Every producer aspires to design an entertainment brand that can grow into a pop icon, a brand whose storyworld or hero has enough creative potential to power spin-offs and reboots, theme park rides and acres of merchandise.

1. Transmedia Storytelling
Every producer aspires to design an entertainment brand that can grow into a pop
icon, a brand whose storyworld or hero has enough creative potential to power spin-
offs and reboots, theme park rides and acres of merchandise. But, how can
independents achieve this degree of success if they don’t have one hundred million
dollars to spend on a marketing campaign or the time to gamble on a one in a million
viral video or game. In this book, I will show you how to use a transmedial approach
to build an entertainment brand that can conquer audiences, readers and users around
the globe and in a myriad of platforms.
Through my own experience producing transmedia with my company beActive, I
have developed a step-by-step approach to building long-running multi-platform
entertainment brands and loyal viewing communities. I want to share my knowledge
with filmmakers, television, games, and digital content producers, marketers and
brand managers, audiovisual and media students who want to learn a trick or two
about how to use stories and a transmedial approach to marketing and communication
to attract audiences and users to their stories and products.
In the past decade, transmedia has proved invaluable as a communications strategy.
Its real value lies in its prioritization of a dynamic storytelling experience as opposed
to a more or less static broadcast. I was eight years old when I heard on the radio a
Portuguese remake of Orson Welles’ play, War of the Worlds. It was so persuasive in
its approach; I was absolutely convinced that an alien force had invaded us.
Decades earlier, Welles first broadcast his adaptation of H. G. Wells’ popular novel;
the impact it had on audiences was immense. Listeners swamped police switchboards
with panicked calls, and some fled their homes. Even though the audience was
familiar with Wells’ story, they engaged in an unprecedented manner with Welles’
use of a popular platform. I was fascinated by the way he made the story function, as
a live event, blurring the lines, is a radical way, between fiction and reality. Looking
back, I realised that storytelling is as much about the way in which you choose to tell
a story as it is about multiplatform entertainment and content.
One of the defining moments of my early career as a writer-producer occurred in
2001 when I was working on a collaborative primetime series with Portugal’s TV
Cabo and Microsoft. At the time, Microsoft was exploring the technical feasibility of
interactive television and they were road-testing their products in Portugal before
launching a product to a global audience. As the project progressed, I became more
and more interested in how different types of content attract different types of
audiences and illicit particular responses. When you present your audience with a
format that is slightly more engaging than the typical television series, more often
than not they’ll form an emotional connection to the narrative and respond to it in a
more way that is both more profound and enduring.
The multiplatform interactive card game we’d developed to promote an existing TV
show is a case in point. The multi-player game employed a simplistic design and
allowed each player to interact with the game itself as well as other audience
members. Players could challenge other individuals in the viewing community,
partner up with other players, and chat. Over time, the game became more successful

2. than its primetime counterpart because its players could interact one another and
actively participate with the content. This social element created a sense of
conversation amongst the players, which enriched their experience and spurred further
interaction. The game’s success convinced me that, in a world saturated with media,
you can still capture an audience by telling your story in a way that brings people
together.
Storytelling is a social experience. We’ve been telling stories for millennia to
establish connections between others and ourselves and to make sense of the world
around us. As producers, we shouldn’t forget how important this need to interact and
participate is to telling and experiencing a story. The most affective stories therefore
are inclusive, not exclusive. They create a community of viewers engaged in ongoing
dialogue. Unlike the ‘choose your own adventure’ style of storytelling, transmedia
enriches story by activating the human affinity toward shared experience. Whatever
your take on a television show or film, that perception is enhanced in conversation
when you can share and revisit the story with someone else. Certainly one of the
pleasures of watching a big name show is the opportunity for discourse it creates.
Mad Men is all the more relevant to me if my friends or coworkers are always
watching it and we can discuss the show collectively.
Before the age of digital media, when you watched a television show, you could only
talk with the person beside you on the couch, over the telephone, or at work the
following day. It was impossible to have the sort of global, real-time conversations we
have routinely today. When I was in school, for instance, I would tune in to watch the
latest hit animated show at six p.m., but I would have to wait until the following day
to chat with my friends about it, and even then my voice was limited to a very
localised audience – my classmates.
The interactive TV card game mentioned above was ground breaking in that allowed
players to communicate remotely in real time with people they more than likely did
not know. The actuality of the story was made all the more palpable by its ability to
create the occasion for conversation between strangers. Nowadays, new digital
technologies and social media have created platforms through which communication
between individuals and audiences occurs on a global scale in real time.