4. Henry Jenkins says:
Transmedia Storytelling is a
story that …
• unfoldsacross different
media platforms, and
• each platform adds
something unique and
valuable.
Users can…
• join the story at different
places, participate, contribu
te content, and
• each piece motivates the
user to seek out the others.
12. a shoe company
• founded 2006 Total Sales 500,000
Employees 90
• unique business model Interns 22
• product distributed via COGS 37%
recognized 501(c)(3) SG&A 24%
non-profits and non- Distribution 300 Stores; 9 Countries
governmental First Year Sales 10,000 units
organizations (NGO’S)
Yr Sales Goal 300,000 units
Annual 10%
Growth (Y/Y)
EBITDA 153,000
13.
14.
15.
16. Complex 5 Senses
system deliver most
info
Three parts:
thinking, Filter, sort &
feeling, and store using
instinct stories
20. lizard brain decision tree
IS IT ABOUT ME?
No Yes
IS IT DANGEROUS?
IGNORE!
No Yes
IS IT GOOD? RUN LIKE HELL
RIP THEM TO SHREDS
No Yes
IGNORE!
AM I AROUSED?
No Yes
yay! fire off some chemicals to the neocortex.
it will make up a story to explain what i’m feeling.
then it will decide what to do....
IGNORE!
unless i’m already doing something.
in which case, we’re going to need another story
30. MONOMEDIA TRANSMEDIA
One way messaging Dialogue between consumer and brand
Assumes all people can be reached Gives audience choice in engagement
with one media channel path
Single message or theme is adapted to Each media platform expands narrative
fit different media with unique contribution
Creator controls message Audience collaborates in story
development
Profitability limited to ROI of a given Broadens life cycle and profitability of a
platform, no cross media leverage or campaign beyond traditional retail
narrative leverage windows because content is monetizable
Audience attention through Interruption Audience attention through invitation
Audience participation enhances brand
identity and creates customer loyalty
Engages the consumer long-term by
providing value beyond the product
Audience is validated and celebrated
34. Case Study: The Three Little Pigs
Wolf: Website
Pig 1: Website
Wolf: Ning
Pig 1: Anime Network for
Super Pig Team Wolf
Main Story Anchor: Novel Sequels
Pig 2: Twitter Pig 3: Pig 3:
Dialogue Cooking Blog Cookbook
Pig 3: YouTube
Pig 3: Fan Page
Videos
44. Maslow’s creativity, meaning
hierarchy of
transmedia
storytelling
esteem: achievement
belonging: social connection
safety: order, stability, control
physiological
45. how do you find a story?
I’m a lawyer. I
write contracts
and wills.
Where’s the
story in that?
48. Story World: Building A Brand
One Sheet Exercise
Story in three sentences
Work from the experience of the image of
the brand
Characters in three sentences
Who are the characters?
Are you a character?
Does place matter?
Why did you choose that story?
49. 5 key take-aways
1. Start with the story
2. Identify your core story and passion at a
universal level to engage the audience
3. Think multi-dimensionally
4. Connect with your audience’s lizard brain
5. Use the new media landscape—ripple
out, don’t broadcast
6. Prepare to collaborate where you don’t
expect it
50. thank you
Dr. Pamela Brown Rutledge
pam@athinklab.com
Editor's Notes
Richer toolboxYou are in a competitive market—specialization and blogger sitesApproaches that will help you design for the mindMy story—circular path; ER finding me useful; love design and technology; expertise is applying psych and neuropsych to tech, messaging, and design and finding innovative solutions. Fine line between crazy and creative
Before we get started, I’d like you to take a sheet of paper write the story of your company, organization, or cause. It can be yours or something you are working on. We’ll take about two minutes
Now, put take a clean sheet of paper, and take another two minutes to write the story about why you wrote that story. Why did you choose it? What does it mean? How do you feel about it? When did it happen?--Put those away for now, and we’ll come back to them.
Emerging stars: definition, code of credits producers associationWow, he’s a really smart guy. That’s freaking brilliant. What the hell am I supposed to do with it?
