The World Is Flat: Will Transmedia Overtake Social Media?
One of my favorite panels from SXSWi asked an increasingly important question concerning digital marketing and online storytelling: “Transmedia 2010, are we there yet?”
Presented by Daniel Lorenzetti and Juan Garcia, the panel looked at the adoption of transmedia storytelling tactics by major media outlets. For those who are just reading about transmedia for the first time, it was first defined by USC professor Henry Jenkins:
“Transmedia is not that new of a concept, but the emergence of today’s social and mobile networking technologies, combined with the myriad of entry points to brand messaging, meaning that transmedia storytelling should be central to every marketing effort, online or otherwise.”
Put simply, transmedia storytelling aims to engage consumers at every entry point by extending a story. This type of storytelling is already commonplace with TV shows like The Office, 30 Rock, and Community where branded web extras are advertised during the airing of the show itself. In this way, advertisers are extending the story from the small screen to the web.
While this is fine and dandy, and also an interesting way to extend a story from TV to the web, many social media purists are asking, “Where’s the interaction? Where’s the engagement? The power of social media lies in the two-way conversation between brand and consumer! How do these branded web extras create engagement, NBC?” Those are valuable questions to ask.
The future of transmedia storytelling will offer a greater level of engagement than anything we have seen with social media thus far. Check this out:
“If I Can Dream” is a new web based reality show from American Idol creator Simon Fuller. Five young men and women, looking for stardom, live in a house in Los Angeles with cameras in every nook and cranny. There are even cameras in their cars. While this may seem just like Big Brother, there is a twist – users can interact directly with the members of the house through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as the story unfolds. This is a new level of engagement, a new level of reality television. What’s more? Similar to American Idol, you help choose who will become a star. The user has a direct impact on which housemate will achieve stardom.
This marks a new level of user engagement in a storyline – you have control of the outcome, or at the very least, an illusion of control, and you get to interact with characters as the story unfolds.
So is this new level of engagement better described as social media or as transmedia? Read the rest of this entry »
