Universe Creation 101

Well, not quite ‘death’ but an indefinite hiatus. I’m powering down this blog for a few reasons, one of which is my desire to finish my PhD. I’ve tried for the last year and a half to do PhD writing and work and this blog, but found the mindsets are somewhat incompatable. I’ve decided therefore to close this blog down. I don’t know if I’ll bring it up again and if I do when, or whether I’ll start another one. But I do know that I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging here these past few years. I have especially enjoyed meeting many of you because of the blog, and seeing ‘cross-media’ (etc) projects become ubiquitous. Thankfully, the area has alot more people looking at it now, from alot of different perspectives. Here are some blogs that will keep you informed:

• Networked Performance: research blog that posts about emerging network-enabled practice;
• You can read and listen to news about alternate reality games and just about any online extension of a film, TV or book property on the ARGNet blog and ARG Netcast (podcast);
• Henry Jenkins personal blog and the Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of goodies from a media studies perspective about ‘transmedia storytelling’ and ‘convergence culture’ in general;
• DeMontfort University share their investigations into what they term ’Transliteracy’ at their PART blog;
• Jeff Gomez, the CEO of Starlight Runner and longtime practitioner of ‘trans-media’ projects, is now blogging regularly about his insights and experience over at the Producers Guild of America blog;
• Monique de Haas blogs about ‘crossmedia communication’ occasionally;
• Tony Walsh posts semi-regularly on alternate reality games;
• Valentina Rao blogs about crossmedia games and anything related to that at Games Across Media, and will hopefully be starting her PhD on the subject soon;
• Johnathan Gray, Derek Johnson and Ivan Askwith are blogging about everything around TV and film at The Extratextuals;
• Crossmedia Dialog is a group blog that post regularly on crossmedia in Amsterdam and worldwide;
• Faris Yakob, Adam Crowe blog about ‘transmedia planning’ and other changes to the marketing industry;
• Jak Boumans posts every single day about stuff happening in the Netherlands and worldwide at Buziaulane; 
• Max Giovognoli runs everything to do with cross-media in Italy;
• MobileCrossMedia is a blog that looks at the different ways mobile phones can network with different devices and the real world;
• If you don’t already get it, the Convergence Newsletter has regular interesting newsletters about convergence in journalism and has been my favourite newsletter for the past few years;

I don’t plan to be blogging here about events or publications I’m involved in, instead I’ll pop them on my bio site. But for now, here are some events I’m involved with, in the not-too-distant-future:

• I’ll be on the ‘expert panel’ with Mark McCrindle and Tim Flattery at Mitchell Communications Group ’s launch of ‘While You Weren’t Watching’, a documentary on changes to branded entertainment etc in which I was interviewed. The launch is private but the documentary will be put online I believe in Nov; 
• I have my own panel on ‘Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration’, and I am a panelist in Darren Toft’s panel on ‘What Happened to New Media Art?’ at the Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment in Dec;
• I’ll be on the panel on ‘Cyber-Born Film’ at Megan Spencer’s Destination Festival (or DestFest) in Dec;
• In Jan 08, I’ll be a guest lecturer again for Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media, De Montfort University, UK;
• In Feb 08, my essay on ‘Tiering in Alternate Reality Games’ will be published in the special issue of Convergence edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze.

For now though, I will continue to be online in a different way. I’ve started a podcast, a podcast where I’ll interview talented people working in this area. My ‘birth’ podcast is a bit awkward, but the second is a great one: an interview with Stitch Media’s Evan Jones. At the site, I also provide sneak preview information about Stitch Media’s latest project.

That is it for me here, thankyou all for sharing this time with me. I’ll see you on the other side of my PhD.

Check it out: www.ChristyDena.com  

Check it out: www.UniverseCreation101.com

Dynamic Logic have just released their latest study:

Dynamic Logic, a Millward Brown company, releases new analysis of 32 cross-media campaigns across ten categories showing that media work best when used together. All three media platforms – television, magazines, and online – contribute incrementally to brand metrics, but at different levels, bringing various strengths at different points along the purchase funnel. TV and online’s contributions were more apparent during the awareness stages while magazines were stronger at building brand favorability and purchase intent.

