Grazie to Scott Walker for the notes! – Brian Clark’s “The Business of Transmedia”

09.21.11 Posted in Transmedia by Scott

Yesterday, Brian Clark of GMD Studios spoke at Dr. Henry Jenkins‘ transmedia course at USC. He’s promised to post a detailed account of his talk, but he encouraged me to share this summary post for now.

The topic of his talk was the business of transmedia. Literally.

Perhaps keying off Mike Monello’s recent admonition for independent creatives to talk less and create more when it comes to transmedia, Brian proposed a couple of frameworks for both dissecting the current typical business model for transmedia experiences and constructing some new ones.

First, Brian outlined the five challenges he sees for current transmedia experiences:

• Funds – where will you get the money to pay for the expenses of your transmedia experience?
• Return – what do your funders expect in exchange for their money?
• Sustainability – how much money will you need over what time period?
• Audience – does it exist / how big is it?
• Promotion – how will you reach your audience?

Next, Brian laid out what he saw as the biggest problem with the current approach for transmedia experiences: almost without exception, they use the same model, whether they are produced by media companies, consumer brand companies or what Brian calls “issue” organizations (social cause, non-profit, etc.).

In the current transmedia business model:

• Funds come from someone else
• The expected return is impressions / ratings / awareness (not money)
• Sustainability for the experiences come from charging a fee (consulting, production, etc.)
• The funders will tell you how big the audience is (and who they are)
• Promotion comes from what are referred to as owned, earned, and paid media

via metascott.com

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales