Hello all! Our weekly update is coming at you a day late, owing to us staying up way too late on Sunday night looking at memes. We regret nothing (we regret a little bit). Our big news of last week, as it is most weeks, was canine-related, in that our social media manager Charles the Dog took a trip to The New York Times and had a subsequent brush with media Twitter notoriety:
We don't expect you to read the whole thread (you can click through if you so desire) but suffice to say there are a number of well-known media people that show up, not to mention a guy who (justifiably, we should note) called out Charlie's owner for his anachronistic fashion sense:
Here's some other interesting tidbits from the world of content that are on our minds this week:
Stories in the App Store?
Have you perused the Apple app store lately? If you're like us, you likely don't do a ton of what we'd generally qualify as "perusing"—we mainly go there to download Candy Crush. But a slightly deeper examination reveals a surprisingly story-centric approach to what used to be basically just a shopping experience. Under the "Today" tab, you can find thoughtfully written content that digs into all kinds of interesting subjects—from app roundups around specific topics (a recent featurette was entitled "Games are Art"; another was focused on apps that will help you navigate Paris)—to in-depth interviews with game developers. This is Apple we're talking about, so of course it's elegantly done and looks great, but what's a nice surprise for such a tech-focused company is how gracefully written each vignette is. It's an important reminder that even for the world's most product-focused (not to mention most valuable) company, good storytelling matters.
Other stuff
When we're not wasting time reading through content in the app store, we're busy wasting even more time following the Nicolas Cage Plot Generator bot. Created by 538's Walt Hickey, it pulls in bits and pieces from Cage IMDB plot descriptions and fashions them into new plots that would be totally absurd and inconceivable if they were't, well, potential plots of Nicolas Cage movies. A few of the best ones are below, (but really they're all the best ones):
In the department of "stories that get shared a lot by content marketing people" is this piece about how Jeff Bezos won't let anyone use PowerPoint, and instead makes his execs write lengthy memos filled with *gasp* sentences, paragraphs, and fully-reasoned arguments. The best part is that, according to this article, the first 30 minutes of every meeting are spent in quiet reading of these memos, which sounds incredibly preferable to most meetings we've attended where the first 30 minutes are comprised entirely of A/V problems.
The WaPo published what we're thinking is probably the definitive (at least for this season) longform piece on brunch, which is both something that we hate with the entirety of our being (we live in Brooklyn for chrissakes) and also a pastime which we're not above enjoying.
LHC is hitting the road! We'll be speaking on the art of storytelling at the Vermont/New Hampshire Marketing Group's annual retreat at the end of May. Specifically, May 23rd and 24th in beautiful Nashua, New Hampshire. Come check us out!
And finally, and most importantly, J Mascis bought a very sensible car:
