Formats Unpacked: Diagnosis

Hey,

As the psychologist and behviour genius Daniel Kahneman once noted, the pain of losing something is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining something. Loss Aversion partly explains why B2B marketing is safe, or for want of a better word, boring. But the reality is B2B brands don’t have to be, and can’t afford to be, boring. If attention is what you want being ignorable is an expensive game. This is why we spend a lot of time trying to learn from the world of entertainment or film - industries with deep expertise in capturing and holding attention.

We’ve turned many of those lessons into a workshop for SXSW 2025 called Boring 2 Brilliant: B2B Storytelling the Hollywood Way. But we need your help! Could you spare us a vote? It’ll take just a moment of your time and we know a lot of great B2B brands will benefit from it. Alternatively, if you’d like us to run that workshop for your company or organisation, hit that big button below.

OK. On to this week’s unpacking from Storythings editor, the amazing Grace Dobush. Regular readers will be familiar with her recently unpacked Long-Form Improv Comedy. You can find Grace on LinkedIn.

Over to Grace…

What’s it called?

Diagnosis (a column by Dr. Lisa Sanders in the New York Times)

What’s the format?

Regularly since 2002, Sanders writes about a hard-to-solve medical mystery, taking you on a riveting journey of trying to diagnose one person’s health issues. Diagnosis was an inspiration for the TV show “House,” and Sanders was one of two medical consultants on the show throughout its eight-season run. Before she went to medical school and became a clinician at the Yale University School of Medicine, Sanders worked in TV news, which explains why she’s such a great storyteller. In 2019, she starred in a Netflix documentary series also called “Diagnosis.”

What’s the magic that makes it special?

The design side is part of the magic. How do you illustrate a story when the main character isn’t the patient but rather the diagnosis itself? Since 2019, the accompanying photo illustrations have been created by Ina Jang, using bold colors to emphasize the pain at hand.

The main reason why this format works so well is the fact that the human body is a carnival of horrors (a phrase I’ve seen attributed to John Oliver). Every one of us at some point has experienced the fear of not knowing what’s going wrong with your body, and we all have to sit with the truth that no one makes it out of this world alive.

The Diagnosis column plays to our dread-fueled nosiness and takes us on the journey of discovery with the patient. You understand their suffering, the struggle to find a reason why this is happening, the trial-and-error solutions and false victories, before finally reaching a diagnosis, usually with a satisfying update on how the patient is doing after treatment.

Favourite Incarnation?

It’s really hard to pick. But this case from 2018 is classic: “A Painful Bruise Wouldn’t Heal. It Took Several Hospital Visits to Discover Why.” An otherwise healthy woman is suddenly incapacitated, and doctors are stumped as they rule out common causes of ongoing bruising. When the doctors take a more detailed personal history, they stumble across a symptom previously dismissed and recognize the underlying illness. No spoilers here — but it has a satisfying ending.

Thanks Grace,

One more ask before we go. We want to make this newsletter as brilliant as possible for all our subscribers. We’ve put together a really quick survey. If you have a moment to fill it in we’d appreciate it. Or if you want to find out how else we can help you with your content strategy and marketing, we’d love to chat.

See you all next time,

Hugh

If you need more creative or strategic inspiration, please sign up for our other newsletters Attention Matters and the Storythings Newsletter. Join our network of over 12,000 creative explorers!