Month: June 2006

Jim Meskauskas puts forward a wonderfully sensible critique of the way marketers are approaching ‘integrated marketing’:

What most clients, agencies and media companies/publishers don’t seem to understand is that integration is not really a media opportunity; it is a creative strategy.

Yes, ladies and gentleman. Integration is not really possible in media. 

Media companies with multiple platforms to offer are not INTEGRATING, they are offering up multiple touch points.

Back in the early 90s, the media and marketing world referred to this as “media mix.”

I must admit I’m quite surprised, I didn’t know marketers were seeing it this way. However, when I consider the amount of film and TV producers I know who view cross-media through a distribution lens I guess they are not alone. Creators have been making entertainment for one platform for a long time. And then with digital technology and the Internet there was the ability to duplicate information, and to broadcast for free, and another medium to learn and the many arts types and hybrid of arts types that emerged within it. That is enough to get your head around before you start thinking about a creating a symphony out of all of them! The best content, whether it be for an advertisement or prose, is created as a cross-media/integrated property from the beginning. But at the same time having ‘multiple touch points’ or multiple points-of-entry (POEs) is a strategy creators need to utilise to reach their fragmented audiences. That is probably where some of the confusion comes: the range of media channels has consequences in all aspects of content creation. It affects the writing stage, designers, funding bodies, investors, production, agencies, distributors, media buyers, advertising, branding and so on and so on. Every stage of the process needs to have someone there making sure the cross-media approach is being honoured. What does this approach need?

Integrators; people who can cross borders; people who can talk to different industries (programmers, writers, artists, producers, marketers, financiers); people who see order in chaos; people who see a pattern; people who aren’t afraid to be wise and be stupid; people who are brave; people who can integrate all they’ve learned and apply it when necessary…

 

This would have to be one of the funniest film sites I’ve seen. It is a ‘meta site’, a site about an apparent actual site for the film Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. The film is about making the film about the novel the film is based on — whichis entirely in the style of the Laurence Sterne’s novel. You can read the emails between the staff as they discuss the site construction, the production of the DVD and reviews of the film. You can listen to voice mails, listen to a talk by the director, look at pics. The joke even continues into the forums. A “real site” is also linked to. The ‘voice’ of the site is in sync with the voice of film and the novel, but what I love about it too is it makes finding information FUN. Check out the trailer at imdb.com.

From David’s blog.

** Update: links to the blog, forum and discussion list here ** 

NBC has a reality TV show, Treasure Hunters, with an online game that is starting June 18. It is not the Treasure Hunt that Speilberg is apparently working on with Yahoo, as I’ve mentioned before, because the search engine on the NBC one is Ask.com. From the description at the Yahoo Group a Cloudmaker just started to play the game:

NBC’s new Treasure Hunters, an unscripted “quest” series that will feature teams of treasure-hunting competitors who will use folklore, fantasy and actual history as clues to solve a complex puzzle.

In Treasure Hunters, multi-player teams try to stay one step ahead of each other as they face intellectual and physical challenges in their quest of a promised hidden treasure. The teams must avoid elimination as they travel to historically significant locations where they must decipher cryptic codes and puzzles, each with a clue leading them closer to solving the ultimate puzzle and obtaining the coveted grand prize.

The show will also feature an Online Challenge Treasure Hunt via the Internet and Mobile Phones that will be integrated into the linear part of the show. Viewers at home will be able to participate — they’ll have clues to find, puzzles to solve and treasure to win!

It will be interesting to see how they integrate the online work in the broadcast world and vice versa.