transmedia giant lego man washed up on beach
There's a lot of talk about "transmedia" right now, basically meaning
a story which unfolds across lots of different media platforms, with different media contributing distinct bits of the story to make up the whole thing.
I think the plannersphere as a whole has been guilty of perverting and dumbing down the meaning of this, using it to refer almost exclusively to treasure hunts, ARGs (alternate reality games), mysteries or teaser campaigns.
Transmedia means more than simply having your audience dig around for info!
One example of something hailed as transmedia is Golden Jigsaw - this is just a website treasure hunt where you collect pieces of a picture. It's not transmedia storytelling, here's why:
1. There isn't a story.
The only story is "where's the next clue?". There isn't a plot to uncover - it's just a hunt.
2. It's not transmedia.
It only uses one mechanic - looking for clues on websites - so where are the multiple media platforms?
In the article Transmedia 101, by the term's founder Henry Jenkins he mentions the example of Pokemon.
A cartoon, a series of video games on every platform, a card game and a movie - all combining to create a rich universe full of life and stories that you can enter at any point - now that's transmedia.
There can be the odd mystery here and there, but the whole thing doesn't just rely on intrigue, like a lot of the teaser campaigns being called transmedia.
The purpose of my rant here isn't just to try to define things for the sake of it, but because transmedia comms planning is a powerful idea, and I hate to see it trivialised by being applied to every treasure hunt out there.
Also, mechanics like intrigue and mysteries are powerful ways to engage audiences, but there's no need to yell transmedia at them!
Children play near a giant smiling Lego man that was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort August 7, 2007. REUTERS/Marco de Swart
Anyway, a giant Lego man was washed up on a beach in Europe just yesterday. This kind of thing is what we need more of in transmedia campaigns, not just endless Internet hunts and teasers!
a story which unfolds across lots of different media platforms, with different media contributing distinct bits of the story to make up the whole thing.
I think the plannersphere as a whole has been guilty of perverting and dumbing down the meaning of this, using it to refer almost exclusively to treasure hunts, ARGs (alternate reality games), mysteries or teaser campaigns.
Transmedia means more than simply having your audience dig around for info!
One example of something hailed as transmedia is Golden Jigsaw - this is just a website treasure hunt where you collect pieces of a picture. It's not transmedia storytelling, here's why:
1. There isn't a story.
The only story is "where's the next clue?". There isn't a plot to uncover - it's just a hunt.
2. It's not transmedia.
It only uses one mechanic - looking for clues on websites - so where are the multiple media platforms?
In the article Transmedia 101, by the term's founder Henry Jenkins he mentions the example of Pokemon.
A cartoon, a series of video games on every platform, a card game and a movie - all combining to create a rich universe full of life and stories that you can enter at any point - now that's transmedia.
There can be the odd mystery here and there, but the whole thing doesn't just rely on intrigue, like a lot of the teaser campaigns being called transmedia.
The purpose of my rant here isn't just to try to define things for the sake of it, but because transmedia comms planning is a powerful idea, and I hate to see it trivialised by being applied to every treasure hunt out there.
Also, mechanics like intrigue and mysteries are powerful ways to engage audiences, but there's no need to yell transmedia at them!
Children play near a giant smiling Lego man that was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort August 7, 2007. REUTERS/Marco de Swart
Anyway, a giant Lego man was washed up on a beach in Europe just yesterday. This kind of thing is what we need more of in transmedia campaigns, not just endless Internet hunts and teasers!
Labels: planning, rant, transmedia
8 Comments:
Im a strategy consultant. In early 2003 I did the first bit of work in our firm to use the words "user-generated content" and "social networking". These things are now mainstream.
Thanks for giving me a new buzzword/meme to explore ;-)
no worries! I personally have no doubt that "giant lego" will totally dominate emerging markets in 5 years time! ^_^
Ant,
Thats very important post you've written here.
Ever since Faris skilfully (yet theoretically) adopted Jenkins's transmedia, planners simply started to use it where they used to say neutral media planning.
So every campaign that has more than one platform or unfolding story, every teaser, every mystery to be revealed became transmedia and thats just plain daft.
I'm still waiting to see a real transmedia campaign - the PS Living was the nearest, I think.
How's the life of the lonely freelancer?
Great post!
Agreed that the web is now awash with treasure hunts which seem to think they are far bigger than they actually are. The Da Vinci Code in the past and the latest Bourne Ultimatum hunt on Google is starting to feel a little tired already.
