Piece adds new elements to definition - don't agree with all myself: California Chronicle | TRANSMEDIA: Starring role

Transmedia is about more than just running content across multiple platforms; it involves engaging an audience in a story wherever they happen to be coming to it from

With half a million game downloads attracting 4,000 dedicated players in 165 countries and widespread media attention, Conspiracy For Good far exceeded the targets of its sponsor Nokia. Devised to introduce Nokia's service platform Ovi, it's an audience participatory entertainment unfolding online across interactive theatre, live event and mobile app.

"With the explosion of social media, the way brands interact with an audience has increased in vitality," says Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's executive VP of services and mobile solutions. "Conspiracy For Good is a unique attempt to enhance a story with technology. While the direction in terms of engaging people through interactivity is clear, exploration of this format is very new."

Much of the media hoopla surrounded the project's use of 'transmedia', a technique hailed in some quarters as a game-changer for the way people interact with stories and brands. Yet it's more evolutionary than the hype suggests, having been around for a decade in various guises.

Indeed, the writer of Conspiracy For Good, Heroes creator Tim Kring, says transmedia is a "fancy word for a simple concept: telling stories across multiple platforms". Ojanpera admits transmedia wasn't in Nokia's vocabulary when it conceived the project over two years ago.

Recognising transmedia

The term was first floated in the early-1990s to represent the idea that narrative can flow from one media platform to the next. It was resurrected in 2006 by MIT professor Henry Jenkins, whose work Convergence Culture lent the movement a conceptual template appropriated by everyone working in the field since.

One of those was Jeff Gomez, co-founder of New York's Starlight Runner Entertainment, who lobbied the Producers Guild of America (PGA) to sanction an official production credit. "In Hollywood, everything is in the credit," he says. "I became frustrated that what I was doing was being confused with game design or cross platform. Transmedia isn't about porting the same content across multiple media, but doing so in such a way that each platform contributes a new and unique aspect to the story." He got his wish in April this year when Transmedia Producer was ratified by the PGA as 'the person responsible for shepherding narrative content across at least three different media platforms'.

The term has since become a marketing buzzword, although its definition remains elusive. "Some people think of transmedia storytelling as a giant jigsaw, where the pieces exist on different platforms," says Simon Meek, producer at Tern TV, which produced transmedia-style project The Beauty of Maps. "As the user consumes these isolated chunks, they combine to create a bigger story."

Transmedia shares many characteristics with projects previously known as cross-platform. Channel 4 Education commissioned careers advice project The Insiders in 2008, which featured content entry points across multiple destinations, combining social media, bespoke sites, iTunes and on-air trails and even outdoors. James Kirkham, MD of Holler, which produced the project with TwentyTwenty Television, says, "We called it a cross-media platform then, but now a similarly exploded narrative would be classed transmedia."

While cross-platform indicates a product is spread across platforms, it doesn't convey the necessity to tell a narrative in the way that transmedia is understood to. Matt Locke, Channel 4's acting head of cross-platform, says, "Story worlds have been extended onto different platforms way back to Star Wars, when it was mostly seen as marketing and merchandise. Now the web allows the audience to immediately give their thoughts to the writers and producers so that they're a participant in the story's creation. Transmedia isn't about platforms but a decision by the creative team that bakes engagement into the project's structure at inception."

Gomez agrees. "Transmedia invites a mass audience to express themselves directly to the storyteller, who's obliged to respond. That dialogue is unique in mass media."

Lost is a prime example of a linear TV programme created with a complementary online narrative that feeds characters and subplots back into the show. Similar examples include Heroes, Misfits, Skins and upcoming web drama Hollyoaks Freshers, described by Channel 4 cross-platform commissioner of entertainment, drama and comedy Jody Smith as "a classic transmedia commission".

"We're putting characters onto Facebook so you can keep up to date between episodes via video blogs and status reports," she says. "Transmedia gives the story depth and keeps it alive long after the basic TV content has aired."

