Transmedia: Platform Selection

 
 

Downloadable Content

• The full article as a PDF and it's also available on Scribd
• Excel spreadsheet tool for ranking platforms

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PART 2 of 2

The first part of this article is at Culture Hacker - it's here.

How do I motivate audiences to cross platforms?

Having decided your objectives, how do you motivate audiences to jump platform?

Digital content can have a nice layout and a URL to prompt action but what about a  live street theatre performance – how do you get audiences to cross platform from the street to, say, go online? Possible solutions with this example might be:

·         flyers with your URL on it (potentially lacks social/real time web)

·         flyers with QR code and Twitter #tag

·         merch/pins (badges)/bookmarks and other give-away with QR code or #tag

·         performers wearing a t-shirt with a QR code or #tag

·         the performers verbally encourage the audience to go online (e.g. shout at them!)

These suggestions answer the mechanics of “how” and assumes that the live audience has mobile phones (so make sure the online landing page is small-screen friendly). But they don’t address “why?”

Motivating the online involvement in this example ought to stress the urgency or immediacy of the situation – don’t let the crowd disperse and hope they’ll connect later: integrate the online component into the performance. Now you’re incentivizing cross-platform activity with the promise of online participation in the live show.

If this isn’t possible or appropriate, you need to consider other incentives ranging from blatant bribery with gifts or prizes to simply the promise of satisfying the audience’s curiosity about what happens next or explaining what on earth the performance is all about.

Figure 3 illustrates a way to think about what you might need to do to motivate audiences to cross or combine platforms. The diagram shows the audience being acted on by two opposing forces: the incentive to migrate (positive force) and the disincentive to migrate represented by “friction” (negative force). By friction I mean anything that makes crossing platforms a pain: increased cost, additional keystrokes, diverted attention, low bandwidth and so on.

Figure 4 and Figure 5 illustrate the consequences when the opposing forces are of different magnitudes.

Figure 3 Incentive Vs Friction: Motivating the Audience to Cross Platforms

Figure 4 When Incentive > Friction Audience Crosses Platform

Figure 5 When Incentive < Friction Audience Doesn't Cross Platform

 In the example of the street performance, the live activity creates attention and a call-to-action gets them online - but what now? Sell them a DVD? Get them to join a social network or mailing list? It’s going to depend on where you are in the project and I’ll address this in the next step.

4. Platform Timing

Unless you have unlimited resources it’s likely you’ll have to prioritize how platforms are released and to do that it will be helpful to define your objectives. Set your objectives with reference to your business model and resources.

Table 5 and Table 6 provide examples of roll-out strategies dependent on different business models. Note that the steps can and may need to be combined or they may overlap. There’s no hard and fast rule – the purpose of the approach is get you thinking logically and covering the bases.

Table 5 Example Platform Release Strategy 1

 

Table 6 Example Platform Release Strategy 2

 

Until now very little has been said about the story. It hasn’t been ignored – it’s been there as a touchstone throughout these five stages – but now is time to see what we might need to do given our platform preferences.

 

5. Changing the story

Think of the story has having two components:

·         “the story”  - the whole world that’s created with all the characters stretching out in chronological order

·         “the experience” – how the storyworld is revealed to the audience (timing and platforms).

Note that the story might be much larger than the project you’re working on now.

Our objective throughout this process is to have the story and the experience of the story integrated with the business model.  Although you started with the story in mind, platform selection has rightly focused on the experience. Now is the time to sanity check the experience and see if there’s any missing story, story that now needs adapting or story + experience that can be improved.

For example, now you have a roll-out strategy for your platforms (the experience), iterate back through the story and looking for these types of opportunities (in no particular order and please add more of your own):

·         Twists

·         Surprises

·         Cliff hangers

·         Inciting incidents

·         Reunions

·         Breakups

·         Conflict

·         Discovery

·         Exposition

·         Reversals

·         Suspense

·         Threats

·         Complications

·         Conclusions

Comments

[@alonsomayo]

Insightful as always. I found your posts on transmedia through Culture Hacker and they've been a great help. More than a comment I have a question: most examples of transmedia projects I know are done as marketing for films/TV shows or for advertising a product: they all have a "main show or product" from which to spin off. What's your thoughts on the selection of a "main platform" in the planning of transmedia project? It seems to me that since the amount of energy that will go to pull off a transmedia project is so massive - it has to allocated carefully.

[twitter.com/ZenFilms]

Hey Alonso, thanks for the kind words and the question!
In an ideal world there wouldn't be a main show/product - all platforms would be weighted equally. That's what we're attempting with Lowlifes (http://www.lowlifes.tv)

However, I know what you mean. I think the choice of the main vehicle depends on your resources, preferences and ability to either get paid or build audience.

Hence, with LowLifes we're writing the novella first because that's where Simon's experience is. That's not to say we've ignored the other media - we're always mindful of the need to integrate it but it feels easier to half develop the other platforms until we one piece of the jigsaw completed. The novella is not intended to be the main vehicle but because of Simon's existing audience it could be seen that way.
I think most people start with an ambition to make a certain type of content - a movie, say, or a theater performance - and then build content around it.

Does that make sense?

[@alonsomayo]

makes perfect sense. to each his own strengths. thanks! & best of luck with the project.