once upon a transmedia table

When my millennial daughter set the table for a candlelit dinner with her boyfriend, she didn't open a box of beeswax, she reached for her phone. This, to me, is the essence of what transmedia is. And why it's the future (or present) of storytelling. We've raised an audience who doesn't think that virtual worlds=fiction and nonvirtual world=reality. They think in terms of experiencing the world in all its natural and technological dimensions. No wonder the longest lines at SXWi were for digital storytelling sessions.

calling all storytellers at sxsw

I'm hosting a SXSW meetup on Saturday at 11 for writers, creatives, journalists, brand stewards and other social types for an hour of brainstorming, kvetching and sharing tales out of school. Please join us! Details here. FYI, the Empire is about a ten minute hike from the Convention Center. On East 7th Street, at 606 E 7th, about a block south of Stubbs. "Empire" sounds like a lovely hotel, but actually it's a hole in the wall bar next to a music venue disguised as an automotive repair center. Gotta love Austin.

twitter goes to bed with tv

Inquiring minds at Brandwatch and My Clever Agency did an interesting study on how "dual screening" is transforming TV watching. Finds:

1. Dual screeners are most likely to tweet from bed. (Surely soon to be a New Yorker cartoon.)

2. Viewers are 12 times more likely to tweet about a show during days it's on air vs. days it isn't.

3. Tweeters are more negative about shows as they're being aired than they are about them after they've aired. (The past is always better, even in TVland)

4. Less than half of TV shows in the US include official hashtag in their broadcast. (When will showrunners get with the program their audience is watching?)

5. Most TV shows do use official hashtags on Twitter, however. (At least there's that.)

6. Almost half of the official TV show Twitter accounts seldom engage fans, not responding to mentions or queries.

More goodness here, with pretty infographic.

how to sell a movie before it's made

Had the pleasure of speaking about social storytelling last night at Storycode, premiere meet up group for transmedia, at Lincoln Center where @BettyDraper shared the stage with creators of fascinating twitter campaign for forthcoming film Saving Lincoln. Two of the creators were still in LA but that didn't detract from their ability to answer questions via Skype. (Isn't technology bliss? When it works.) The film isn't coming out until later this Fall, but twitter campaign for it was aptly launched last year. The film portrays Abe's life through the eyes of his (real life) best friend who tweets @SavingLincoln in the voice of an 1860s soldier. What interested me is how they're using the twitter feed to flesh out stories that couldn't be included in the film. Tweets are ostensibly from his private diaries and are archived in an onsite "anthology" of stories that makes for pretty engrossing reading.

What also interested me was the mechanics of twitter campaign production. The twitter writer (yes! there's a twitter writer!) actually storyboards tweets in a serial comic strip format which can be sent to producer for review and edits. Finals are pre-posted onto Hootsuite, about 4-8 tweets a day, each day forming a story "beat." Story tweets are posted together, to keep the stream "clean", response tweets are posted later. No sell is put into tweets--the movie itself is rarely mentioned. The sell is offloaded to the Facebook page. All this might sound easy and no-brainerish, but that's because they (with no template) have figured it out.

notes from my sxsw session

Thanks to Craig Carter for live blogging my SXSW session last week. If you missed it and want to catch up on how brands can use social storytelling to enhance the fan experience, his excellent notes can be found here. Or listen to the SXSWpodcast here. 

@bettydraper's guide to social storytelling

If you're in Austin for the SXSW digitalpalooza, hope you'll join @BettyDraper and me for a fun session on Monday morning at the Omni Hotel. It's @BettyDraper's Guide to Social Storytelling where we'll take a look at current examples of social advertising, transmedia, brand fiction and branded content to determine what makes stories work for today's social audiences--and what makes them fail.