Transmedia storytelling is not just for telling stories. Thanks to social technologies, the principles that drive transmedia storytelling ensure that it will emerge as the basis for effective communication and engagement. Transmedia — using multiple channels of communication and technologies — is unique in that it allows stories and messages to be constructed in the same the way we make sense of the world around us. Transmedia storytelling works like the brain thinks — constructing holistic meanings from bits and pieces of information and experience. We show ‘who we are’ through words, actions, and physical clues like clothes or hairstyles, not a sign around our necks that tells our ‘story’ like the synopsis of a TV show. Our brains create stories out of the patterns we uncover around us; it is the natural way for us to process information. Meaning comes from our ability to explore, share and discover. As technologies advance, why should our use of media be different?

Transmedia storytelling transforms communications so that we can interact, construct, share, and create meaning within the storyteller’s world. It will be the dominant form of communication strategy in marketing, management, entertainment, and education, because it creates a multi-sensory, immersive experience directed by the audience. Transmedia storytelling starts with a story or message that, through multiple types of connection, becomes a rich, additive process. Transmedia producers take the storyteller’s vision and provide a paint box of potential experiences, from face-to-face and legacy media to emerging technologies, that allows the audience to co-create their experience.

Transmedia storytelling is often associated with large entertainment franchises, but it also has profound implications for areas beyond the entertainment business model: education, advocacy, organizational management, marketing and branding.

United by the first transmedia storytelling conference, StoryWorld Expo and inspired by the wide-reaching potential, the Transmedia SF meet-up and similar groups in places like Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, and Sydney, are creating hubs of activity and exchange, linking artist, producers, techies, investors, storytellers, and organizations anywhere in world who are passionate about transmedia storytelling — whether it’s learning about it, exploring ways to collaborate, find partners and inspiration, or produce projects. Transmedia SF may be in San Francisco, but the welcome mat is global, connecting the world through story.

The webinar I created with colleague Dr. Bonnie Buckner for UCI Extension, “The Power of Transmedia Storytelling: Persuasive Communications Across Emerging Technologies,” won the best webinar content award from the Internet Marketing Association. We created it for the course we developed and teach on Transmedia Storytelling and Marketing for UCI Extension’s Internet Marketing Certificate Program.

I am excited to have our work acknowledged by this award because, for me, effective transmedia marketing is a way of viewing the world before it becomes a strategy. It’s a willingness to think multi-dimensionally and acknowledge the psychological shifts in individuals that have totally redefined what it means to be a customer. Transmedia storytelling, as I see it, uses storytelling to bridge narrative, branding, persuasion, and media psychology with emerging and traditional media for coherent, authentic, and engaging communication. See the full press release.

Behavioral Targeting: Redefining Net Neutrality

Behavioral targeting gives a whole new meaning to net neutrality. It violates the foundations of a social media environment: authenticity and transparency.

If the majority of online users don’t want to have their online search activities tracked, advertisers and search companies are walking a fine line between profit and a huge public relations disaster when they target consumers. Search engines can help advertisers target us, but in doing so, they “invisibly”skew our search results and make our world narrower and less rich. Whatever happened to freedom of information?

Media Post reported on a study by TRUSTe showing that only 11% of the participants were comfortable with online behavioral advertising (Web Users Uneasy With Behavioral Targeting.) In behavioral advertising, our browser behaviors — where we search, what we search for, and how often we do it — are tracked in order to provide ads targeted at us based on our perceived likes and buying habits. Forty two percent of the respondents favored “do-not-track” lists. Another survey by Consumer Reports had support for do-not-track at almost twice that number, with 81% in favor.

Aside from all the pesky privacy issues, I don’t like behavioral advertising because it skews my search results without disclosing how. I don’t want algorithms second-guessing what I’m looking for. One of the strengths of the Internet is that there is a wildly diverse range of opinions, products, and topics. I want that richness and randomness of experience. If we want ‘better’ results, we should learn to hone our search strategies and keywords, not off-load it on a system whose priorities are not aligned with ours. I have nothing against people selling stuff and making a profit. In fact, I’m in favor of it. But I have no illusions that their goals will neessarily even intersect with mine, much less be in my best interest. Behavioral targeting gives a whole new meaning to net neutrality.

I also like the idea that a Google search reflects a broad and random set of preferences, not just mine. I don’t want to do a Google search for media psychology and have my own site come up at the top because I go there a lot to add content. I want to know if it comes up on top because OTHER people look at it. I want searches to be a glimpse of a larger social behavior, what John Battelle elegantly describes in one of my favorite descriptions of all times as the ‘database of intentions.’