Which one is the noun? And what’s transmedia? Transmedia is an adjective. It is modifying ‘storytelling’, meaning that transmedia storytelling is a type of storytelling the same way that a green frog is different from a red frog. What does that tell us about how to get under the hood? It tells us that whatever is going on, transmedia storytelling starts with the story—otherwise we’d have nothing to modify, transmedia or otherwise.
Which one is the noun? And what’s transmedia? Transmedia is an adjective. It is modifying ‘storytelling’, meaning that transmedia storytelling is a type of storytelling the same way that a green frog is different from a red frog. What does that tell us about how to get under the hood? It tells us that whatever is going on, transmedia storytelling starts with the story—otherwise we’d have nothing to modify, transmedia or otherwise.
So while I agree with Jenkins’ attributes as being part of transmedia storytelling, for me, his definition is the transmedia part. Transmedia is the development and execution of assets, packaging and distribution strategy. It’s the wheelbarrow and which direction you push. Those are important, for sure, because otherwise you don’t go anywhere. But the point of any communication is the content, not the vehicle, so we have to start with story. When the Internet exploded, everyone went around saying “content is king.” In Transmedia Storytelling, saying that is a massive understatement, because at the end of the day, it’s not about the media. .
Mantra
Using story in marketing and branding isn’t a new concept. I’ll talk about why story is a particularly powerful form of communication, especially in this media environment in a minute. But before we go there, let’s get clear what we mean by story. What is a story? Through out some words--What do stories contain?Human experienceFeelingsEmotionsTruthsResolutionMemoriesExpectationsTimeWe have this big world of story and so let’s look at some of the key pieces that will be most useful to you. I’m not going to go into the details of narrative structure here. But I’m more concerned with giving you an understanding of how the psychological dynamics of story work so that you know an effective one when you see it.
Here are the four most important components of story. Connecting—Social connection and information transferBodily Experience – PerceptionMeaning – CognitionFeeling – Emotion
Every story starts with a bodily experience. From bodily experience, you get an image that creates a story because even gestures have meaning. We just saw that, right? Even something as simple as a ‘gesture story’ brings us closer together because it’s shared experience. Stories express truths. They touch the core of our humanity physically and psychologically. Everyone in this room experienced a gesture—their own or mimicking someone else’s. When we hear that story from someone, we are inside that bodily experience, and it becomes our own experience and memory. At the same time, it is forever linked by context to that other person. We are connected to that story and, through that story experience, to that person. The feelings in a story start as a bodily experience either in the present or from the past. So feeling is experience. We give experience meaning through story. When you share feeling, you share experience and meaning. That is power of story. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Hemingway, Nike, or the Red Cross.
Let’s look at a case study. This is a privately-held shoe company that has been in business for 5 years. It began with one person and a group of interns, and sold 10,000 pairs of shoes in its first year of operations. By April of 2010, this company had sold over 600,000 pairs of shoes and has grown to over 90 employees with operations in over five countries worldwide. Boasting 10% annual growth year over year, a presence in major chains across America, this company is a growing force in the footwear apparel business.
Now I’m going to tell you a story. In 2006, 29 year old Blake Mycoskie traveled to Argentina to learn how to play polo after series of successful entrepreneurial endeavors, such as affordable laundry service for college students. Poor villages ringed the polo field in Argentina and Blake noticed that most children were shoeless. Sitting in cafes in town, he began to notice how many children in the area were shoeless. Day after day, he would watch kids walking barefoot, cuts and infections plaguing their feet. He learned that these children were not in school because shoes were required for attendance and their families couldn’t afford them. Blake he also noticed many older Argentinians wearing a very simple shoe. This, Blake learned, was the Alpargatas – the traditional shoe worn by Argentinean farmers. An idea took hold of him then that he couldn’t shake. With the help of a local shoemaker, Blake learned how to make the Alpargatas. He returned to his apartment in Venice California with 200 pairs of shoes in his duffel bag and the intention of founding a shoe company with a new business model. This is TOMS shoes. It has a One for One business model; product is prices so that for every pair of shoes TOMS sells, one pair is donated to a child in need in Argentina. One for One. Today, TOMS shoes can be found in Nordstrom’s, Barneys, Whole Foods, and a host of other locations. TOMS gives shoes to children in over 10 countries. Blake always thinks of TOMS as a Movement, not a business. Buy the shoes, and join the Movement of TOMS to become part of global giving.
