Once upon a time, entertainment and advertising were two separate lands. Each land was dynamic, and cool, in its own way, but their denizens rarely commingled. In yet another land, the geeks of technology toiled in isolation on tasks both obscure and unfriendly. And then the winds of innovation blew through. Everything changed.

Today, a new creative map is taking shape, as the barriers between these businesses fall away, spurred by a swarm of adventurers and explorers… For companies and consumers, actors and artists, marketers and musicians, there is no turning back. On the contrary, this is the wave of tomorrow.

Fast Company, December 2011

I simply wanted to call out Fast Company for being one of the first to acknowledge the highly significant metamorphosis transpiring within the global business landscape: the collision of tech, culture & commerce. I frequently introduce myself as a catalyst for convergence, largely due to my multifaceted professional background. Years in the entertainment, technology and advertising spaces have lead me to one realization: nothing can bolster the three of these disparate industries more than their fusion.

So thank you, Fast Company, for so eloquently echoing my credo.

** part of my ongoing blog series on using emerging technologies to transform the entertainment + business landscape **

Each weekday morning, I wake up to a copy of the above Nielsen TV Ratings Report in my email. It’s pretty interesting to see a measure of the overall viewership of primetime network television shows. But that’s about as much utility as I get out of it.

Unfortunately, though, this same ratings data was the justification for $21.7+ billion of ad revenue yielded by the major broadcast networks in 2010. Woah there! It’s no less than asinine that TV networks and advertising/media agencies almost exclusively use Nielsen’s increasingly obsolete Target Rating Points system to attach a value to specific television properties and programming slots.

The company’s proprietary Local People Meter technology and archaic paper diaries simply collect a small aggregated sample of audience TV watching habits and high-level demographic (age/geo) data to determine a program’s rating, and therefore, fiscal value. Does it really make sense to use cumulative viewership (potential reach ÷ estimated reach) as the primary metric to gauge potential marketing effectiveness or a television program’s success?

Granted, Nielsen does release reports on the effectiveness (receptivity, resonance and reaction) of specific ads, and performs brand-recall studies as illustrated in the above widget, but that information typically doesn’t correlate with the valuation of the media buy.

Effectiveness vs. Performance
The objective of an agency or brand’s media buying function is to increase the sales of a product by appealing to a targeted audience with the highest propensity to buy that product. In this case, why aren’t we valuating the primetime lineup based on the amount of peer influence the audience has or the collective sentiment, political affiliation or buying power of viewers? This is the standard practice in digital advertising — why should broadcast be so different? In addition to the above, I have seen one KPI stick out as a true predictor of marketing performance — engagement. The issue: Nielsen has no way of quantifying the amount of, or value of, audience engagement.

The Secret
Of course there is currently no cut-and-dry solution, but companies like Networked Insights, BlueFin Labs and the just released Trendrr.tv are providing practical alternatives to Nielsen. Of those three, Networked Insights seems to be the most substantiated by data. The company’s SocialSenseTV analytics platform has already been used to advise TV executives during the May 2010 broadcast upfronts. Their brilliant report (view the PDF here) illustrated total viewership as not being entirely indicative of an audience’s social influence, passion or engagement. Nielsen’s #10 ranked show at the time, ABC’s LOST, acquired the highest social index ranking on Networked Insight’s report. It’s still not 100% representative of an advertised product’s increased sales numbers, but we’re getting closer and closer.

Side note: the entertainment analytics space seems to be moving pretty quickly. Since I published my blog post on the advent of social television check-in apps in February, a number of TV execs have disclosed to me their plans to use metrics from IntoNow, Miso and Get Glue to identify and engage core influential audiences of certain shows on a microscopic level. TV is getting ever more personal. More on that in a future blog post. 

Graphic via Filmz.rus

I’ve been approached three times this weekend with questions on the topic of “transmedia”. The buzzword has found its way into my lexicon, and as if I’m speaking in foreign tongue, my friends, family and colleagues frequently solicit further definition. Typically my response is as such:

Transmedia is platform agnostic storytelling. It is a strategy-driven process. At its core, transmedia strategy is constructed by pinpointing the appropriate medium(s) for the development, distribution and monetization of a story, most often accomplished by examining the target audience’s behaviors, the available technologies, the breadth of immersion and intended top-level objectives.

Academic definition aside, the transmedia approach has driven the entertainment business for some time – and is now finding a rightful home in the marketing and advertising realms. Take Batman. What started as a minor character in Issue #27 of 1939’s Detective Comics has emerged as a global franchise. Batman eventually received his own comic book, followed by live-action and animated television series, a succession of box office-breaking films, and video games & merchandise galore. There are immersive theme park attractions, books, radio dramas and even an [ultimately cancelled] staged musical version. 70+ years of cohesive cross-platform storytelling has made a simple piece of IP an incredibly valuable cultural and commercial asset. Good stories just can’t linger in a single channel. Smart businesses won’t let them.

Video: A pretty comical fan-generated trailer for “Batman: The Musical” featuring demo recordings of the original concept production.

Was it the story or the profit potential that drove the Batman brand expansion? Likely both. As such, I find it important to be driven by both. As they say, the story is paramount – without it, there would be nothing to profit off of. As a transmedia producer, it is my responsibility to ensure the fidelity of the story (and to make certain that it is deployed on different mediums for reasons beyond ‘economies of scale’, but rather to tell a fully captivating story.) Likewise, I focus an equal amount of attention to the business of storytelling. Financing, production, distribution, marketing, monetization and data analysis are perhaps collectively more vital to the welfare of an entertainment property than a well-written manuscript.

As mentioned earlier, businesses are increasingly finding content to be more effective a sales tool than traditional ‘brochure-ware’ tactics. Psychology plays a big role here; purchasing decisions are often made via a combination of emotional and logical appeal. How better to usher a prospect through the funnel than through the mediums in which they are already engrossed? Mobile, web, television and film brand integration, live events and video games all serve as viable channels to captivate the audience in a brand or product story. Multiply this appeal by the power of 360° immersion – surrounding the audience with a connected story across multiple platforms – and it’s easy to recognize the value of the transmedia approach.

Some do it better than others. I plan to strengthen the transmedia revolution as new platforms emerge and we collectively develop ways for stories to become even more pervasive. I have a feeling (well, an aspiration) that eventually the transmedia concept won’t need explanation.

2011 is the year… I can feel it.