Social media marketers and researchers aren’t the only ones who like to put a finger on the pulse of public conversation every now and again. New technology can impact the quality, quantity, and use of information as it moves across a networked society. I don’t want to have to go to Google Zeitgeist and pick a topic to get a glimpse of the spirit of the times. While official search monitoring tools can capture what’s on our mind, our mood, and our energy in the aggregate across society. I want the ability to watch the zeitgeist of the country online through different lenses at micro-level based upon what comes up when I search without sponsored links showing up because I recently bought shoes or watched cute cat videos.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) doesn’t have the authority to mandate privacy — like a “do not track” registry — without a little help from Congress. Frankly, though, I’d rather have Congress spend it’s energy figuring out how to be more fiscally responsible than trying to regulate something they don’t understand.

We all know there is no shortage of information. The shortage is our ability to filter. This is an increasingly important skill and one it behooves us all to learn. I am, however, supremely confident that some really smart company will make a search engine where the user who doesn’t enjoy the exuberance of information on the web can EASILY specify how much he or she is willing to share to get the search engine’s “help.” We shouldn’t have to understand the backend of an interface to protect our privacy or get clean searches. Until then, we’ll need to add clearing cookies, caches, and web histories to our media and digital literacy curriculums*.

When I was in elementary school (at the risk of dating myself), teachers spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time explaining the obtuse Dewey decimal system and the card catalogue at the school library. I’m in favor of similarly empowering people by encouraging behavioral-targeting-disobedience and preserving the right to ‘free search.’

—

*TRUSTe has an article on Personal Privacy Tips that is a good place to start.

Web Users Uneasy With Behavioral Targeting http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=154667

Battelle, J. (2008). The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. New York: Penguin Books.

Cross-posed on PsychologyToday.com on Positively Media

By Pamela Rutledge and Bonnie Buckner

In part 1 “Levi’s: Go Forth and Exploit,” we wrote about our problems with the Levi’s Go Forth Campaign, such as romanticizing and trivializing the Great Depression and exploiting the efforts of the town of Braddock, PA to fit their Steinbeckian narrative. Here, we will focus on the opportunities for what we call Karma Capital–economic profit combined with positive social impact–that got away.

Brands and corporations have significant impact on individuals and culture. The Levi’s campaign shows a considerable deafness to the current social and technological environment and the shifting psychologies and cultural sensibilities of their market. In a globally networked world, every message from a company and organization will ripple through the system. They could have created some serious Karma Capital by aligning social goals with their bottom line.

Levi’s missed an opportunities on two levels. Instead of a contrived narrative, they could have authentically celebrated attempts to reinvent and revitalize Braddock and towns like it. Granted, it doesn’t work as well with the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ grit look, but it would have both truth and inspiration going for it. Change is hard. It means letting go of something old to embrace something new. At the essence of the Levi’s campaign, the message is (or should be) that we all can reinvent ourselves through hard work. But Levi’s focus rests on the ‘stuck,’ not the potential or progress.

At a higher level, America can only reinvent itself if it moves beyond Industrial Age ideals and builds an economic base built on knowledge, technology-training, innovation, and flexibility. Campaigns such as this are like driving by looking through the rear view mirror. We need to face forward and reeducate and retrain people so that they can successfully move into industries with growth potential.

Levi’s is still marketing in the traditional model, forgetting that individuals matter and that every message has impact and the potential for positive change. Levi’s could have focused on positive efforts to revitalize the town, such as Mayor John Fetterman’s “two-pronged approach” to attract homesteading, such as creating the first art gallery in the four-town region with artists’ studios and public art installations and encouraged projects such as growing organic vegetables in the shadow of a steel mill.

Organic vegetable garden in the shadow of an old steel mill.

A better model, however, is a company like Zappos. Levi’s could have taken a lesson from Zappos’ corporate culture and considered projects such as opening a call center in Braddock and launching a documentary-based campaign showing workers gaining computer literacy in a high-tech environment. And if they were REALLY smart, they would provide Levi jeans for all employees and their families.

This is a sad story of lost opportunities all around. Levi’s could have had a positive long-term impact on real people (and their brand) by taking action that would have resulted in genuine rather than transitory productivity. They could have celebrated the positive rather than preparing a message that, from almost any angle, is negative. They also built the campaign as a completely closed system, so audience participation is reduced to those who are making fun of the ads, when they could be engaging with Levi’s to promote a larger cause. Levi’s isn’t asking for help for Braddock or its citizens, they are merely using Braddock to ignite predominantly negative emotional triggers to promote sales.

Here are the lessons we can learn from Levi’s ill-conceived campaign:

1. Don’t scare people by linking current conditions with metaphors of something far worse
2. Don’t trivialize hardship or disrespect real people
3. Take responsibility for the cultural symbols you invoke
4. Focus on what people are accomplishing, not on the failures
5. Make your brand part of a higher-level mission
6. Invite your customers to join your efforts alongside your brand
7. Align business success and growth with positive social impact