Simply put, Transmedia is the technology, production, and management of creative storytelling authored across at least three media distribution platforms. Furthermore, the story should be seen as smaller pieces of the overall universe; that should start to ring a bell. Marvel is renowned for its smaller stories that fit into a larger universe.
There are a few reasons why. First, from a sales point of view, it takes at least three touch points to get customers interested in a product. From a marketing standpoint, not everyone is on one platform. Finally, looking at it from a creative view, it creates deeper storytelling.
The children's story of the Easter bunny has always been a fun fictional story for children. But, interestingly, when Aaron surveyed groups of people, asking them what the Easter Bunny story was, no one could produce a story. And they all gave a short, "well...the bunny brings the candy eggs to the kids." But why? There must be a story in there. So Aaron & Jonathan set out to create one possibility, Easter In The Woods.
The Transmedia Easter project is a whale of a project spanning several areas of media. The objective of this project was to create a truly unique Easter event with deeper storytelling. To achieve this objective, Aaron met with Jonathan Wendt (Stakeholder) to brainstorm a story that would align with the organization's values and appeal to children & parents. Also, the organization had already reserved a venue in a local park for the event. So, the story needed to be associated with this location. The idea of Easter In The Woods was born from this initial session. The story involved a rabbit who owned a candy factory and a roster antagonist.
For the technical side of things, research was conducted by Aaron to find out where the organization's audience ingests most of its content. To understand who, what, when, and where of the org's audience, Aaron looked through the org's Google Analytics and their CRM software. With this data, it was decided that the story would unfold on a website, Facebook, YouTube, and a booklet.
Once the vision and major goals were defined, the responsibilities and stakeholder check-in were scheduled twice a week via email. All major milestones would involve an online meeting. And, of course, deadlines were set for each piece of content.
Once the initial plan was put together, it was time to figure out how each part of the story would fit into the respective mediums, how they would be released, and because the organization already had a video crew, Aaron coordinated with them on record dates, necessary equipment, and work arranged for Jonathan to step in as our actor. For the animated part of the video, Aaron teamed up with a fellow producer, Maddie Beard, to do the voiceover work and used Adobe Character Animator to create the cartoon.
Then there was the web section of the story. The organization already has a website that they did not want to alter, so, Aaron purchased a new domain and hosting to support it. Here, the story would take on a comic book style graphic and play host to a press release, an about section, privacy policy, and terms & conditions. Additionally, the site needed to plug into the existing site seamlessly. Finally, the site also needed to point visitors to the next parts of the story on Facebook and YouTube.
For the print part of this project, an invitation with a QR code was going to be placed in a plastic Easter egg and placed in front yards, and a booklet needed to be created. The booklet needed some basic body copy for welcoming guests, lyrics to some songs, and some coloring pages in the back. Lastly, during the live event, Aaron would do some photography for social media. Special attention needed to happen for this part as taking photos of children can cause legal issues without consent.
Because the project window was only two months long, all parts of the project had to be carefully controlled and monitored. If a technical part like the website was not working well, Aaron had to ensure there was enough time to work the problem out or bring in another set of eyes. The stakeholders also made backup plans for the live event if it should rain. The design phase of this project was relatively simple because one, the story was already written and two, the stakeholders were extremely laid back. So, a style guide with the suggested typeface and color blocking was presented with sound reasoning. Next, the rough draft of the characters was made and presented. The stakeholders only had two changes to the design process. The production timeline called for the website to be completed in eight days, a Facebook campaign to finish in three days, and the video production to be completed in three days. The live stream had four days of setup and testing.
In an extensive campaign like this, there are so many moving parts, it is easy to overlook the most important; the KPIs.
