trolley and the importance of developing social norms: "In many cases what a product means to you - or to others - is more important as a determinant of value than what it does for you objectively. This is becoming more and more true in wealthier parts of the developed world. And meaning is heavily context dependent. It depends on a social context and a perceptual context. This explains why people are strongly driven by habit and social norms. What did I do last time? What are other people doing? What will they think of me if I do this?"
(2 min read)

Mr. Blog and the Vanishing Art of 'Folk-Branding'
The term 'folk-branding' was completely new to me before reading this. And I'd never given much consideration to the number of services that have 'Mr' in the name. That's why I love Tone Knob so much. It always shows me something I'd never noticed despite it being right under my nose.
(7 min read)

4 Principles For Great Nonfiction Writing
They are all great but my favourite is the one about writing musically: "People sometimes poke fun at me for my unhealthy obsession with naming things: workism, hygiene theater, everything shortage. Naming things is a gimmick, and I am not strictly pro-gimmick. But I am an extreme partisan for memorable writing. I want people to read my words, and recall them, and use them, and talk about them. People naturally remember musical language, and I would encourage writers to inject their prose with a bit of music. When you’re writing, think about repetition and variety. Crescendos and rests. Pace and punctuation. Read your work out loud, and feel the rhythm of the words in your voice."
(4 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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