best use of multimedia: how stories propagate

photo from n3wJack


After that post I wrote about transmedia, I thought I would put up my favourite example that I use to illustrate how a good, rich, idea spreads in a transmedia way. It's a slide I knocked up ages ago when this stunt happened - feel free to use it, as long as you don't use it for evil.

It can be used as a this-is-how-the-Internet-works kind of slide, or to show the importance of trying to make ideas richer.

It started in retail (droplifting is the posh term for what Banksy did), and all the different content - images, music, stories, product - whizzed around the Internet. Different people were interested in different aspects of the stunt, which all contributed to the story as a whole.

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!