Close your eyes for just a moment and picture the two slides. What is the feeling in your body? Is there a taste, color, smell to it? Is there a word?; Brand, and brand story – whether you are a for-profit, a non-profit, or a political entity including a candidate—is based on what we experience about it.
As you saw in the TOMS example, storytelling is a very powerful and effective method of engagement. Now we’re going to talk about the psychology and brain science of story that makes that happen. All day long you make decisions on development, design, distribution, communication, and content. Psychology and neuroscience are tools that you can use that are fundamental to the choices you make no matter what medium you choose, or whether you are developing a transmedia campaign for a brand, cause or organization or creating internal communications..
Things to remember about the brain
Nothing is simple. The brain and the body are not separate, like Descartes thought. They are a dynamically inter-connected complex system. Things happen in complicated ways and influence one another. What we experience in the body, influences our mind. How and what we think, manifests in the body. This is not something to underestimate.
When people ‘work,’ their brains use glucose and they get tired, causing cognitive deficiencies that can lead to “rationalizing” thinking that follows irrational behavior. Because our consciousness is the thinking part, we think we’re in control. Rather than one, tidy integrated organ, the brain has three main parts: the Neocortex or conscious thinking brain, the emotional mammalian brain, and the instinctual lizard brain. You only need to remember the Lizard. He’s the most important for communication because he’s standing in charge of all the emotions that are standing between you and the client or customer decision.
Story is the basis of all human communication. There’s information everywhere; we are bombarded all day long through all of our senses. Most of what we experience comes to us from sensory input that is collected and processed by the lizard; it filters what gets sent up to central command
The lizard is also notoriously self-focused. His primary concern is “Is it about me?” If not, he really doesn’t care and that message won’t get in.
Sort, filter; brains link new to old; use stories to justify, rationalize, persuade, inform, share experience, form identityIt’s the job of the thinking brain to fit the pieces together into a story and figure out what goes with what, so we can make sense out of it. We are not aware of the information filtered out, because we didn’t “see” or “hear” it. We are very good, however, at explaining whatever we are feeling so it makes sense. By linking new information to old experiences and information, we use stories to understand how things work, why things happen, to make decisions, to justify decisions, to persuade ourselves and others, to understand our place in society, to learn and pass on social norms, to form identity, and to share experience and emotion and to entertain.
The human brain is a pattern seeking creature. Our brains are hard-wired to turn information into narrative. They provide the order we need to operate everyday.Stories can be thought of as a: mental models, schemas, cognitive maps, or narratives. They shorten mental processing demands because they organize the incoming information into something quickly absorbable in a holistic way.. But no matter what you call them, they provide the file cabinets in our brain: context, categories and meaning. That is what enables our brains filter, process, and store all the stuff around us so we can use it. Because they provide all these sorting mechanisms, they are highly culturally dependent. How many of you remember Gilligan’s Island? Or remember when Steve Martin made frequent appearances on SNL? If I tell you that this guy is a “real Gilligan.” Or that that fellow is a “wild and crazy guy.” A good way to test this is to ask anyone to tell you about a big event, such as when John F. Kennedy died, when Barrack Obama was elected or something even more important, like when you got your first iPad and they’ll tell you, but not by a date. They’ll tell you with a story set in the context of that time. They’ll say something like “I was over at my friend Greg’s house,” or “I was in school and the teacher came in and said the President’s been shot… “ or “I waited in line, man, for four hours just to get the white one…” Story not only organizes our own stream of living into meaningful experience, it is how we convey that experience to others. As soon as humans learned to write and draw, they told stories. Story is the vehicle we use to tell someone about events, feelings, what we care about, when things happened; they are how cultures pass on social norms, customs, and beliefs. For a brand or a cause, stories can tell us how that product or action can not just fit into our own story—but have meaning there.
