09 | Unusual Story Tactics

and what brands might learn from them.

April 05, 2024

We had to work under the cover of night, because when you’re writing a story about graffiti culture in Berlin with the intention of writing some yourself, it’s smarter that way.

I had pitched the piece to the New York Times because Berlin very much was (and still is) an urban canvas for graffiti both stunning and vulgar. But the idea of writing it without writing it, seemed weaker, more from the “My wife Linda and I” school of travel journalism. I called a friend who I knew went out on occasion and asked if I could come along, offering to buy the spray paint for the night.

On a cold and clear evening, we headed out and he decided to bring along his puppy, a Rhodesian ridgeback named Mowgli. This was a dumb idea in retrospect.

BLU and JR, sadly gone from Kreuzberg.

We soon realized Mowgli got excited every time he heard the shake of a spray can, which you can imagine was quite often. Over the next few hours, we crossed over train tracks, and ducked into dark corners, covering the walls with our tags, Mowgli mewling throughout and us switching locations quickly. His was art. Mine, pure vandalism.

The point of this anecdote isn’t to talk about committing graffiti in the name of the Old Grey Lady (I believe the statute of limitations has run out at this point), but to use it as a springboard to talk about pushing formats and boundaries in storytelling.

Brand creative is dictated by the requirements of the platforms that dominate our digital behavior. There are clever edits and creative, like this from inclusive fashion brand Telfar on IG (credit to Grace Gordon’s nice weeklyish write-up on Substack for this). But how about pushing beyond those boundaries?

This week I wanted to highlight a couple of creatives who play with standard brand marketing mediums — the web site, the newsletter — in different ways.

👇🏼 some nice examples

Craig Mod’s Pop-Up Newsletters 🚶🏼The American writer moved from the midwest to Japan to study at university and never really left. A tech and art obsessive, he built a small community around his blogs and pieces on the advent of digital readers. But it’s the work he’s done since that has catapulted him into (reasonable) prominence. Put simply, he writes about walking in Japan. But add another line to that description, and it’s about the layers of culture and geography that he peels back as he walks. He’s created wonderful handmade photo books dedicated to the vanishing Kissa (cafes) of rural Japan, and the people he meets along the way. He’s mentioned here not just because of his prolific newsletter writing (and you should definitely subscribe), but an interesting tactic he sometimes deploys: pop-up newsletters, a flurry of content during a stretch of days he’s in a particularly interesting area. He includes the terms — when he starts, how far he walks, how many photos he takes, etc — and then the goal of writing 1,000-5,000 words about that day’s walk. He teases these to his sizable global community in advance. You can either sign up just for the newsletter, or become a paying member of his community, the only way to access archival pop-ups. “I make these archives available for members because the membership is what enabled these walks, funded these walks — both financially and spiritually,” he wrote recently. He creates exclusivity, urgency, and that no doubt leads to stellar open rates and memberships. I’d never thought of a newsletter demanding a pace this quick, both of the writer and the audience. Stretch it to the brand world, however, and you can see using it to create exclusivity and manifest desire in an audience. Tapping a prominent creator, say, to pen a behind-the-scenes of a particular campaign, with incentives to sign up. Or releasing limited editions JPGs, tracks, maybe even (gasp) an NFT, on a day-by-day basis. Brands sit on enormous servers of customer email addresses. But their blasts out to these folks are typically transactional. What a nice way to break it up. And for more on Craig, this podcast interview is a good deep dive.

Seb Emina’s audio work 🎙️ We featured his work in a smaller mention in the Flotsam section of this newsletter. But this project with WeTransfer deserves a bigger look. Wild Memory Radio draws on the brand’s access to great artists and creatives the world over (30 in all) to serve up something simple: a 2-3 minute audio memory of place and the artist’s association with it. All the art featured was crafted using Open AI’s Dall-e software (and creatively directed by friend-of-the-letter Nessim Higson). As someone who loves the meaning we derive from places, Wild Memory Radio offers an opportunity to not simply bookmark those spots in my Google Maps, but exposes me to the unique perspectives of the artists that cherish them (most of whom I’ve never heard of). The site is teased on WeTransfer’s landing page (where you go to send files) at irregular intervals, competing with advertising clients and stories from WePresent that also appear there. I kept thinking about how other brands might use this combination of audio and visuals to relay messages or create immersive experiences on home pages so vital to communicating brand identity, but so often glossed over by the customers they hope to draw in. The most apparent use might be in archiving (thanks to friend-of-the-letter and Wild Memory Radio instigator Damian Bradfield for this insight). So much budget is allocated to content, only for its executions (video, audio, text) to be discarded in social platform graveyards as the campaign ends. What if they’re recrafted to reinforce brand story on the home page, using audio and visuals to create more immersion? It sure beats the standard scroll.

🦀 Flotsam & Jetsam 💦
Random links from this week’s haul

🎧 A fun, deep-dive into the wild world created by the brand team working on one of Coca-Cola’s big misses, the beverage brand OK. An instructive take on when you win with brand story, only to lose with product.

✍🏼 A simple, beautiful story about a man supporting an open-water swimming community, one early-morning piece of street art at a time. Thanks to friend-of-the-letter Jonathan Hum.

🎧 One of hip-hop’s poet laureates, the late MF Doom was a complex man who dealt with more than his fair share of tragedy. This podcast, thanks to friend-of-the-letter Jorge Woolley, explores his biography through his mesmerizing wordplay and stage craft.

Hey, what is this?
BRAND NEW STORY highlights smart strategies and good stories told by brands and humans. It’s penned by me, Andreas Tzortzis (or, simply, Dre) and draws on insights from my career at Red Bull, Apple, and in my own brand consultancy Hella. It appears every week or so because I write it, schedule it and hit send. I’m always on the look out for your ideas, so write me, and go ahead and forward it to folks who might find it interesting. Sign up and see the archive here.

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