1, 2, 3: How to tell sustainable stories; social media is dead, and much more

Hi team

I am sitting in Sydney, Australia right now, heading back to the northern hemisphere at the end of this week. Looking out the window now all I see is smoke haze. It is planned hazard reduction burning - burn the bush now so that it doesn't burn worse later. Today, this city has the third worst air quality in the world.

There was not really a winter here, this weekend was 32 degrees and it is only early spring. There was very much a summer in the northern hemisphere. Wildfires are becoming the norm.

This week

1 Opinion

Tell your sustainability story using balsa wood, not mahogany

2 Ideas

2 (a) Social media isn't social anymore

2 (b) How you came up through the organisation shapes your digital thinking

3 Stories

To come on Monday

Here we go.

1 opinion: Balsa wood is better for shaping narratives than mahogany

Did you catch Apple's sustainability report video last week?

I mentioned last week that The Content Engine has a refreshed mission to combine creativity and tech to communicate about “stuff that matters”.

This video from Apple is about stuff that matters. And, at the same time, it is what we would call "mahogany" content. It is carved carefully out of expensive material.

It is a big budget Hollywood-directed piece that stars the CEO and a number of its senior exectuives and crafts its narrative very carefully. Most companies couldn't afford it and it only made a big splash because it was Apple. The execution risk for most brands on something like this is extremely high.

Even Apple doesn't quite pull it off.

We prefer a "balsa wood" approach. The storytelling material you use should be light and cheap, so you can make more of them, and they are more likely to fly.

Sustainability stories are hard to communicate, and our approach lends itself to telling lots of different aspects of the story that add up to a complete narrative.

In this article, my former colleague Peter Vanham tells the sustainability story of the world's larget building solutions company:

And this is the story that the company tells through myriad different content pieces on its social channels. In many ways it is a much more challenging narrative to tell, and yet it is one that, as Vanham reports, holds much more potential for impacting the world. Holcim has recently moved Nollaig Forrest from its chief communications role into its chief sustainability role. Not because its sustainability strategy is just spin, more because it is so complex that it needs a proficient communicator to land it with a myriad of external stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and regulators.

That’s the stuff that matters.

How are you telling your sustainability stories?

2 Ideas

2 (a) Social media is dead

Everybody is sharing on social media, but they’re doing it privately.

Social media is more media than social these days, and it’s leaving people exhausted. Users are giving up on main feeds and spending their time in direct messages, group chats and closed communities.

Or they’re giving up on platforms all together. Twitter is haemorrhaging users, but we can’t blame all of social media’s problems on Elon. This is a tale being repeated time and again across all platforms.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said it himself in an interview with The Twenty Minute VC:

As regular people exit the public spaces of social platforms, will only the brands remain?

Some pundits are saying is that this shift has killed social media. Here's Matt Navarra interviewed by Contagious:

"When people say, ‘I don't see my friends and family posting in my feed anymore,’ it’s not because the algorithms changed, it’s because people are not sharing as much."

So what do you do if you’re in the content creation game?

Make stuff that people will share with their friends. Richard Cook calls it “dark virality”.

The platforms know it, and they are advising on how to develop your private social sharing strategy. On this link, details of a Meta-sponsored event on this topic.

Have you started to consider your private network sharing strategy?

2 (b) Mental frameworks for digital comms

Have you, as Head of Digital Communications, come to the role from a communications background, or a marketing background?

It's a relatively new role.

Owned media—the idea that an organisation could become its own publisher—is a new idea, maybe 15 years, since social media became an actual thing. And so the people who have grown into these roles have not had a well worn career path. Some have grown up from social media management roles. Some have been given responsibility for digital media after spending a career in earned media (PR). Marketing directors have been handed owned media, and been made responsible for digital channels.

Each of these routes will influence how you see your owned channels working for you.

If you came up from marketing (paid), you are looking to drive prospects down your funnel, give them reasons to click, provide product value.

If you came up from PR and communications (earned), you want your audience to understand your story, to engage with how impactful the organisation and its products are. You want what goes out on your social feed to end up in the mainstream media.

If you came up from digital (owned), you are content first. Give the audience value that relates to them, how they do their jobs, how they see the world. Give them something that they will share, append to their own personal brands, something that makes them look and feel smart and informed. Value first, organisation and brand second, product last.

Are your digital priorities shaped by your professional background?

INDUSTRY REPORT

Do you have social media managers on your team? They are reading this report.

3 Stories

• Brand safety is a big deal. X apparently doesn't think so. And Apple chief Tim Cook is worried by that.
• Interesting job alert: The New York Times is advertising for a Newsroom Generative AI lead, "a senior editor to lead the newsroom’s efforts to ambitiously and responsibly make use of generative artificial intelligence.... they will shape the vision for how we approach this technology and will serve as the newsroom's leading voice on its opportunity as well as its limits and risks.?
• When confronted with a cookie alert, do you "accept all"? I generally do. As Charlie Warzel reports in this piece, our privacy is what the internet eats to live. Part of a guide to privacy by The Atlantic.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Please do share this with your networks - it makes a huge difference.

Mike