How to Make People Listen, the Origins of Rick Rolling, and a Big Gorgeous Content Strategy Deck

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

Illustrated portrait of Shirley Chisholme. Shirley is wearing a two tone purple shirt and spectacles with green rims. She is standing at a purple podium talking into 10 microphones.

Illustration by Olivia Fields - Work with her

Hi All,
We're just about to kick off a big piece of work looking at new audience behaviours that you might be interested in. The work will question the assumptions of how people discover, consume and use content in a world that is getting used to hybrid working.

We want to uncover new behaviours that are emerging now but will be around for a long time, driven by our observation that the content strategies many of us relied on for years may no longer fit with our new hybrid work lives.

Over the coming weeks, we're going to be looking for partners who can support this work, financially and in other ways. We're also going to be looking for a researcher with experience in audience research to work on this and other Storythings projects. Is this you or do you know someone who fits the profile? Keep your eye out for the advert in next week's newsletter and on Twitter and LinkedIn. Get in touch if you want to know more about how you can help support this.

OK. Enjoy this week's stories and have a great weekend.
Hugh

The Short Story

A Big Gorgeous Deck on Product Content Strategy
(Deck)

How to Think About News Across Three Timescales
(4 min read)

This is 75: What Retirement Looks Like For the First Boomers
(8 min read)

How Hitchcock Used the Staircase to Create Suspense
(5 min watch)

No One Will Listen to You Before They Feel Heard
(5 min read)

The Origin of the Rick Roll Meme
(40 min listen)

Why Brand Publishing is a Long Game
(5 min read)

Johnny Marr on McCartney and Billie Eilish But Not Morrissey
(12 min read)

"What Was the TED Talk?"
(20 min read)

It's Hard to Believe the Queen Would Make Such an Error
(Twitter thread)

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

A Big Gorgeous Deck on Product Content Strategy
It's definitely big and gorgeous. It's also a great resource for anyone launching a content product. This deck is the first in a series from the very smart brain of Steve Bryant, a content strategist who has worked with the likes of Adobe, Amazon and Budweiser. It will really help you think about what a content strategy should do for you and how to hire the right people for the job.
(Deck)

How to Think About News Across Three Timescales
Another great edition of Why Is This Interesting? If you don't already subscribe you should do. When we think about keeping a healthy information diet we think about the importance of a diversity of topics, viewpoints, and backgrounds. But we should also think about the importance of consuming across a variety of timescales. How is the increase in rolling news we consume impacting our view of world events? What would a newspaper look like that is published once every 50 years? The headlines would certainly differ from rolling news or weekly news. This also references Tim Harford's book The Data Detective which was one of my favourite books from last year.
(4 min read)

This is 75: What Retirement Looks Like For the First Boomers
The increase in births between 1946 and 1964 in many places around the world created the largest generation to-date: the Baby Boomers. Today, the oldest Boomers are 75 and the youngest are 58, with retirement on the horizon. I really like this format that uses short interviews and data visualisations to tell the story of how retirement differs in different countries. I should say, this is a feature from ReThink Quarterly, a publication we produce for ADP.
(8 min read)

How Hitchcock Used the Staircase to Create Suspense
Told in the form of a supercut, this film illustrates how important the staircase was as a storytelling tool for Hitchcock: "Hitchcock made the staircase a recurring motif in his complex grammar of suspense - a device by which potential energy could be, metaphorically and literally, loaded into narrative, a zone of unsteady or vertiginous passage from one space to another, always on the verge of becoming a site of violence. Nearly every Hitchcock film includes stairs somewhere"
(5 min watch)

No One Will Listen to You Before They Feel Heard
Zoe Chance gets a mention for the second week running. I was persuaded to buy her book on persuasion after an interview I read with her last week. I've read quite a few books on persuasion and they can feel a bit creepy. Zoe, on the other hand, deals with that upfront and delivers excellent metaphors and stories that we can all use in our work without feeling a little dirty. This article, and her book, is highly recommended.
(5 min read)

The Origin of the Rick Roll Meme
My latest new 'podcast I can't get enough of' is Endless Thread. Each episode looks at online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other fascinating stories. I enjoyed this episode in particular for a handful of reasons. I'm always interested in the origins of memes. I'm obsessed with music from the 80s (Stock Aitkin and Waterman deserve more credit than they get). And there's a nice story of how Rick Astley's daughter helped him come to terms with the challenges of being at the centre of such a meme.
(40 min listen)

Why Brand Publishing is a Long Game
'Toolkits' is a collection of 'practical guides, strategic insights and actionable resources oriented around specific outcomes and business goals'. I like this piece from the Insights section that looks at the value of patience for those starting out in brand publishing. In our experience, the need for patience can't be stressed enough. If you were thinking about charging for content, there's also a great collection of essays on subscription publishing.
(5 min read)

Johnny Marr on McCartney and Billie Eilish But Not Morrissey
This is such a great read for fans, and non-fans, of the Mancunian guitar hero. The difference between Marr and Morrissey is that Marr is in love with his craft whilst Morrissey is in love with himself. You hear this every time the pair of them speak. Here, Johnny answers questions from fans and celebrity fans including Debbie Harry, Neil Tennant, Maxine Peake, Hans Zimmer and more.
(12 min read)

"What Was the TED Talk?"
If you're going to choose one long read to invest some time in this weekend make it this. Oscar Schwartz looks at the problems with TED and its brand of 'inspiresting' talks: "It was around the same time that TED talks began to take on a distinct rhetorical style, later laid out in Anderson’s book TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. In it, Anderson insists anyone is capable of giving a TED-esque talk. You just need an interesting topic and then you need to attach that topic to an inspirational story. Robots are interesting. Using them to eat trash in Nairobi is inspiring. Put the two together, and you have a TED talk. I like to call this fusion “the inspiresting.” Stylistically, the inspiresting is earnest and contrived. It is smart but not quite intellectual, personal but not sincere, jokey but not funny. It is an aesthetic of populist elitism." Thanks to Nathan Martin for sharing.
(20 min read)

It's Hard to Believe the Queen Would Make Such an Error
There's a lesson here that even when we have been pre-warned we can all make terrible errors.
(Twitter thread)

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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