Interview with Dan Light, Part I: engaging online communities « BBH Labs

via bbh-labs.com

Excerpt:

"Transmedia. It’s becoming a buzzword of 2010 and was certainly one of the most talked about topics at SXSW back in March. Your last piece of work at PPC was for the latest Iron Man film – what role can transmedia marketing play for an entertainment property?

DL: Like film itself, it’s about guiding people through an experience, and a sequence of emotions. With a movie like Iron Man it starts with intrigue, which is a really powerful motivator for people ready to take a flight of fancy. Film is also about escapism, especially a movie like Iron Man – part of that is not knowing what’s next.

It’s worth saying up front that when we’re talking about transmedia as marketing, it’s not suitable for all films, probably not for the majority of films, but that there are those where there’s an opportunity for a film maker and their marketing team to do something a bit different.

The communities that exist around films; are you focused primarily upon creating a deeper experience for them individually, or do you view them as a means to propagate content amongst and beyond their network?

DL: Both really. By its nature online marketing has become a process of exploitation – in a non-sinister sense of the term. It’s about getting that core group to germinate these seeds of intrigue into wider awareness, so that they continue to permeate through other communities. That said, it’s always hard to be certain how much wider it does permeate out. It’s a mistake to assume that by reaching that audience you’re going to reach the popcorn moviegoer.

What a good transmedia campaign does achieve is that it anchors core fans in your campaign. At the same time you need to find ways to make it as accessible as possible to the mainstream, reaching the audience who aren’t living their lives in the Unfiction forum.

One of the best things about The New Frontiersman (the WATCHMEN online campaign) was that it made truly integrated use of YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Friendfeed, all of which made it easier for a wider audience to access the latest content as it went live. We brought in a consultant on the project, Annie Ok, specifically to help us make sure that we weren’t just paying lip service to social media the way a lot of campaigns still do."

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http://bbh-labs.com/interview-with-dan-light-part-i-engaging-online-communities

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