Great Deets On: Detective Avenue and the French Transmedia Revolution » Excerpt from Social Media Week

August 3rd, 2011 by Sally O'Dowd

"Wooing Brands
I have personally been following the Detective Avenue story, having met Laurent at a transmedia barcamp, an informal, participatory conference, in Marseille a couple months ago. I also caught up with him at a recent event hosted by TechMap Paris (which launched earlier this year during Social Media Week) and Lunch Club after Dark, two networking groups here. “We wanted to show and prove that a model like this is possible, from an entertainment perspective,” Laurent told a crowd of Parisian marketers.

And from a business model perspective? The results are mixed. Orange clearly saw the benefit of supporting an innovative project that was enabled by mobile phones and an Internet connection. But Laurent and his team did not have any luck securing advertisers for Detective Avenue.

“This kind of program needs massive exposure but the experimental nature of it made it a tough sell,” Laurent told me. “Prospective sponsors kept saying, ‘Show me the figures’ but this hadn’t been done before. It’s the price of being a pioneer. And it’s also a question of [a] brand willing to take a risk.”

Indeed, the metrics for Detective Avenue—seen just in French and in France—are a strong indication for the appetite for multimedia storytelling, gaming and creative collaboration. If the project had been in English, it likely would have taken off internationally given Orange’s support and the high level of engagement, Laurent said.

Even if you don’t speak French, I think you will agree that this trailer draws you in.  Suzelle has just died. Gaelle, her distraught sister, is about to start her murder investigation...."

Website Metrics/Five Weeks

via socialmediaweek.org

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