Check it out: http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/WhatsInTheMix/Oct2007.html

As I’ve mentioned before, the upcoming episode (Wed Oct 24th in the US) of CSI:NY will feature and continue in the online virtual world Second Life. A primer has been released on youtube, getting audiences excited and prepared for cross-platform traversal, which is good!:

[youtube 3-ZmjA7GCzQ]

I kept forgeting to post about this but just in case there are some of you that not aware of what Radiohead are doing, here it is. Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, will be released in December but you can preorder at their website. Rather than just offer the CDs for buying, Radiohead have undertaken four very important strategies:

1. Cross-media bundling: When you purchase the album on their website, you get the box set which includes the music on CDs, the music on vinyl and as a digital file. They use the method common in the online pornography industry: order the tangible product, it’ll get posted to you, but while you wait you can download the file immediately. Considering the subject matter of the pornos, I can understand the desire for immediacy. :/ The point about cross-media bunding, however, is that it acknowledges the affordances and in the case of the vinyl, the sentimental and connisseur value of certain media. It also acknowledges the reality of use: people use lots of different media platforms to experience a product. A CD on the stereo for instance, digital files on the iPod and so on. The content is not bound to a particular medium.
2. Staggered release: The digital download is available as of 10th October, about two months before the boxset. This helps build awareness and familiarity with the product, which should translate to sales of the boxset with its added value.
3. Enhanced material: Like the pervasive method of the feature film DVD industry, the product provides extra materials such as new songs on top of the album, photos and artwork (which, I note, has also been used in the music industry as well). The digital download and obviously any pirated files, will not have this added value.
4. Consumer-defined price: The price of the digital download is not pre-defined, instead, the consumer (person!) can name any price they want to pay for the download. They can even put in nothing. Amazing. Obviously this is not something that most bands or creators in general can do. Radiohead are in a financial position to take such giant leaps. But gee it is great. I personally cannot stand the tactic producers use to combat pirating by locking their material and so this free-will counter-balance is endearing to me.

There is so much I could say but no need to delay you any longer.

Check it out: http://www.radiohead.com

A couple of years ago Scott Donaton, the editor of Advertising Age, published a book called Madison & Vine: Why the Entertainment and Marketing Industries Must Converge to Survive. Scott revisited ‘branded entertainment’ in a talk he gave recently, which has been published at the Madison & Vine section of Advertising Age. In the article he quickly explains what Madison & Vine is:

At its simplest, there were two primary factors that drove the entertainment and marketing businesses reluctantly into each other’s arms. For marketers, as I mentioned earlier, there was fear. New devices such as digital video recorders were giving audiences the ability to bypass traditional forms of media advertising. These devices let consumers decide when, how and whether they were going to interact with all forms of content. So some in the ad community decided that if they were going to avoid commercials, one valid reaction to that would be to embed products, logos and commercial messages into those entertainment vehicles viewers were choosing to spend time with.

Across the continent from Madison Avenue, those in Hollywood found their own business models and bottom lines under enormous pressure, partly from the same factors. There were other pressures felt all over Hollywood. For film studios, the costs of producing and marketing films became a huge burden just as some traditional sources of funding dried up. And the movie-business, too, was threatened by the same technologies disrupting the TV and music industries.

The result was that these two sides, the ad business and the entertainment business, which decades ago established outposts on separate coasts of the U.S. and mostly operated independently of each other since then were suddenly compelled towards each other. They realized that they had the potential to help each other out. If nothing else, the advertisers had the money and the entertainment companies had the creativity and the attention of audiences.

And covers some notable examples:

• Paramount Pictures, Hasbro and General Motors: Transformers feature film
• BMW: The Hire film series, comics and game
• Virgin America: Virgin Americans animated series
• Dove: Evolution video, part of Campaign for Real Beauty
• Sundance Channel and Grey Goose Vodka: Iconoclasts interview series
• Burger King: games
• Volvo and MSN: Mr Robinson’s Driving School
• Axe and MTV: The Game Killers

Check it out: http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article.php?article_id=121042

At the IAB Leadership Forum on User-Generated Content and Social Networking held on June 4th in New York, Tom Troja (VP of Marketing for Pajamas Media) had this to say about how storytelling changes in the UGC context.

The Boston Interactive Media Association (BIMA) is holding it’s 3rd Annual Cross Media Forum on September 18th 2007 in Boston. It is described on the site as follows:

In the ever-changing and increasingly fragmented media environment, marketers must develop multi-platform advertising strategies to effectively reach their target markets.  The BIMA Cross Media Forum was created to bring together leading agencies, marketers and publishers to have an open dialogue on the challenges, successes and realities of executing across multi-media platforms. Now in its third year, this half day forum includes case studies and panel discussions offering actionable, solutions-oriented recommendations for both planning and implementing successful cross media programs.

Keynote Speaker: Peter Hirshberg, Chairman, Technorati

Session 1: Overcoming the Obstacles to Cross Channel Integration     
Moderator: Kate Kaye, Editor, News and Special Projects, ClickZ
Panelists: Erin Matts, Group Director of Strategy, Digital, OMD; John Moore, SVP, Director of Ideas and Innovation, Mullen; Kristen O’Hara, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Time Warner Global Marketing; Traci Topham, Vice President, Interactive Ad Sales Marketing, Scripps Networks; Lisa Valentino, Senior Director Digital Sales, ESPN

A cross channel campaign that uses multiple touch points to convey brand position and key marketing messages is the ideal way for advertisers to overcome fragmentation and clutter. The reality is that buyers and sellers alike face numerous obstacles as they strive to develop truly integrated media programs. As a marketer, how do you contend with the fact that most companies are not structured to reward integration? How do publishers manage and balance the needs of multiple participants from the agency side? What does it take to get representatives from different channels to work together to come up with an integrated solution that supports the “big idea?”
 