Wouldn’t it great if the Bourne Ultimatum game was actually integrated into a “real life” adventure on the streets and perhaps the players involved in the adventure for Bourne could dictate elements of the plot for the next feature film?...highly unlikely I know.
asi - yeah good parallel with media neutral.
I'm beginning to think that media neutral planning, and transmedia planning are both just expressions of what happens when you have a really rich, deep idea, as opposed to a shallow one.
we use examples like Pokemon and the Matrix, but they're entire universes! most brand ideas simply don't have this depth of stories to go 'transmedia'.
Perhaps Dove - real beauty, and maybe something Red Bull has the depth to do this, but not many brands at all.
That's how PS3 Living comes close - it's trying to create an alternate world for the brand to live in. Sadly, it's a cliched, boring world (I think!).
I start work on Monday - loving my week off so far!!! Am sitting in my mum's garden in the sun as I write.
also, lol@faris doing things theoretically - does he do things any other way?!?
@Gen - the thing is that these integrated guerilla, online, offline campaigns are not rocket science and they are easy to think up - it's just a simple fact that agency and client structure means that they don't happen as much as they should. we spend too much time bunfighting instead over who's going to have the biggest idea.
This *is* interesting.
I don't actually see many of these things defined as 'transmedia' by their creators. Transmedia is still a very academic term and hasn't gained as much popularity as we like to think.
The 'media' in Transmedia is bunk, in any case. We are in danger of being a little bit too prescriptive on how many mediums a story has to travel through to be considered 'trans' media. Where exactly do you draw the line? Is a production sketch on back of a fag packet that later becomes the inspiration for the rendered movie also part of the counted amongst the mediums of that story? Is the total movie experience incomplete to the audience without access to that sketch?
And since all external mediums rely on prior processing by the human brain... though, in actual fact, most of human experience is the playback of previously processed stimuli with the assumption that the current situation is much the same as before (clever yet lazy brains)... what is media, anyway??
I think we mean to emphasize the trans as 'transcendental': that the story exceeds the limit of representations made possible by media giving us uniquely subjective experiences that immerse us because we have to fill in the blanks. So we are talking about mysteries rather than puzzles, since puzzles have objective and verifiable solutions: the missing piece(s), whereas with mysteries we take the fragments of experience as our own pieces and fit them together in ever more elaborate combinations to create stories.
What 'transmedia planning' (personally, I don't use the term, only catalogue its uses) could be about is understanding the deep human need for shared stories and integrating experiences. And this need has become even more apparent as networks bring as all closer together, yet also pull us all apart.
The trouble for brands is that storytelling experiences are more easily distributed and available to us. They take up more of our time and this is time that we don't spend with brands. And I would go far as to say this includes time for using products and services, not just brand communications and messages. Most commercial offerings seek to individualise, yet networks entice us to collectivise and share our experiences in direct reception (think status updates in Facebook and Twitter). Increasingly we choose to sit around metaphorical campfires and tell tales and to do that successfully we go out into the world seeking yet more interesting experiences to feed back to our audience of friends.
All good thoughts and glad to see the topic attracts such lively debate.
Do you mind if I add this blog posting to the 'transmedia' facebook group?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2778325800&ref=mf
Adam
Hi Adam, yes, sure, add away!
Whilst I don't approve of endless pondering and classification, my point was simply that the word is being slung around and rapidly losing all its meaning, and hence, losing its usefulness.
We started with a simple, usable planning framework (Faris and Jenkins):
"brand stories with their different bits in different media"
Crucially, it's the kind of thing you could explain to media planners or clients in 2 minutes - but it's now devolved into a dreadfully vague concept of intrigue and missing pieces.
This is also useful and related, but not the same thing.
agree though, it's all good debate. Dreading going back to actual agency employment on Monday instead of blog pontificating!
ant
Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.
Alice: The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.
Humpty Dumpty: The question is: which is to be master - that's all.
Sorry mate - couldn't resist - I'm am in love with theory. Real world application is so messy ;-p
I guess if we are being true to the origin of the term, there is a requirement for narrative, but I think the underlying principles are applicable to a broader set of circumstances. Maybe.
Adam mate - interesting - we now have access to the narratives of our friends lives, as well as their thoughts on blogs and that, which definitely eats into brand time. It's all the attention economy I guess. Rock on.
That lego man is awesome - hope we find out why it's No real.
Hopefully see you sat -if I can get my bike working.
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