How to Make People Binge Your Content, How to Find Stories andNew Attentional Norms

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

Illustration by Raj Dhunna - Work with him

Hi All,
We're hiring! Are you obsessed with audience behaviours? Come and join our team! We're just about to kick off a major piece of research on how people's attention patterns have changed through COVID. We're hiring a new audience researcher to help with this and other research projects. Apply or share widely.

Finally, friend of Storythings, Rifa Thorpe-Tracey is putting on a Wonder Women Retreat in beautiful Brighton in July. Rifa is amazing so this will be too!

OK. That's it for now. For our UK subscribers, stay safe and good luck getting your wheely bins our of your tree when Eunice has passed.
Hugh

The Short Story

Formats Unpacked: Superbowl Ads
(6 min read)

13 Good Reasons For Writing About Your Work
(5 min read)

New Attentional Norms
(4 min read)

A Tone of Voice That is More Distinctive Than the Brand Itself
(5 min read)

Research Shows How to Make People Binge on Your Content
(3 min read)

Record Store Day is Harming, Not Helping, Indie Record Stores
(4 min read)

Ten More Tricks For Finding Stories
(10 min read)

Mona Chalabi's Wordle Probability Visualisations
(3 Instagram pics)

Strong Songs: Stop Making Sense
(60 min listen)

Why We All Fell in Love With Big Jet TV
(2 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

Formats Unpacked: Superbowl Ads
Our very own Matt Locke on how Coinbase won the Superbowl: "This year’s breakout Superbowl ad stood out by going in completely the opposite direction. Some years, the companies that dominate the Superbowl ads can tell you a lot about the current cultural moment. In the dot-com boom, having a Superbowl ad was a way of signaling to your customers (and more importantly, investors) that although your company was only a few years old, it deserved a place alongside giants like Pepsi, Cadillac or Doritos. This year, Crypto investment companies tried to have a similar breakout moment, mostly following FTX in using a tired celebrity format. But Coinbase did something very different."
(6 min read)

13 Good Reasons For Writing About Your Work
A great bunch of reasons that are guaranteed to guilt you into writing more. Especially this from Paul Graham: "Writing about something, even something you know well, usually shows you that you didn't know it as well as you thought. Putting ideas into words is a severe test...You can know a great deal about something without writing about it. Can you ever know so much that you wouldn't learn more from trying to explain what you know? I don't think so."
(5 min read)

New Attentional Norms
Every medium of communication has its own attentional norms. But that doesn't mean they don't change over time. For example, classical music concerts used to be noisy affairs until Gustav Mahler quietened auditoriums. Many of our digital behaviours at the beginning of the pandemic have evolved too. There are some interesting Zoom observations in this that I recognise from my own behaviour.
(4 min read)

A Tone of Voice That is More Distinctive Than the Brand Itself
Another brilliant look at a brand's tone of voice from Tone Knob. Insurance company Lemonade's tone of voice is so good it actually manages to make T&Cs readable: "The main way that most brands attempt to make their small print palatable is either with a lipstick-on-a-pig humorous distraction (eg. calling the Ts&Cs ‘the boring bit’ or saying ‘the lawyers make us say this’) or helpful precis (‘what this really means is X’). Both of those approaches are predicated on the belief that it’s not worth fixing the problem cos people don’t want to be bothered with the detail anyway. Lemonade start from the belief that people genuinely want to know, and will take the time to read through it all – as long as you explain everything clearly, logically, and helpfully."
(5 min read)

Research Shows How to Make People Binge on Your Content
A really good summary of research by the Journal of Marketing Research on what makes consumers come back again and again. The big take away is to think like a Netflix series producer when planning your content strategy. Audiences return when they are creating serialised, episodic content that follows a structured format.
(3 min read)

Record Store Day is Harming, Not Helping, Indie Record Stores
This is such a fascinating read on how well meaning campaigns like Record Store Day can have a catastrophic impact, not just on the stores, but on the indie artists, their chart positions, their tours and more.
(4 min read)

Ten More Tricks For Finding Stories
Great stories don't just fall into the laps of great storytellers. There's a lot of work that goes into finding them. This is a really useful bunch of suggestions to help you get better at finding stories. It follows up on this lot from a couple of years ago.
(10 min read)

Mona Chalabi's Wordle Probability Visualisations
Based on 3.1 million successful games of Wordle, Mona visualises the probability of guessing the right position, the correct letter and an incorrect guess. All in a Mona style, of course.
(3 Instagram pics)

Strong Songs: Stop Making Sense
You've watched the film. You've played the album to death. Now hear it deconstructed on the excellent Strong Songs podcast. If you're super-nerdy, and I am super-nerdy about stuff like this, the analysis of the Slippery People breakdown is a particular highlight of this episode. If you've never watched the film, it really is the greatest live concert movie ever made. Whether you like Talking Heads or not, it's a must-watch.
(60 min listen)

Why We All Fell in Love With Big Jet TV
"The internet has enabled us to appreciate the unbounded joy people get from their nerdier or more obscure hobbies. Dyer just announced that the wife of one pilot currently coming into land is watching the livestream, and sounded genuinely delighted to learn that the aviation industria was watching at the back."
(2 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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How to Make People Binge Your Content, How to Find Stories andNew Attentional Norms

10 stories we've enjoyed this week

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