A short post on a matter I feel is not taken
into consideration enough when drawing up a transmedia project (a failure I’ve
been guilty of as well); the challenge to not only dream of success, but
actually also plan for it and execute said plans.
When a transmedia project is devised, the
plans often stretch as far as a successful rollout and perhaps the distribution
of a full season (or episodes or [insert proper term here]). There have,
hopefully, been thoughts about continuing the project for more episodes or
seasons. There might even have been thoughts on how to use transmedia methods
to span the gap between seasons and episodes. What seldom is thought, however,
of is how to actually cope with success. Dreaming of success is all good and
well, but harnessing success is hard work. Here are three points I feel are
valid to take into consideration:
Longevity
If people like your content, they will want
more of it. This could mean not only one season but several, perhaps even many.
Your storyline and storyarch will come under scrutiny, your story world should
be able to withstand this added toll on its resources and you yourself should
be prepared to buckle up and stay in the game for the long run. This could also
mean that the value of your content rises considerably, which in turn means
added pressure on your legal resources (due to more collaborations, more
distribution and production deals, more revenue to consider, more business
propositions to address). As success does not turn into money immediately, a
contingency plan needs to be made for this aspect as well; line up possible
partners well ahead of time, so you don’t have to climb into bed with the first
suitor who turns up.
Great numbers
If people like your content, you could
possibly have a lot of people suddenly liking your content. This in turn means
that you will need to plan for devoting time and resources to community
management and social media presence, for answering emails and tweets and for
keeping everything coherent and logically connected. A great number of people engaged will also
solve your riddles and ARGs quicker, which might result in added pressure on
your development team (or you yourself, if you are that development team). This
then not to mention the stress a really great number of people will put on your
technical resources – servers, connections and so on. Plan for small numbers,
but have a contingency plan in hand if the numbers suddenly turn big.
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| Mad Men - a great example of unharnessed fan engagement |
Open up for audience participation
If your content is a storming success people
will want to engage more in it. This is
where you should be able to offer up sandboxes to create in, or whole vistas if
you’re so inclined; invite fan fiction if that suits the bill or why not
encourage your audience to create own fan-based social media characters á la
Mad Men, if that’s what they fancy (or just about anything else you can think
of that fits your project). Or simply add a PayPal button to let them show how
much they care by contributing. The point: if people want to engage and create
since they like your content so much, you really really should let them.
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