So, open your notebooks to the second page, where you wrote why you chose the story you did about the organization or cause. How did you write it? Is it written as a mini story?
Transportation viscerally and experientially; put ourselves in role of protagonist; to lizard b rain, real=virtual; Dr. Zhivago, smell the coffeeNarratives transport us. They can take us to a new place. Mentally and emotionally, we have a tendency to put ourselves in the role of the protagonist or major characters, of a narrative. To our lizard brains, imagined experiences and virtual experiences are processed in the same way as real experience. We step into the narrative, and we identify with the characters and with the conflicts they have and this identification is becomes increasingly powerful the more a narrative presents a Universal Truth. When we identify with the protagonist, we make their conflicts our own, and are “transported” viscerally and experientially into their world. The ability of stories to transport us, gives us added perspectives, teaches us new approaches to life and gives us new maps for resilience and survival in the face of struggle. We bring this then bring back into our own lives when we return—this is a form of embodied cognition—we learn because we are feeling the experience. Transportation works because of sensory and emotional engagement. This act of transportation is why we feel cold if we’re watching Dr. Zhivago or can smell the coffee in a Maxwell House commercial.
I have a lemon—a big juicy, fresh lemon. I am going to cut the lemon, and squeeze it a little, and then I will give each of you a slice to put in your mouth.
As much as narratives break up our inward, personal experiences, they also allow us to make meaning of events in our exterior world. Known narratives also become cognitive shorthand. We often take events and apply a known narrative as a way of quickly understanding something; this is a useful cognitive tool but sometimes this is accurate. For example, we could look at Anna Nicole Smith from a number of “known narratives”– to some she might have been a Hooker with a Heart of Gold. To others, she was a Gold Digger.
Everything is transmedia; boundaries blurringSo now we’re going to bring this back to the Transmedia part. Transmedia Storytelling is about narrative flourishing in an enabling environment. As communicators, while things have undergone a tremendous shift with boundaries blending, this is also a magic moment. We have a proliferation of innovative media technologies, widespread access to media, increasingly availability and easy to use tools, and a socially networked environment. Nearly everything is transmedia in the sense that it uses more than one distribution channel or platform. From the coherence, engagement, and participatory view, very few are successful. From a marketing and communications standpoint, the existing way of doing business is pretty much pulverized.
Implicit assumptions: homogenous, passive, manipulatedWe have a huge shift. I’m quite sure you’ve noticed that the communication models have changed from that of one to many to many to many. The one to many model had implicit psychological assumptions that were driving a lot of the marketing and research decisions and questions. These assumptions were that the 1) audiences were largely homogeneous; 2) that audiences were passive, easily fooled and manipulated participants—possibly even kind of stupid.
The new connectivity and capabilities have created an audience with an entirely different psychological profile—particularly apparent among those who have grown up with social network connectivity. It has redefined trust, authenticity, transparency, and shifted the power from single authority sources to multiple influences and social proof.
Perfect environment for TS; turns audience into stakeholders.Dialogue, collaborate, expansive – story and life cycle; invitation; validate and celebrate audience involvementLet’s talk about the differences between Traditional Media, and Transmedia with respect to messaging. There are a number of distinct differences between monomedia and transmedia communications. I’m not going to go over them all, but I just want to highlight a couple of things that are representative of the new audience psychology. They all boil down to relationships and respect:Communication is a dialogueThe audience attention is gained by invitation not interruptionThe audience has choice in engagement—which means you can (and must) deliver more relevant information—what you might call a value proposition--and engaging material. The value proposition may not always be about product features; qualitative attributes of the company matter too.The audience is valued and celebrated as a collaborator, not as a consumer or someone who is supposed to buy your product and go away quietly—like children, seen but not heard.
Cavernous difference – people expect different things shoes, fundraising, campaigningParticipate, heard, acknowledged, speed, honest – relationship not brandThere’s a cavernous difference between the rules for engagement in these two models because there are new expectations about how people interact not just with other people, but with organizations and brand. I don’t care if your selling shoes, raising funds for AIDS, or campaigning for a candidate. People expect some very different things. They expect to participateThey expect to be heardThey expect to be acknowledgedThey expect engagementThey expect authenticity and transparencyThey expect it fastPeople are ahead of the market---producers are still thinking “brands.” The audience is thinking “relationship.”
This new psychological profile makes a perfect environment for transmedia storytelling because to be successful, participation is a key element. It not only leverages and grows your story, it turns audience into stakeholders. By engaging a participatory audience, you are recruiting advocates on your behalf, like the TOMS College clubs. A successful transmedia campaign means it is no longer “your” story, but a larger shared commitment. A transmedia story unfolds across several platforms—whether it’s Twitter or a video game. Each platform is chosen for what is does best in terms of supporting the story and reaching the relevant audience. Each piece is self-contained and satisfying as a standalone media experience but simultaneously adds unique information to the larger story—maybe it’s backstory, or character development, or the telling of one of the rising actions. Combine the media experiences– combining the stories – makes for a much deeper and richer experience and also provides multiple points of entry for the audience. Transmedia storytelling stresses the development of the storyworld, which allows you to add much more depth to the exposition—or basis of the story. The audience participation and collaboration make important contributions to the content, but also, by participating, the audience themselves become stakeholders. This is one of the strengths of Transmedia Storytelling—through this relationship, it extends the shelf life of the campaign and increases the ROI of a brand or cause.
Not repurposed; You as transmedia storySo let’s say you have a story and you want to create a distribution strategy. One thing to know is that everything is transmedia if you communicate in more than one medium. The biggest difference in how it is meant now is that it is not about repurposing the same message. Each piece is unique and contributes it’s own value, but at the same time, can stand alone as a single and fully satisfying piece. You are a transmedia story.Think about your life. You are in the center of many different stories and experiences. None of them are exactly the same. They have happened over time. The story of you has unfolded with different people entering your story and learning something about you and you are both a director and sometimes participant. Your third grade teacher is one sub-plot. She knows about you from the perspective of a teacher trying to figure out how to explain the multiplication tables. You are both a director and sometimes participant, such as when your teacher assigns homework. But your best friend knows about you from a bunch of perspectives, at school, at the In N Out Burger, travel soccer, and in the context of your family, so she has a much richer and more intimate sense of who you are. She makes an effort to find out about different parts of you because she finds the main story so incredible. Because she is so involved, she even contributes content to your story, sometimes influencing the directions you take or the choices you make. Transmedia vision is standing in the middle of the story and building it out, using the medium that is right for each part. You don’t wear your tap shoes to school and you don’t wear your Little League outfit to church (usually).
Here’s a more concrete example of how to build out a world. If the Three Little Pigs were told as a transmedia story it might be designed like this:The basic story would be told in an anchoring medium, such as a novel, TV show, or film. We have four main characters—three pigs and the wolf. We can make opportunities to get to know the wolf from another angle, using for example, a companion website to learn more about him, the path that led him to his current antisocial tendencies, and that could give us a glimpse of his inner genius. It turns out that Wolf has great quantitative talent and has developed mathematical schematics of the impact of wind velocity on the materials of straw, sticks and bricks. A story website could provide a secondary anchor and portal and there we would also be able to find maps of the turnip field, apple tree, local market and County Fair and plan strategic attack and defense positions. For wolf sympathizers, there is a Team Wolf Ning network, where participants can contribute to plotting strategies for attack and plan adjustments based on each volley by the pigs. A similar network exists for Team Pigs. A new game called “Angry Pigs” tossing turnips at wolves is available for download from the site for Droids and iPhones.To get to know the pigs, the first little pig keeps a blog and details the family history, his paranoid suspicions of a dark figure lurking about his house that led to the pigs’ decision to live apart rather than together.An Anime video takes fans on the first little pig’s visions of a pig super hero saving the world and avenging evil as personified by wolves. There are pictures and puzzles of Super Pig on the walls of Pig #1’s house in the main story to give recognition to the people who have seen the Anime but will not detract from any other viewer experience.The second little pig Tweets his chronicle, seeking advice on sustainable building materials and the relative merits of straw and sticks from other Twitterers, and relaying