Transmedia Storytelling: Part 2

While the first chapters of this book made little to no sense to me, chapters five and six really helped to solidify this concept in my mind. I found it very helpful that the author broke the concept of storytelling down into the components of character, conflict, plot, rising tension, setting and mood, theme, and originality. In my mind, I knew that these were all concepts of storytelling because this idea had been drilled into my head all throughout middle school English and Literary classes. In order to understand storytelling as a marketing and social media tool, I don't think that I full understood it until those same concepts were applied.

When applying these concepts to marketing storytelling, I believe that the definition of transmedia storytelling has become a lot more clear to me. This concept is truly all about building up a brand identity. This identity can belong to pretty much anything and everything. In order to do this successfully, the identity must be able to relate to the target audience; and audience wants to feel like they personally know the brand itself. This is an extremely key component in building a trusting relationship between the brand and the potential or current customer.

Looking back on my internship last year with KnockKnock Social, the main objective in everything we did was to tell the story of the company for all of the clients. We did this by ensuring that there was one unified voice for each client across all social media platforms. This ensured that there was one solid brand identity, in which customers would immediately think of when they thought of the brand. This kept a base of loyal customers because they truly felt as though they could trust each of KnockKnock's clients.

Transmedia Storytelling

Before taking this class, to me, social media was a simple way to "stalk" your friends and a way from business to promote themselves while creating a brand identity. Even though we aren't halfway through this semester, this class has broaden the way that I think about social media. One of the new ways that I can think about social media is in terms of the idea presented in this article: Transmedia Storytelling.

While the definition for this term is fluid and constantly adapting to the environment around it, to me, it simply means that social media is being used to as a tool to market some of form of entertainment on a technological platform. It is important to remember that this term is going to be used to define a lot of different ideas and projects. Like the article pointed out, focusing the definition too much will exclude the work of talented storytellers, thus not giving them the credit they deserve for their hard work.

The successful examples of transmedia storytelling are all focused around one key factor: they used many platforms and forms of media to create one cohesive image or identity for a brand, a store, an idea, a movie, or an individual character. An example of a successful transmedia story that sticks out in my brain is of Mickey Mouse. The cartoon character is literally everywhere; on tv, in comic books, stories, movies, and in person at the theme parks. All of these portrayals of Mickey are identical and cohesive and together they create the identity of the mouse that we are all so familiar with.

Super Bowl 50

Personally, Football is my least favorite sport to watch. However, I was looking forward to this year's festivities due to the fact that it was Super Bowl 50. A large anniversary such as this one calls for big celebrations. I was expecting an enormous half time show and ads that blew me away. Coverage of this year's Super Bowl started long before kickoff, with the hashtag trending on all social media platforms and previews of the commercials showing up everywhere. There was plenty of gossip circulating about the stars of the half time show as well.
With all of the buildup for this year's Super Bowl, I was pretty disappointed. Not only in the commercials themselves, but in the social media coverage as well. A lot of the ads that I saw tried desperately to get a laugh out of the audience, but some of them took it too far and the humor was lost. In years past, ads featured cute animals and talking babies. The ads this year featured talking animal/baby combinations and babies being born prematurely because they just couldn't wait any longer to get their hands on Doritos. With so many companies trying to branch out, I found myself missing the traditional ads. I'm under the impression that the marketers in charge of the ads knew they'd be a bust as well, due to the number of celebrity cameos.
During the game itself, I think that the social media coverage was lacking. As I was scrolling through my favorite platforms, it became clear that half time stole the show away from the ads. Most of the memes I saw were of Beyonce recovering after her fall, and the gossip following the show was about the motives behind the political stances that the performers were taking. Overall, I think that the best advertising I saw during the game was for Beyonce, and she is all viewers can seem to talk about.

Chapter 4: Communities and Networks

This chapter in Baym's book gave me a new perspective on what the definition of a community could be. There appears to be two sides to this argument; one that believes that a strong community can only exist when there is physical social interaction (such as in a local community), and one that believes a community can thrive when people are using technology to communicate (via social network platforms). For me, this definition can be very fluid. However, I do agree that within any type of community, there always exists little subsets, or smaller groups who have more mutually-agreed-upon norms than those of the entire community.

When considering the subsets that exist in communities, two clear examples come to mind. First, I think of the community that Twitter has build over the years. The large community that can be considered here would be all of the users on the platform; anyone who has an account, no matter their degree of usage. There are tons of possibilities that can be taken into consideration when considering all of the subsets that could exist on the platform. Twitter is an extremely customizable social network, so the amounts of subsets are limitless. For example, a subset could be as simple as the group of people who all follow the same celebrity. These users all have the same tweets appear from that celebrity as they scroll through their twitter feed, and therefore all carry the same knowledge about that celebrity. Another subset that exists on Twitter is the people who follow certain hashtags. Similar to the previous example, these people are all gaining the same knowledge about the specific information that is relevant to that hashtag.

A second example that comes to my mind regarding communities is right here on campus. All of the people that associate with Saint Michael's College (whether they are students, staff, faculty, or alumni) can be considered the large community. All of these people can then be broken down into subsets, based on their interests and involvements on campus.