This chapter serves as a case study to examine the role that media convergence has played in the American Broadcasting System and how this has affected corporate marketing strategies. In discussing the success of American idol Jenkins notes the importance of understanding how the role between marketers and consumers has changed. The theory of affective economies tries to understand the emotional process of the consumer as a driving force behind viewing and purchasing decisions. In doing so, the marketer and program creator hope to shape these desires to influence purchasing decisions. The chapter continues with a discussion about the positive and negative affects of affective economies and the importance of interactive media in this marketing theory.
The emergence of new technology, such as the Internet, and DVR has, the changed the way people consume media, resulting in new marketing strategies to emerge. Companies are no longer using raw numbers of viewers to assess the effectiveness of their ads, but are now trying to understand the quality of their relationship with their viewers. The idea of “expression” is a strategy that seeks to measure viewer loyalty and overall impression of a program and its sponsors. This is allowing marketers to better understand their audience and the culture surrounding a particular program.
In order to create cultures surrounding a brand, companies are now adopting cross-platform marketing. By extending across multiple media outlets companies are appealing to more interests of their consumers and are creating new ways to be seen. Coca-cola has done this by creating a Cokemusic.com, which allows users to download music and create playlists that can be rated by other users. This strategy has helped create loyalty and dedication to a brand. Audience participation has also been used to create loyalists. This is demonstrated by American idol when the fans become the contestants and decide the winners.
The idea of loyalists, zappers, and clickers are used to discuss how audiences view television programs. Creating loyalists is a primary goal for programs and their sponsors because these fans watch the show consistently and are much more likely to tune into advertisements. American idol has tried to turn zappers and clickers into loyalists by recapping episodes and creating cliff-hangers. The use of serialization is also used to make the viewer want to watch each show to understand the storyline and drama.
The idea of brand communities is also discussed to examine what makes consumers loyalists and advocates of a particular company. When brand communities move online they become more interactive, making the consumer feel more like a producer. This audience participation is very helpful for creating loyalty because the consumer feels like they can shape the dynamics of a brand they are affiliated with. The chapter concludes with a discussion about product placement as a strategy to transfer program loyalty to sponsor loyalty. Effective product placement can heighten consumer awareness but must be done in an effective way that does not annoy the viewer.
http://www.mycoke.com/
Questions
1.) Two brands that seem to have extreme loyalists are apple and pc. How have their marketing strategies differed and whom do you think has done a better job in creating brand loyalty?
2.) Do you think transmedia storytelling can play a role in forming brand communities?
Searching for the origami Unicorn.
This chapter uses The Matrix franchise as a case study to explore how media convergence has been used to create transmedia storytelling. Transmedia story telling uses media convergence to create a narrative across a wide range of media platforms that each contributes to the overall meaning of the story. While this type of storytelling opens up many possibilities and creates deeper meaning, it also has been criticized for requiring too much from the audience and creating incoherent individual plotlines.
One important aspect of Transmedia stories is the use of co-creation and collaborative authorship. When creating the matrix series, the Wachoski brothers used a wide range of producers who each brought interesting ideas and perspectives to the matrix franchise. This co-authorship helped shape the storyline of the matrix series and opened the franchise to a more global market by converging popular culture from different parts of the world. Although the Wachowski brothers contributed ideas and created content for the various platforms involved in the series, they allowed each artist/producer to explore the matrix from a unique perspective.
Although this synergistic approach creates unique perspectives surrounding the narrative of the matrix, it can also create dysfunctionality. In order to ensure consistency across platforms, the Wachowski brothers created the matrix world as a guideline for exploration of ideas. Creating a world with rules and guidelines allows for greater flexibility and expansion then simply creating a franchise based on a story line or character. The creation of worlds is changing traditional ideas of story structure where there is a definite beginning middle and end. In transmedia storys, this structure is abandoned allowing for more complex structures where multiple story lines are interwoven.
The idea of transmedia stories shows parallels to early types of storytelling. This is shown by the story of Jesus or Odysseus being passed along multiple levels of culture. Representations of these characters and stories were passed along with the idea that background knowledge was already known about each figure. Without prior knowledge of these characters, stories could be confusing and less meaningful. This has been shown in modern films such as X-men where storylines are created with the assumption that the audience has background knowledge of the characters. However, Jenkins notes that he does not believe modern transmedia stories have the same layers of depth as stories such as The Odyssey.
The origami unicorn is used to discuss how small pieces of information can change entire perspectives on a film. With the matrix series each media platform contributed meaning to the already existing story line. The storylines created around transmedia stories are often so big that one person cannot aggregate all the pieces together by himself. Collective knowledge is usually necessary to fully comprehend all aspects surrounding a transmedia story. While some people fully embrace this idea, others are left frustrated because they don’t want to contribute vast amounts of time to understand a movie.
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/paulcMiller1a.html
Questions.
1.) Do you think audience participation and fan production can play a role in creating and shaping storylines surrounding a transmedia franchise?
2.) Transmedia storytelling usually requires a great amount of involvement and dedication from fans moving across multiple platforms. How was the matrix franchise created this high level of dedication from its fans?
Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?
This chapter begins with a discussion about amateur media production and what roles consumers play in shaping mass media markets and cultures. The emergence of new technology has allowed consumers fans and amateur producers to remake and remix stories surrounding popular films. This idea has allowed consumers to become active participants in shaping the culture of mass media.
The distinction between participation and interactivity is made in order to show various degrees of involvement allowed by media companies. Interaction allows media to respond to the user but is constrained to the structure of the designer. In contrast, participation allows for greater freedom of the media consumer, allowing him to shape and create ideas. Although traditionally, media companies have been able to control the participation of consumers, new technologies such as the internet have allowed amateur producers to go public making it increasingly difficult to control distribution.
Media companies have responded to amateur productions and fan participation with two different approaches. The prohibitionist approach tries to restrain audience participation with legal action while the collaborationist approach encourages consumer participation. Collaborationist companies hope that allowing fans to contribute to their media content will help create loyalist consumers. While some companies have taken an extremist position towards prohibition such as the music industry, most media companies vary their stance towards fan participation. This has created confusion among fans about what they can and cannot do.
One franchise that has embraced and also prohibited fan participation is the Star Wars franchise. In 2000 Lucas film launched www.starwarsfans.com in order to encourage fans to create new content surrounding the star wars franchise. However, everything posted on this website would become the property of Lucas films. Although this website was a step in the right direction, there were still several restrictions on fan participation. While this is merely one approach Lucas films have taken towards fan participation it shows how mass media companies are having issues with what approach to take towards their fans. On one hand companies’ want encourage fans participation to create fan loyalty but at the same time they want to limit the amount of power fans have over content creation.
The section concludes by discussing why the prohibitionist stance is a poor strategy for media companies. Not only does this create enemies out of their fans its is also almost impossible to control. This has been demonstrated by the music industry who has filed lawsuits against consumers, which has done very little to stop file sharing and only created more opposition.
The last section discusses how game companies have fully embraced fan participation by creating MMORPGS. Online worlds are designed to allow the player to become the creator of their world. Fans have also been encouraged to contribute their game ideas to an online forum.
http://www.atom.com/spotlights/starwars/challenge/
Questions.
1.) What is unique about the game industry that has allowed fans to have a more active role in participation and production of ideas? Is there anything other mass media companies can learn from the game industry’s approach towards their consumers?
2.) What are some of the problems that mass media companies may face by relinquishing content creation over to consumers?
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