breaking news in the heat of the battle:@littlepig2 walls of house bowing inward, sticks flying off roof – help!The third little pig has a cooking series on YouTube with ways to make Parsley Turnips, Baked Apples, and Stewed Wolf Surprise. He hides clues for secret ingredients in his dishes in lyrics of songs and the YouTube trailers and he encourages viewers to send in their stories about home cooking and wolf encounters to be shared on a website. He publishes a cookbook with recipes often submitted by fans available for $9.95 on Amazon.com, it contains clues to the location of the “real” house of stone, and phone numbers with recorded messages of cooking tips. The YouTube videos are shot on location in the third pig’s house, so if you see the videos, you can additional glimpse of the house interiors and daily life for Pig #3, as well as occasional trips to the Local Market and County Fair, where additional characters can be introduced or where the pigs can link with other story worlds for hard core fans. The hypothetical transmedia version of the Three Little Pigs is not the repurposing of the story across different platforms as in traditional “cross media” advertising. It is the creation of a holistic narrative that unfolds in different and unique manners across different media. It allows for a dialogue between creator and participant. Developers can decide if participant interaction, such as solving the sustainable materials problem, finding the wolf through clues and maps, or creating another character for the story, could move the story in different directions than the original version. Participants might introduce a hunter to the narrative on a fan fiction forum who steps up the stakes for the wolf and alters the time dimension of the wolf’s schemes. I hear that under development is an educational video game based on physics concepts and, there is also talk of a Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game.
Jay-Z is a musician and rapper, clothing design company head, motivational speaker, restauranteur, and if he didn’t have enough claims to fame, he’s also married to Beyonce. Jay-Z is all of those things— What does this mean about Jay-Z? Jay-Z is a BRAND. Jay-Z as a brand has furthered his franchise with very smart use of transmedia. A spectacularly example in his booked “Decoded” and the “Alternate Reality Game” (ARG) in conjunction with Microsoft’s Bing search engine that launched the book. “Decoded the ARG” was designed as a giant scavenger hunt to find the pages of Jay-Z’s book. Clues were in Bing maps that would lead participants to places such as the bottom of Jay-Z’s Miami hotel pool, on the dinner plates in Jay-Zs NYC restaurant, behind the mirror in Jay-Zs NYC bar, sewn into a sleeve of a jacket, and wrapped around and on a 1982 Cadillac Seville parked in front of a Run DMC graffiti mural in Brooklyn. Jay-Z’s book is called “Decoded.” The companion ARG emphasizes both the explicit and implicit message that we are decoding Jay-Z’s life. It is a spectacular example because it allows people to get to know Jay-Z in a participatory and experiential way – we can eat off the his plates, we can experience his tastes by ordering Jay-Zs favorite meal, we can physically visit his old neighborhood in Brooklyn and learn his backstory—what was important to him in the past (the Caddy) as well as where he likes to go today. We can visit the life of Jay-Z through the ARG scavenger hunt, putting the book together. But if we didn’t play the game, we can still read the book. Neither relies on the other to understand Jay-Z. If we do both, we get the franchise of Jay-Z – which is another way of saying his full story.
Jay-Z’s ARG and book launch marketing paradigm is not one-to-one marketing effort to sales or counting clickthroughs, but about feeding the franchise. Jay-Z expanded his market for all his products and ventures, not just the book sales.Barrack Obama showed this in his fundraising – he focused on cultivating his franchise through social media and small donations, whereas Hilary Clinton focused on a traditional one-to-one action-response with her big ticket dinners for well-heeled and reliable donors.
Jay-Z’s book and ARG knocked it out of the park for his franchise. He dramatically expanded his reach—adding 500,000 Facebook friends, expanding his Twitter base and accessing fans with different interests and demographics—readers who don’t wear his clothes, or listen to his music, but have heard him on Oprah’s Masterminds and appreciate him as a motivational speaker. Jay-Z increased his franchise in both numbers and interest, creating a broader launch platform for any future projects and in a way that drives fans from one platform and experience to the other. Both Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga have done the same—built a large base that self-reinforces--through masterful use of social media distribution and compelling personal stories that are synonymous with brand. Effective distribution happens through influencers and networks, not traditional channels. It creates a stronger, more “redundant,” customer base and it creates allegiance to the higher level story of the brand rather than to a specific product, album or clothing line.
