Formats Unpacked: Six at 6

Hey,

You may have noticed we’ve been a little quiet here recently. That’s because we’ve been publishing our Attention Matters newsletter every week. With our Storythings Newsletter also being weekly we didn’t want to overwhelm your inboxes.

We’re taking a break on Attention Matters this week in preparation for a new series on “How to STAY HUMAN™ and avoid a B2B Zombie Apocalypse.” It’s launching next week so subscribe now if you work in marketing and want to tell more human stories.

OK. This week I’m unpacking a newsletter format that I don’t believe gets the credit it deserves.

What’s it called?

Six at 6 (newsletter)

What’s the format?

Every Sunday, at 6 PM, Billy Oppenheimer sends an email with six stories or anecdotes that captured his attention or found useful. The stories feature entertainers, sports people, writers actors and more and are elegantly woven around a single theme or concept. Each story offers a unique perspective while working together to create a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the episode’s key idea.

Billy is a writer and researcher based in Austin, Texas. It’s clear from his newsletter that he loves a good biography so it wasn’t a surprise to discover he’s worked with the prolific Ryan Holiday, helping him research, write, edit, publish, and market his books. A format like this takes a lot of research and writing. Thankfully Billy has a great notecard system that I’m hugely envious of. Like Holiday, he never misses a week, which is wonderful because it’s such a pleasure to read.

What’s the magic that makes it special?

There’s a great line in Dan and Chip Heath’s brilliant book, Made to Stick, about learning and memory, “Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it's the next best thing. And, to circle back to the world of sticky ideas, what we're suggesting is that the right kind of story is, effectively, a simulation. Stories are like flight simulators for the brain.”

At Storythings, we believe “Facts tell but humans sell.” Our job is not to just deliver information. Our job is to make people feel something. The magic of Six at 6 lies in its ability to bring to life abstract concepts and ideas in such a rich, beautiful and human way. By putting human experience at the heart of the stories, each episode makes you “feel” something!

You get snippets of wisdom and experience from musicians, actors, comedians, athletes, authors, psychologists, and even a frogman building a parade float. As mentioned, it’s clear Billy loves a biography and his eclectic taste gives the reader a mix of voices that keep the content fresh and engaging, demonstrating the universality of the theme. Let me give you an example.

In September, Six at 6 featured 6 stories about what Daniel Kahneman calls “duration neglect,” or in other words, our tendency to assess life events by their peak or final moments. To do so he first tells a story about astronaut Chris Hadfield who trained for 20 years to spend just 6 months in space.

The next story is about musician Ben Gibbard and his wife who divorced in 2012. When they got together both their careers were flying. It was all very exciting. “We didn’t do what I think everyone needs to do: you need to get to boring… If there was one thing that would have been good to do, it would have been to get to boring first. Get to boring, and then determine if you’re truly compatible.”

We then hear of a lesson Marina Abramovic learned at the age of 14 from the abstract landscape artist Filo Filipović. In their first lesson, Filipović carefully prepared the canvas, methodically pouring glue, sand, yellow pigment, red pigment, and black over it. After devoting so much time and care, Filipović doused the canvas with half a liter of gasoline, and set the whole thing on fire. Abromovic said, “It taught me that the process was more important than the result, just as the performance means more to me than the object.”

Then “In The Heights” director Tommy Kail talks about winning a Grammy and four Tony awards for the show being a pinnacle. “Well if this is a pinnacle, and it’s over in an instant, and people are already talking about what’s next, it can’t be about this. It has to be about something more than this.” When the entire cast went on stage to collect their award for Best Musical they stood on the stage for forty-four seconds. That’s 0.000017% of the eight years Kail spent working on it.

Finally, we have the French painter, Yves Klein talking about his paintings being remnants of something far richer and more time-consuming - every moment, every experience, and every thought that preceded them.

There’s something about Billy Oppenheimer’s tone of voice that sets this learning experience apart from other list formats. The idea of everything being loosely based around a theme is much more interesting than a more instructional “6 Ways to Understand…” approach. It’s subtly persuasive in a way that creates a more impactful learning experience because readers feel a sense of ownership over the insights they glean. Both approaches work, but as an email that drops into my inbox on a Sunday evening, my brain is definitely welcoming the former.

Favourite Edition?

The consistency of Six at 6 makes it incredibly hard to pick a favourite, so I’m going to pick one of the most memorable. The theme is on the importance of accidents in the creative process and uses stories from Zen teaching, Thomas Edison, Paula Scher, Phil Knight, Andre Aggasi, and Jensen Huang.

Similar Formats?

The Red Hand Files clearly owes a debt to advice columns in newspapers and magazines, although most questions Nick answers aren’t really straightforward requests for advice. The Guardian’s Ask Philippa is a better contemporary example of the classic advice column form. 

That’s it from me for this week. Make sure you sign up to Billy’s newsletter.

If you want to talk to Storythings about how we can help you book a call by hitting the button above. Here are two simple ways to get started working with Storythings:

• Our Formats Unpacked workshop will help you come up with lots of format ideas to prototype.

• Our 15-day story-finding sprint will help you find compelling stories about your company that will make you stand out and help your customers make better buying choices.

Both approaches have been tried and tested with some of the biggest brands, foundations, and arts organisations on the planet.

Thanks for reading. See y’all next time,

Hugh

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