Welcome to the seventy-seventh edition of '3-2-1 by Story Rules'.

A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:

3 tweets
2 articles, and
1 long-form content piece

Let's dive in.

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

Interesting analysis on the top 8 rankers from IITJEE-1998 - and where they are currently. ALL of them are in the US

Cool way of showing the stat! (Haven't confirmed the source though)

Technology kills some jobs, but creates new ones - often more than the ones made redundant.

📄 2 Articles of the week

a. 'Why should public money be spent on sports?' by Nitin Pai

In this article, Nitin shares an excellent set of arguments on why a government should (and should not) spend on sports. Nitin evaluates three reasons for why the government spending in sports:

The public health argument - it will increase overall well-being and reduce healthcare expenses.
The social psychology argument: medals as a way to increase national pride and unity and as a statement of aspiration
The utilitarian argument: Of the economic benefits of the sports on the economy

Nitin points out an interesting contradictions between the different objectives:

Public health calls for government to promote a sporting lifestyle by providing for sports facilities. National glory recommends hothousing* world champions by focusing resources on our best bets. Economic benefits will come if we focus on celebrity sportspeople and franchises. You can’t have all three, especially so if you have budget constraints. In other words, India must choose why it must invest taxpayer money on sports. Else we will spread our energies and our budget too thin to make a serious impact towards any one goal.

* Hothousing means identifying elite talent at early and then nururing them with dedicated programs by focusing all attention and resources on these medal prospects

In closing, he muses that we dont need to worry much about our medals tally. As India becomes richer, the medals will come:

There is a correlation between the medals haul and per capita income. It is reasonable to impute causality, that as a country gets richer it’s society will have more resources to allocate to competitive sports. No harm then in focusing on good old economic growth. The medals will come, as will better public health and national glory.

b. 'Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction' by Massimo Giunco

This cautionary piece by a senior ex-Nike leader ( spent 21 years at Nike and quit as a Sr Brand Director in 2022) chronicles the footwear giant's fall from grace due to an over-reliance on metrics-driven management.

Nike recently had a horror quarter:

A month ago. June 28th, 2024. Nike Q2 24 financial results. 25bn of market cap lost in a day (70 in 9 months). 130 million shares exchanged in the stock market (13 times the avg number of daily transactions). The lowest share price since 2018, - 32% since the beginning of 2024.

Not too far back Nike was flying high as the undisputed leader in the business. But, the author argues, the company's downfall came due to three key strategic decisions taken by a new CEO in 2020:

1) Nike will eliminate categories from the organization (brand, product development and sales)

2) Nike will become a DTC (Direct-to-consumer) led company, ending the wholesale leadership.

3) Nike will change its marketing model, centralizing it and making it data driven and digitally led.

Elimination of categories may have reduced some duplication, but led to a vacuuming of decades-long expertise inside the company:

In 6 months, hundreds of colleagues were fired and together with them Nike lost a solid process and thousands of years of experience and expertise in running, football, basketball, fitness, training, sportwear, etc., built in decades of footwear leadership (and apparel too). Product engine became gender led: women, men, and kids (like Zara, GAP, H&M or any other generic fashion brand).

If today, we talk about lack of innovation and energy in product creation, well, we know exactly what originated all of that.

The shift from wholesale to DTC (direct to consumer) resulted in the destruction of old relationships:

Nike just began to terminate hundreds of agreements with many local business partners or reduced the business they had with them (selling in less products, and/or diverting premium products to Nike Direct). And they did it globally, showing the middle finger to partners Nike had worked together for decades in any part of the globe and brutally downsizing the number of people working for the sales teams in local country teams.

The distribution chain was a source of info for the supply chain. The leaders thought that they could solve the problem with data analytics. But they couldn't:

Nike – that had been a wholesale business company since ever, working on a well- established “futures” system – did not have a clear knowledge and discipline to manage the shift operationally. Magically (well, not so magically), inventory started to blow up, as all the data driven predictions (the “flywheel” …) were simply inconclusive and the supply chain broke up.

A movement from brand marketing to performance-driven digital marketing also did not go down well:

...the brand team shifted from brand marketing to digital marketing and from brand enhancing to sales activation.

...

Due to all of that, Nike hasn’t made a history making brand campaign since 2018, as the Brand organization had to become a huge sales activation machine."

This seems to be a cautionary tale about the tyranny of metrics.

As someone wise said, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

I think it'll be taught as a case study in business schools for a long time to come.

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

a. 'Learn Great Copywriting in 76 Minutes' | Harry Dry on the 'How I Write' podcast with David Perell

Harry Dry is a copywriting expert and teacher. In this conversation he shares loads of actionable techniques to improve your writing.

He talks about the three rules for good advertising copy:

Can I visualize it? Can I falsify it? Can nobody else say this? So you get three nos you probably write a lot of rubbish, you get three yeses you're on to something. I'll give you two examples of what not to do and what to do. So I saw an ad on the way here "Don't just get a job, change an entire industry" by a recruitment company. Now if I said you change an industry you close your eyes... can you see that? No. Can you falsify that? Able to be proved true or false? (No) Can nobody else say it? No, I could start a recruitment company tomorrow and write 'Don't just get a job change an entire industry' Now let me tell you which (ad) does all three - New Balance (sneakers). 'Worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio'. I think that is so good. So if you close your eyes can you visualize the supermodel in London? The dad Ohio with a barbecue and pair of New Balance on? You can falsify if it's true like supermodels have worn New Balance. Dads (have). Can nobody else say it? Well no because a load of dads in aren't going wear (unclear) and a load of supermodels aren't really wearing Rebook like it's bespoke to New Balance. It's something they can only say so that's the three rules.

The importance of being concrete:

...how do you go from abstract to concrete? The best way I found is to zoom in on the words. So what I like to do is get a sheet of paper and I draw a line down the left hand side. At the top I'll write abstract at the bottom I'll write concrete. I'll write the word at the top and I'll just rewrite it and rewrite it and ask myself what do... I actually mean here what am I actually saying, until I end up with a concrete object ... So here you could have written 'worn by pretty people in big cities and old people in non-big cities' but instead of pretty people I can't... I guess I can kind of see that, but a supermodel absolutely everyone can see a supermodel in London oh man that's sexy you know big supermodel London and then dads in Ohio

An iconic ad campaign for diamonds that made it rise to the top of the engagement ring market:

...at the time wedding rings were sapphires, rubies and emeralds. How do you create demand for diamonds? You say when's it's for marriage... um how... 'Can you make two months salary last forever?' I love that line because of the juxtaposition like how can you make two month's salary last forever? You can't! It's two months of your salary. (but) it's forever. You know it shouldn't work. There's contrast. The answer? The diamond engagement ring. I think now 85% of engagement rings are diamonds and this campaign by Mary for deBeers (the diamond company) is the reason why.

That's all from this week's edition.

Ravi

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Ravishankar Iyer

Lessons from Copywriting with Harry Dry (3-2-1 by Story Rules #77)

𝕏 3 Tweets of the week

📄 2 Articles of the week

🎧 1 long-form listen of the week

The Fascinating Story of Oil (3-2-1 by Story Rules #90)

India's Centre-State Fiscal Schisms (3-2-1 by Story Rules #89)

How to Build Lasting Memories with your Children (3-2-1 by Story Rules #88)