Because story engages emotionally, it has a halo effect; the unfolding over time and the emotional engagement create a longer shelf-life and this also extends the franchise ROI. None of this is directly measurable to, for example, Jay-Z’s book sale promotions.Three Key wordsThe key words for transmedia storytelling are: experiential, participatory, and coherent. Jay-Z is a good example of experiential—we stepped into many aspects of his life.
For participatory, let’s look at TOMS again– the story about a young entrepreneur who started a business to solve a local problem. You can find the story of TOMS through many means: news stories, web sites, YouTube videos, and word of mouth. Once you know about TOMS, you can participate in any number of way that don’t have to do with buying shoes but allow me to feel like you’re working toward a positive social purpose. You can join one of the many Tom’s Campus Club at a University or start my own. You can throw a Tom’s Shoe Design party—the new version of Tupperware. You can raise other’s awareness by joining the “walk barefoot for the day” events. You can share and connect by uploading photos of me in my TOMS to the “How We Wear Them” page of TOMS website. You can Twitter with Blake and ask questions like “Is it cool to wear TOMS with socks”? You can also connect with other TOMS fans can comment on videos fans have made and uploaded on commercials for TOMS. All of these make you a stakeholder in the TOMS Movement.
A final example of how well TOMS does transmedia is this letter and friendship bracelet that was sent to TOMS customers. This breaks the fourth wall--changing the field of action to your own physical space. He’s using the participants’ experiential world—much the way that an Alternate Reality Game brings the game play into a real world environment—TOMS brings the power of his movement into your home and in this case, onto your physical person.
Red Bull Participatory
Allowing people to move from recipient to participant, moves them up the hierarchy of needs, from satisfying a base need with a product purchase to connection, achievement, and creativity and meaning.
See that you are telling the story of your company in image. What images appear? What colors are in the images? What is the feeling in your body seeing these images? and open your eyes. See a customer standing in front of you. Step into his/her shoes. From their perspective, hear them tell the story of your company Now step into the shoes of the assistant/CEO/etc.
This has been a quick Transmedia Storytelling 101. We’ve shown some examples from traditional product-based brands as well as an advocacy brand – which is really what TOMS is. The story of TOMS is really about advocacy. Each of you are here because you are leaders. Whatever organization you lead is going to have a story – and it’s going to be a bigger and more organic story than a product-based company, and its going to have more places for participation. So how do you find your story?Let’s do one more set of exercises. See that you are telling the story of your company in image. What images appear? What colors are in the images? What is the feeling in your body seeing these images? and open your eyes. Story, as we’ve found today, is about feelings, images and experiences. It is also about the perspective of the storyteller, and the dynamic created by the listener’s response. Notes – If time allows another exercise would be to:See a customer standing in front of you. Step into his/her shoes. From their perspective, hear them tell the story of your company Now step into the shoes of the assistant/CEO/etc. Step back into your own shoes. What has changed? What have you learned? Close your eyes. 3x. See that you are telling the creative story of your company or cause to someone. What is the expression of that person as you are telling it? How do you feel seeing that expression? 1x. See that you are telling the heroic story of your company or cause to that person. What is their expression now? How do you feel seeing it? 1x. See that you are telling the collaborative story of your company or cause to that person. What is their expression? 1x. Which of these expressions do you prefer? 1x, and open your eyes. You might want to write in your notebooks what it feels like or what you see.
Start with the storyIdentify your core story and passion at a universal level to engage the audienceThink multi-dimensionallyConnect with your audience’s lizard brainUse the new media landscape—ripple out, don’t broadcastPrepare to collaborate where you don’t expect it
The whole reason we started A Think Lab, was that we’re passionate about helping companies elevate their ideas and designs from a product to a vision.