Exponents suggest audiences can access transmedia stories via any of the platforms on which it's carried, yet TV remains the primary medium. Perhaps this is because in Jenkins' theory few consumers will be able to dedicate the time required to get the whole picture.

"We don't want to turn any project into a wild goose chase and force people to consume everything," says Smith. "We don't want major plot points online or in live events where only a few thousand will see them."

Brand involvement

It's no coincidence that transmedia's best examples are from TV (Heroes), cinema (Head Trauma) and gaming (Electronic Arts' Dead Space), where the brand is itself the story. But that doesn't preclude brands getting involved as part of the story - series one of Misfits featured Nokia sponsorship, with producer Clerkenwell Films creating a mobile app that linked the drama to a Nokia- sponsored event - or devising its own narrative.

"Whereas branded entertainment or product placement drive awareness by tacking the brand onto something else, transmedia builds brand mythology," stresses Gomez. The attraction of transmedia to brands is that it encourages participation and the extension of the brand's narrative by its target audience. At the same time, this poses a risk since the narrative is then hard to control.

Gomez even points to the Iranian unrest last June as an example of transmedia erupting online then going global via social networks and transcending any one individual or group control. "This exhibited a vitally important aspect of transmedia in that there was no central person or brand behind this spontaneous outburst," he says. "This is transmedia taken to its logical conclusion."

Jenkins describes this as 'collective intelligence', where a community carries much more than any individual within it. So a vital aspect for brands building transmedia campaigns is to incorporate social benefit as a motivation to participate. Nokia achieved this in Conspiracy For Good, working with charities to equip five libraries in Africa.

"We advise that the brand message needs to have an aspirational core," says Gomez. "Content will have a certain invulnerability to negative feedback if its themes are seen to mean well or contribute something."

According to Kirkham, brands have an opportunity to shift from simple intrusive display advertising towards genuinely compelling experiences. "The smarter brands will be able to immerse themselves in a transmedia project and in turn attract and immerse the audience in their brand ethos, above all making people feel something."

Cross-over medium

The multiplicity of devices and near-instantaneous broadband connections have helped evolve cross-platform projects into transmedia ones. But smartphone growth has arguably been the biggest catalyst for its take-off.

"Mobile often provides the glue for many campaign elements," says Tom Thorne, MD of multi-channel agency Candyspace Media. "The crux to getting transmedia right is in the interface between technology and narrative."

It's no coincidence that Nokia has made the biggest impact in this space. "It's a natural fit for technology partners and mobile apps provide a means of getting your product involved in the story," says Ann Wixley, creative director of media agency MEC. "A basic trait of transmedia is to blur reality and fiction, and since you take a mobile with you everywhere, it can be used to weave all manner of real locations, objects or events into the narrative."

Is transmedia truly transformative of the way brands and content producers engage with audiences, or is it just dressing familiar concepts in new clothes? Opinion varies.

Wixley believes it to be "jargon", and even Kring admits it's a "catch-all phrase" for trying to create narrative across multiple platforms, "something born from the necessity of trying to reach people online".

Channel 4's Locke also downplays its influence. "Eventually we'll see persistent story worlds created as a matter of course, rather than producing a TV show which is aired once and forgotten about. What will define its potential is whether it can generate new revenue streams for broadcasters to invest in content."

Having fought for Hollywood recognition of the intellectual property he's creating, Gomez has the most forthright view. "Transmedia development, production and implementation is a paradigm shift," he asserts. "There's a generation of people who are the most self-expressed. They're already moving rapidly and seamlessly from one platform to the next; it's almost instinctual. The problem is that their content isn't doing that right now."

What is transmedia?

* A fusion of real life and fiction

* Tells bespoke parts of the same story on multiple platforms and through live events

* Access to the story can be from any platform at any time

* Needs to have an element of social benefit

* Closes the feedback loop between storyteller/brand and audience

* A community creates and extends the story beyond the control of a single creator

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