1. Measuring RoI for Transmedia Storytelling
Presentation to
Spoilrr Meet-up Group
San Francisco, California
Robert Pratten
Founder, TransmediaStoryteller.com
26th October 2010

2. About me

3. This presentation
• Intro to transmedia: basic concepts
– what is transmedia storytelling?
– types of transmedia storytelling
– why is "transmedia“ so popular?
• Measuring RoI in Transmedia
– Cost-justifying “free” content
– The $ value of advocacy

4. Part 1: Introduction to Transmedia

5. Transmedia storytelling
…is telling a story across multiple media and,
if possible, with audience participation,
interaction or collaboration…
...with each product or experience satisfying
in its own right
…and consumption of each additional media
heightening the audience’ understanding,
enjoyment and affection for the
storyworld.

6. Transmedia storytelling

7. Narrative space
NEW
PLACE
CURRENT
story

8. Story and storyworld

9. Harry Bosch (Author: Michael Connelly)
Harry Bosch
Eleanor Wish
Mickey Haller
“The Mythos” – e.g. the Storyworld
Book B
Book A
Crime (Homicide) Book C
LA Times
Fictional World Past & Present
LAPD
The FBI
Los Angeles
Rodney King Real World Past & Present
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connelly

10. Franchise transmedia
multiple platforms create a collection of individual experiences

11. Types of Transmedia

12. Portmanteau transmedia
multiple platforms contribute to a single experience

13. Mix & match of transmedia types
ARG
Comic Book Feature Film

14. Why Transmedia
• Millennials/GenY expect it:
– simultaneous multi-platform consumption of media
– multiple media
• More audience touchpoints & improved engagement in
world exploding with content:
– address discovery & attention; piracy; UGC
• Increased advocacy (more later...)
• Consumers actively avoiding ads: therefore brands
seeking truly engaging experiences
• Exciting and fun: oceans of uncharted water to explore

15. Transmedia Tao

16. Part 2: Measuring RoI

17. Measuring RoI for Transmedia Storytelling
“how do we cost-justify the content and
experiences we give away for free?”

18. Assumptions
• Other products or services sold to generate revenue
• The free content and experiences are sharable
• Not an isolated give-away but an on-going relationship
with audience/consumers
• There is a content strategy: you know who each piece
of content is intended for and how it will be used

19. Multi-platform strategy
Official
Good
site App Store
Revenue
YouTube
piracy
Poor
Poor Good
Spread, Attention and Credibility

20. Content that’s designed for a purpose

21. Determine goals
• Awareness
• Advocacy
• Sales
• Insights

22. Cost-justifying the investment
• Awareness
– Comparison with other methods (e.g. paid ads)
• Advocacy
– Net Promoter (word-of-mouth economic framework)
– Customer Value Matrix
• Sales
– New revenue from new customers
– New revenue for existing customers
• Insights
– reduced cost of product development
– reduced cost of scrapped

23. Awareness

24. Awareness
• Awareness is measured by recall
• Recall is significantly higher for rich media
than for TV or banner ads
• In measuring cost-effectiveness, the question
is “how much do I need to spend for the same
level of recall?” (e.g. not for number of views)
• Free content lives on long after paid
advertising has been spent and replaced

25. Recall comparisons

26. Advocacy

27. Net Promoter Word-of-Mouth Economic
Framework
Net Promoter is another approach to measuring the ROI in empowering advocates. The methodology places
customers along a spectrum from Detractor (negative word-of-mouth) through to Promoter (positive referrals).

28. Calculating a Customer’s Worth

29. Customer Value Matrix (Harvard Business
Review)
In the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article How Valuable is Word of Mouth?, researchers
found that a company’s most valuable customers were those whose word of mouth brought in
the most profitable new customers regardless of how much they bought themselves.
Well-designed transmedia will have the impact of increasing referrals (and hence customer
value) in all segments, effectively converting the least valuable Misers into Advocates and
Affluents into Champions.
Customer’s Lifetime Value
Affluents Champions
high
Buy a lot but don’t
market well
Misers Advocates
low Don’t buy a lot but are
strong marketers
low high
Customer’s Referral Value

30. Why Should Free All Be Spreadable?

31. The Consumer Funnel
*
consumer sees rich media
attitude
brand emotional
brand awareness image
towards
response
rich media
brand consideration
love the
brand preference media
consumer funnel
buying
intention
purchase share/remix
customer loyalty
customer advocacy content
creation
*Borrowed from Elaboration Likelihood Model, Richard E Petty and John T Cacioppo

32. Cost-justification
consumer sees rich media
A. Comparison with
other media in terms brand attitude
emotional
brand awareness towards
of basic awareness image
media
response
generation. brand consideration
love the
brand media
preference
buying
intention
B. Calculating the word-of- purchase
share/remix
mouth referral and
customer lifetime value customer loyalty
(CLV) benefits.
customer advocacy content
creation

33. Free content & experiences are social media
(e.g. meant to be shared)
• Uncreative or clumsy attempts to motivate
audience to “buy now” destroy the social capital
inherent in forwarding content to a friend and
hence significantly damage its chances of
spreading
• Capturing sales will be best accomplished by
combining marketing methods.
• Calls-to-action in free content should offer
prospect of further engagement - directing
audience to homepage where new calls-to-action
motivated the buy.

34. Does free content generate sales?
Microsoft’s whitepaper, The Long Road to Conversion, criticizes what it calls “the last
advert model” in evaluating marketing ROI in which calculations over-attribute
sales success to the last click before conversion. After studying 17 million sales
conversions between May and September 2008 they found that:
• impression-based & rich media advertising influenced
purchasing decisions as many as 30 days out from the actual
sale
• click-through rates were 22% higher for search advertising
campaigns assisted by impression-based ads.
That is, although impression ads and rich media are generating sales, few
marketers record their full contribution to success because the “click” is attributed
to the final search ad and because measurement of ad spending rarely looks far
enough back in the history of the consumer’s contact with the brand.

35. Sales

36. Justifying free content for existing fans
• Increase in advocacy generates:
– increased margin per fan (e.g. up-sell to “collectors
edition”)
– market for new products (role-play, belonging, gifting)
– new sales to new audience
• Increase in life-time value of IP
– deeper mythos = more sustainable (from cult to pop),
more opportunities… greater longevity
– increased customer life-time value

37. Summary
• Transmedia storytelling is increasing audience
engagement (and hence revenue) by telling
stories across multiple platforms and allowing
audience participation.
• Return on investment can be measured by an
increase in:
– Awareness
– Advocacy
– Sales
– Insights

38. Transmedia Storyteller
Robert Pratten
twitter.com/zenfilms
www.transmediastoryteller.com