Join a distinguished group of panelists from leading agencies and publishers as they share their insights on how to overcome these and other challenges and successfully shape cross channel campaigns.
_________________________________________________________

Session 2: Breakout Sessions - B2B & B2C Case Studies

Planning an integrated campaign is difficult but there are many agencies & marketers who have pulled it off successfully.  Hear their secrets of success.
_________________________________________________________

Session 3: What to Do, What to Look For, and What to Avoid When Executing Cross Media
Moderator: Ken Dec, Chief Measurement Officer, Director of Strategic Planning, PARTNERS+simons
Panelists to Date: Kerry Benson, SVP/Account Director for Liberty Mutual, Hill Holliday; Erica Crossen, Senior Manager Operations, Brightcove; Mike Lacorazza, VP/Director of Marketing, Digitas; Erin McSheffrey, Director of Program Management, Carat

Once you have successfully planned, sold and gained approval to implement a cross channel campaign, the work doesn’t end there. Even an expertly integrated plan can falter in execution if you do not take a number of additional factors into consideration. Have you secured the T&R rights to run the creative across all recommended platforms?  Does your creative messaging translate across all channels?  How do you compare and measure the success of each medium and its overall impact on the campaign?  Join our panel of implementers - creative, traffic, messaging, production and measurement team members - to receive essential tips for executing successful cross media
programs.

Earlier I’ve mentioned the technique of having characters call audiences, now Laura Marriott, President of the Mobile Marketing Association, provides a business argument for using voice in mobile campaigns:

Voice provides an opportunity to hook the consumer and then possibly have them engage in more advanced services via text, video, Web, etc. Voice is easy for the consumer to interact with based on their current experiences with their device, so there is no learning curve. A few agencies I spoke to told me that some of the most successful campaigns to date have been voice campaigns. “The numbers are staggering,” said Keenan.

Check it out

Mark Deuze (Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications in Bloomington, United States, and Professor of Journalism and New Media at Leiden University, The Netherlands) has a new book out: Media Work. The book is described in an interview with Deuze at influx:

As a former journalist, I have always taken a special interest in the management of creativity within media organizations: how can media workers truly be creatively autonomous? How can an individual culture creator really do what he or she wants to do? Under what conditions will media deliver the best entertaining and informing experiences for producers as well as consumers? My research, which is largely based on interviews with media professionals, tries to come up with answers to those kinds of questions. [...]

The book deals with the working lives of professionals in the four key media industries: advertising, journalism, film/TV production, and digital games. Collaborating with colleagues and students in South Africa, The Netherlands, New Zealand and the United States I interviewed hundreds of media workers over the last couple of years, basically asking them only one question: “so what is it like to do what you do?” The book serves three purposes: first, it allows me to tell our students – who all want to work in “the” media – exactly what that means. Second, understanding media work contributes to critical debates about and within the media professions, for example about the impact of new technologies, the globalization of production networks (for example through outsourcing), and the management of creativity and innovation. Third, I assume that citizens of wired countries all over the world are increasingly behaving like media producers – uploading pictures to Flickr, videos to YouTube, and everything else to MySpace or Facebook. This makes the lessons learned by media professionals also increasingly relevant to everyone else using media. [...]

What I’ve found my research is, that under the banner of Integrated Marketing/Brand Communications and the shift towards full-service agencies a lot of work within holding firms has been overhauled, reorganized, and disrupted. To some, this meant increasing centralized control and monitoring of work, less attention to unique interests of the cultivation of specialized talent in favor of unified management strategies.

Other companies, while using the same terms and concepts, used this trend to increase the autonomy of multi-functional teams, and started programs to facilitate knowledge sharing throughout the many agencies within larger firms. The problem is, that media workers are a special breed of people – they tend to be more interested in getting their own creative voice across and receiving peer acknowledgement than securing benefits or a steady paycheck. That makes them more vulnerable to exploitation (of labor), and the consolidation of agencies certainly can be understood in this context. However, as most media work takes place and gets organized through informal and personal networks, individual professionals can have some tactical impact on company strategy beyond the often hollow rhetoric of “integration”, “convergence”, and “synergy”.

I’ve spoken with some theatre directors about using the web and communities to draw patrons into their productions but it has fallen on deaf ears. So, I was pleased to see a not-for-profit company making an effort for the production of ‘Coast of Uptopia’. The website, includes pictures and videos — just the sort of media that many need for making a decision about whether to attend.

Check it out: http://www.coastofutopia.com/