Week Six - Transmedia Storytelling

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.”

-Henry Jenkins

Some key characteristics of transmedia:

• The project uses more than one medium, usually at least 3 different parts expand the overall narrative

• There are public points of entry and users are encouraged to contribute content of their own

• They often contain some gaming or interactive elements

• All these elements exist within a ‘story world’

In today's seminar we learnt about transmedia, in simple terms a franchise that stems across multiple types of media. One of the main successful examples of a transmedia is the Star Wars franchise, as this is a fictional world that is promoted and grows through many types of media such as films, comics and tv shows. This is an ever growing universe as long as there is an interest in the franchise they will continue to create merchandise and content that extends it. I have always been a fan of Star Wars so it really puts into perspective how diverse the franchise is, as not only the films are integral to the brand but more recently TV shows have been made inside the Star Wars universe. I also remember playing Lego Star Wars the video game as a kid so have been aware of this transmedia franchise for years but never properly acknowledged it.

As a class we then looked into Clover field, a 2007 film which used these transmedia techniques to its advantage. The marketing team created a viral campaign for the new monster  film by creating eight false new station clips, each in a different language, that documented the destruction of an oil rig. Each clip was slightly different and hinted more towards a supernatural element to the destruction and over time these all started to garner lots of attention, leading to more global interest and therefore a successful campaign. Although this is the first time I personally had heard of the campaign I really liked the concept, as create a fairly niche marketing scheme before the film was out successfully built suspense and therefore must have played into how many people went to see the film.

One other way this technique is used for profit is through transmedia marketing. This is a concept where marketing for a media text is spread across multiple platforms and therefore a story is made which actively engages an audience, which has become a key concept in digital marketing. An example of this is the Starbucks ‘white cup contest’. This is a public marketing campaign that asks contestants to design their own cup and publish the results on social media. This therefore became a successful transmedia marketing campaign as it garnered lots of attention as many wanted to win leading to hundreds of thousands of entries that all subconsciously promoted Starbucks, without them having to pay to promote. Another example is the ‘ALS ice bucket challenge’ which went viral a few years ago leading to 17 million videos,70 billion video views and raised $220 million becoming one of the most successful social media campaigns ever.

I then learnt that the best way to create a transmedia franchise is to create a whole story world. Creating a world people can invest into is much more effective than a singular character as it can grow limitlessly and infinitely. This is reflected through franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Harry Potter, as both these franchises are able to continually grow through the idea that their world holds a range of fictional characters, each having the potential for their own storyline. I found it interesting to relate this idea to other successful films and TV shows and connoted that almost without exception they all are based around the fictional world the characters live in, not necessarily focused on one person.