Transmedia: The Next Step for Multi-Channel Marketing
What is transmedia?
Oh so like marketing, but not?
I heard these questions over and over while studying the very subject at Winona State University. Such confusion even saw the program change its name to Creative Digital Media. I remember when it all clicked, sitting in the windowless B5 basement classroom with my then professor Miguel Elizalde. He preached something that not many understood at the time and something that I only recently came to grasp. Although I have shifted lanes and am now studying design, I feel this topic deserves much more attention. I also believe that the world of service design can aid in some of transmedia’s shortcomings and allow it to become the superpower for narrative consumption that it deserves. This will be the first in a series of essays that will shine light on the niche world building and under utilized marketing approach of transmedia storytelling and begin a discussion on the way interaction design can create seamless and powerful content consumption ecosystems. In this first piece I want to provide an overview of transmedia, how it differs from multi channel marketing, and a few contextual examples.
In short: transmedia is a form of narrative delivery that harnesses the power of multiple consumption ports to create an immersive storytelling experience.
How Transmedia and Multi Channel Marketing Differ
An easy way to understand transmedia is to talk about it in relation to multi channel marketing (MCM). Although the two concepts are similar there are several key distinctions. MCM has been used for decades and places content pieces across multiple consumption ports to create an entrancing marketing environment. Take the Star Wars canon for example. The franchise started with movies, but now contains video games, toys, and even branded cereal. The key distinction here is that transmedia works to create an overall narrative experience that focuses on storytelling while MCM strides to create an overall marketing tool that utilizes a medium at the center with supporting and referential posterior content. This is not to say however that transmedia can’t be used as a marketing tool, it does though require additional foresight and planning.
Like A Tent
A helpful concept here is tent pole marketing. MCM and transmedia both spread content across multiple points while revolving around a central content form, or tent pole. The difference lies in how the supporting poles are connected. Transmedia places a fraction of the overall narrative structure on each of the poles instead of them all standing alone only connecting to the central piece through canon referencing.
Each narrative port builds on the last thus creating an inherently stronger structure. In MCM the supporting tent poles are all under the same roof, but disconnected and standing alone with connecting lines only to the center piece. Although they exist in the same canon, they do not necessarily support each other. Instead of an MCM model where a toy from the Star Wars franchise is simply a duplication of a character from the latest movie (the central tent pole), a transmedia sees the toy itself aid in an aspect of the overall narrative consumption. People don’t need to have the toy in order to understand the movie, but in the transmedia model the toy provides an insight to the story itself otherwise left unknown in the film. Even the branded cereal mentioned above could act in this way.
Perhaps the next Star Wars movie will center around a collection of symbols needed to save the universe. The movie starts and four of the five symbols are already known. The movie then spends 90 minutes searching out this mystery symbol. Why not make the branded cereal in the four shapes, with 1 of 100 boxes containing the mystery shape. The cereal can be released prior to the movie and teased as to not spoil the film. Consumers can now participate in their own journey to find the needed symbol. In essence, transmedia seeks to not just duplicate narrative elements across consumption ports, like MCM, instead it seeks to involve those ports in the narrative experience itself.
A Famed Example
Although a proposal like custom cereal may seem like a stretch, many real world transmedia experiences have seen incredible praise and cult like status. One of the most historic came before The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s second Batman installment. The campaign centered its activity around the site Ibelieveinharveydent.com. Over 11 million unique page views from 75 countries grew to become the largest campaign of its kind in history. The gamified experience saw people acting as Gotham city residents and taking orders from a virtual Joker.
Real world events and scavenger hunts in large cities allowed for users to become part of the world Batman was trying to protect. A phone number, for example, was written in the sky outside of a comic convention. Calling the number gave a list of instructions that thousands did. The campaign itself generated heaps of press and blog coverage therefore growing its presence online and increasing participation. A fantastic video that discusses the experience can be seen below.
This utilization of transmedia has all the marketing buzz words to widen the eyes of any executive: guerilla, viral, earned, fandom, etc.
Current Limitations
Utilizing transmedia in such a manner however is not a one size fits all tool to replace MCM. I want to close this article by addressing some of the larger challenges such storytelling has. Transmedia relies on some form of narrative content as the centerpiece that the ecosystem revolves around. An album, movie, or video game for example work great because the core aspect is narrative content. Transmedia would not necessarily work with a marketing campaign for Tide soap. Secondly, a high burden of entry exists for most, if not all, user interaction forms present in a transmedia model. The Batman example above required a plethora of “heavy users” that other less known franchises would not have.
The next article in this series will address such high burden of entries and discuss how emerging technologies may solve this problem. The third and final piece will then discuss the 7 needed traits of any good transmedia campaign.
