Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) says, “Our current multi-channel, multi-screen, ‘always on’ world is giving rise to a new form of storytelling, dubbed ‘transmedia,’ that unfolds a narrative across multiple media channels.”
A single story may present some elements through a television series or a motion picture with additional narrative threads explored in comic books, video games, or a collection of websites and Twitter feeds. Depending on their level of interest, fans can engage in selection of these story elements or follow all of them to fully immerse themselves in the world of the story.
Andrea Phillips, author of A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms, offers her observations on the current shift happening in marketing, including stealth advertising across media:
It has to do with experience. There's a point where you enjoy ambiguity. The problem is that that point is a little bit different for everyone. And the audience wants to be in control of knowing where that line is. When you present yourself as real, you open yourself to creating problems for people.
Assuming that your audience can't possibly know it's fictional is ridiculous on the face of it…. The idea that admitting that something was fictional would ruin the whole thing winds up being a non-starter. An audience is a little more robust than that. They're not so fragile that when they can find out that it's not real, it will ruin it….
There's a myth that if you make something interesting and you tell a couple of people, it will spread virally across the Internet. That is, by and large, a terrible, terrible lie. It is not true that the cream rises to the top on the Internet.
When you launch something, don't just send someone a mysterious box. Send them a mysterious box if you have to, but also send them a letter with a URL telling them what you're doing. Send out a press release. Make sure people know what it is you're going to do, and make sure that they know before it's almost done or nobody will look at it.
These things do have to be marketed and promoted exactly the same way that every other entertainment medium does. It's frustrating to see campaigns start with no concept of a marketing budget, no concept of how they're going to spread the word beyond, "Well, people will know because it's cool."
...There's a lot of talk about the attention economy, where we're in a flat-out war for attention. Marketers have cottoned to the idea that people aren't going to look at marketing just because you put it in front of them. People simply don't notice banner ads. Calling [the impact of a banner ad] an ‘impression’ is a terrible lie, because it isn't making an impression on anybody. You just tune it out. It might as well not exist.
Marketers have started to realize they need to create content people will seek out because it has value to them, independent of the value to the marketer. You're seeing things like the Old Spice guy, which has tremendous entertainment value — partly because it's really funny and partly because Isaiah Mustafa is extremely beautiful to look at — and people seek that out because there's something there that they want. And the marketing comes in subtly.
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