Marketing Week
MBA launch new campaign for the National Trust
February 18th, 2010. Posted by Sam Child
Musings on Transmedia Planning
February 18th, 2010. Posted by James Devon
We’ve been having some very interesting chats with our Clients about Henry Jenkins’s concept of the “Transmedia Narrative” and how this relates to marketing. You can see my thoughts on the subject in this recent article in Campaign.
Much has already been said on the subject of “Transmedia Planning” e.g. this from Faris plus this and this from Henry Jenkins. The below diagram is from Faris’s post.
I’d like to propose an addition to this thinking. And perhaps it’s something that was already implicit in Faris’s version. Although the disparate channels don’t have to be saying the same thing, there needs to be some redundancy between them so that people can bring the parts together to form a coherent story. There needs to be a strong core theme.
Now this is hardly revolutionary. However, it feels a valuable addition to the story. Besides, it makes the diagram look more like a ship’s wheel (is that the right term?). Which has got to be a good thing.
If you’re interested in reading more about the transmedia narrative then you must read Henry Jenkins’s recent “seven principals” (part 1, part 2) in addition to chapter 3 of “Convergence Culture”.
Delicious Coffee and Tasty Customer Engagement
February 17th, 2010. Posted by James Devon
Our esteemed CEO, Stephen Maher, has been experimenting with foursquare of late. Maher is Mayor of several places including Wandsworth Common.
Just down the street from our office on Charing Cross Road is a delightful coffee shop by the name of Caffe Vergnano. I highly recommend you visit for a most delicious coffee. Mr Maher visited recently and he checked in with foursquare. And because he’s a technical wizard, this resulted in an automatic tweet…
Shortly after, @CaffeVergnano responded to Stephen with a tweet of their own.
A few things to note:
1. This type of interaction is simply charming for the customer.
2. Caffe Vergnano is activity listening to what’s going on – hunting any mention of “Caffe Vergnano” on Twitter and responding accordingly.
3. Hopefully they’ll give us discounted (free?) coffee now we’ve given them some free promotion via this blog and my Twitter feed 
[Update 18/2/10]
Caffe Vergnano responded to my cheeky request…
Boo. I went to Starbucks this morning.
Pitching Worlds
February 8th, 2010. Posted by James Devon
Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins is a must-read book for we agency types as we adapt to stay relevant in this crazy-fast world of ours. (Amazon link)
The concept of the Transmedia Narrative contained within this book helped to shape the thinking behind my recent article in Marketing.
In the book, Henry quotes an unnamed screenwriter about how Hollywood is changing:
“When I first started you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didn’t really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. and now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media.”
This may sound really obvious, but isn’t “pitching worlds” what we ad-folk should be doing too?
