Content, Curated. - Issue #30

Christmas is almost upon us, and the issue 30 milestone has now been scratched off. Apologies for the slightly later issue this time around, you can blame omicron for that (though there’s a high chance you’re fighting it off yourself).

The good news is there’s plenty to get through, but before we crack on I wanted to thank the sponsor of this issue, Stacker.

Stacker Studio is frankly one of the best-kept secrets in content creation + SEO right now.

Brands partner with their team to create and distribute newsworthy content to their impressive newswire of 3,000+ publishers, including Newsweek, MSN, SFGate, Chicago Tribune, and more. (They’re like the AP of feature news.)

The result is hundreds of quality, SEO-friendly media pickups of your story, meaning more brand authority and reach to new audiences.

Interested? Email Stacker’s Head of Marketing, Amanda Milligan, at amilligan@stacker.com, and tell her I sent you!

Also, Must-follower Marketer is a little different this month, so make sure you check that section out.

Must-see Content 👀

The Hidden Risks of Sesame Allergies 🤒

We kick things off with veterans of this newsletter, The Pudding. This time they’ve looked at product labelling in the US and the impact on those with allergies. As always, it’s beautifully presented.

Patch Plant Tones 🌵

Best pun of the issue goes to Patch Plants with their ‘Plantone’ piece. It looks at several common plant species and provides a ‘PLANTONE’ colour guide to determine what might be wrong with them. Genius.

Discovered via Amy Van Schalkwyk 🕵️‍♂️

Location Screen Time 🚀

This is a really cool site that illustrates how prevalent each setting is across the Star Wars films/series. Someone clearly had fun crunching the data, and the illustrations work really well to portray each location breakdown.

Discovered via Matt Smith 🕵️‍♂️

Visualising he Earth’s Crust 🌍

Along a similar vein visualisation wise, this piece is a fairly simple graphic that does a great job of illustrating the material breakdown of the earth’s crust.

Discovered via Gisele Navarro 🕵️‍♂️

Distant Workplaces 🏝️

Apparently this is a piece from earlier in 2021, but somehow it completely avoided me. Thiago Tallmann put together this amazing project that takes the saying “distance working” to another level.

Discovered via Amy Jones 🕵️‍♂️

Sole Supplier Disney Collection 👟

Sneaker news/drop website The Sole Supplier put together these cool Disney shoe designs. Shoe/trainer concepts is an idea that regularly crops up and people always seem to be very receptive to it.

Discovered via Carrie Rose 🕵️‍♂️

The Most Festive City in the UK 🎅🏻

This is a festive piece that looks at the most Christmassy cities in the UK, using data points such as Christmas markets in each city, chance of snowfall, cost to visit and more. However, I’m always sceptical when London, Liverpool and Manchester come out on top, as it raises the question whether they accounted for population. (spoiler alert: they didn’t. Happy to be proved wrong though).

Most Distracting Christmas Songs 🎄

Continuing the Christmas theme, did you know you could be fined £5,000 for singing to Christmas songs while driving? Actually, it’s for singing or dancing to anything to the point where you’re driving without due care and attention. PassMeFast have looked at the most distracting Christmas songs that could land you in trouble with the law.

Most Misspelled Brands 😶

There’s been a few misspelled/mispronounced word/brand pieces recently and they always seem to do well, presumably because it sparks a debate or makes people realise how they’ve been doing something wrong all their lives. This one looks at the average number of times brands are misspelled online.

Discovered by Patrick Langridge 🕵️‍♂️

Cars Created by Tech Giants 🚗

This is a pretty cool piece that uses genuine patents filed by Apple to visualise what the Apple Car may look like. There’s also a couple more illustrated patents ffrom Samsung and Google.

Discovered via Just Digital PR 🕵️‍♂️

PR Stunts

The below campaigns may not have been intentional PR stunts, however they did attract substantial attention from the media.

Fictional Toys Reveal the Tragedy of Child Poverty 🧸

This is a simple, hard-hitting campaign from The Childhood Trust that aims to raise awareness around child poverty at Christmas. It’s a series of fictional toys that are just empty packaging, with names such as “Nada!” and “Zilch!”.

Discovered via The Weekly PR 🕵️‍♂️

Santa Skydive 🎅🏻

Is it your Christmas wish to leap out of a plane with Santa and his trusty elves? Good news, you now can. One of Santa’s little helpers will even film though whole thing for you. Nice!

The World’s Worst Toy 😔

Another hard-hitting toy, this time highlighting the hidden reality of conditions factory farmed animals endure. It’s incredibly well done, and highlights the difference between how we perceive farms to look like, and how they often are.

Must-read Articles ☕

Below are some articles that are absolutely worthy of a read during your coffee break:

Must-follow Marketer 👑

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, this section is a little different this issue. A question I got asked recently was, how do I feel when I see a newsletter similar to mine crop up? Couple of things:

I didn’t invent newsletters, so it genuinely doesn’t bother me
We’re incredibly lucky that we have so many different sources of inspiration to draw upon. There are few industries where competitors (essentially) will openly share their wins, tactics and insights with everyone

With that in mind, I wanted to share some of my favourite newsletters that you should also signup to if you work in Digital PR/content. In no particular order:

There’s likely some I’ve missed, but I’m happy to expand the list so drop me a note (markprtr [@] gmail.com). Running a newsletter is tough and time consuming, so show your support by subbing/following the above.

To Conclude

That rounds off issue #30! Thank you to those who send over campaigns, and if you ever want to share something please do get in touch: markprtr[@]gmail.com.

If you’re not yet subscribed, feel free to do so in order to be notified of future issues, and follow me on Twitter.

Thank you!

Mark.

Content, Curated. – Issue #30