OUTTAKE | TVNZ Breakfast Series | Transmedia Storytelling | Amie Mills 1

29 April 2015

Transmedia Storytelling Amie Mills | Senior Digital Producer | TVNZ Blacksand

LINK TO SLIDES

It’s a fascinating time to be working in the TV/Digital space, as the way we’re

watching and engaging with TV/video content is changing so rapidly.

Accenture recently released a Connected Consumer report that revealed

87% of individuals are watching TV with devices within arm’s reach1, and

there have never been more opportunities in terms of technology, devices,

platforms, and Internet access to connect people with our content. The part

that we’re particularly interested in at TVNZ is the insight we can glean

around where and when people are watching to make our content as

relevant as possible for them.

Definitions. Always useful. I’ve been guilty of using these terms

interchangeably so I thought it would be useful to cover off the differences

between them. In this space, we understand multi-media as one singular

story told using multiple media forms (photos, video, audio etc.), published

on one platform. Cross-media or multi-platform is when you tell a singular

story across multiple platforms, and where the story isn’t significantly altered

from one platform to the next. When we’re talking about transmedia, we’re

starting to use terms like story world, where you have many stories told using

multiple media forms, across many different channels and platforms … and

how that content lives and breathes is uniquely tailored to the platform

you’re viewing it on. 1 Accenture Report | Digital Video and the Connected Consumer | Link | p2

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Marvel is arguably the best example of this. It’s a 7 billion dollar industry

(that’s just box office!2) and as a consumer there are myriad, dispersed entry

points by which you can discover that content and engage in the Marvel

story world; including comic books, fan fiction, movies, television, games etc.

On each platform that the content lives, the narrative is extended, not simply

adapted or transplanted.

Last year there was a wonderful Transmedia Masterclass held at Unitech run

by Jeff Gomez - who is considered one of the reigning Godfathers of

transmedia. His company, Starlight Runner, is responsible for some of the

biggest transmedia executions in the entertainment industry (including Men

In Black, Pirates of the Caribbean, Coca-Cola’s Happiness Factory and more).

He argues that over the past five years or so, as transmedia has grown more

sophisticated in its application, it’s increasingly differentiating itself not just in

terms of the well-planned use of multiple media platforms to tell a story,

but also in regards to creating architecture for dialogue where fans are

given the agency and space to have a degree of ownership over their

experience of the content. I find this the most creatively exciting and

frightening aspect of the work, as it means you have to relinquish the reigns

(to some degree) around how your content is consumed in the real world.

Each of the four case studies I’ll talk through fits one of the following four

categories – which are by no means exhaustive in terms of transmedia but all

four seem to me to be interesting growth areas for broadcasters. The

Channel 4 project fits into the digitally hard-wired box, where digital

tech/products sit at the very heart of the content creation. Dual-screen

2 Marvel Cinematic Universe Hits $7 Billion At Worldwide Box Office | Link

OUTTAKE | TVNZ Breakfast Series | Transmedia Storytelling | Amie Mills 3

meshing is the Network Ten example, and it’s when consumers are asked to

actively engage with the content on TV using their second screen

simultaneously. Bridging campaigns are most commonly used to generate

excitement around the launch of the next season of a show, or (with the daily

soaps) to sustain audience interest whilst the show is on hiatus each year.

Platform extensions are not about meshing simultaneously with the show

but instead extend the content on to different platforms and encourage

viewers to engage with it after they’ve watched it on-air – thus building a

360° brand/platform approach beyond the linear TV show.

Channel 4 released a six-part observational documentary series last year

called The Secret Life of Students. The series followed the trials and

tribulations of six freshers in their first year at Leicester University. The idea

itself isn’t hugely groundbreaking but the way digital technology is used to

create the content is. The creators of the show identified that this generation,

more than any other in history has grown up digitally native, and that as a

consequence, current students’ lives are phenomenally impacted by the

advent of personal devices and social media.

To address this, Channel 4 invested in a piece of technology called the

Digital Rig (D:Rig), which allows contributors to share their digital

communications with the show’s production team. The system comprises

customised mobile phones, which send data back to a secure central server

in near real time. A team of researchers and producers then processes that

data, and use it to inform the crew on the ground to shape what and how

they’re filming. This is woven into the fabric of the show’s final edit.

Secret Life of Students - Segment

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Channel 4 are now rolling this product out across multiple shows and think it

has the potential to radically alter the way these shows are made3. When I

first read about it, I was vaguely horrified but the more I’ve seen of the show

and the more I’ve read about the ethics processes, and the approach to

working with the students, it’s felt respectful rather than repulsive. It feels like

an entirely new and valid narrative voice that would otherwise have gone

unheard.

The dual-screen meshing case study is a Network Ten example in Australia,

and it’s one of the most exciting transmedia projects I’ve come across in

recent years. It aired last year and was a collaboration between Network Ten

and Hoodlum Productions, featuring our very own Martin Henderson.

Secrets & Lies – Launch Promo

The show was designed at the outset as a completely immersive, dual-screen

experience that synced the live TV event with the social TV app Beamly. As

users sat down to watch the show, they pulled out their phone, opened the

app; it synced immediately, and would serve the viewer extended content at

specific moments throughout the episode. For example, as you watched on

TV there would be a scene where the police were just about to raid a

character’s house and your phone would light up to let you know a clue was

about to land. Then on your phone, you would see an exclusive piece of

short-form video showing that character stashing drugs as the police closed

in. This is something you would never see if you only ever interacted with the

linear TV broadcast. Another example was a character caught out in a

3 Q&A with Dimitri Doganis | Link

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hushed, inaudible phone conversation on TV, and on the app you could

listen to the phone conversation in full. This split-platform storytelling was

intricately done to ensure that it never alienated linear TV viewers from the

full story experience, but for those following along with the app, it gave them

richer, more complex insight into the characters and the narrative.

From a viewer perspective, the digital, dual-screen aspect felt intrinsically

woven into the viewing experience, not as an afterthought. In so doing, it

made the viewer an active participant in the drama. It was defined as an

‘unmissable’ TV event by former media journalist for Mumbrella, Colin

Delaney. I think it’s fair to assume it’s a rare piece of television content that

fits the bill for this type of transmedia execution but it’s an enormously

exciting space to play in if you have the story to back it up.

Which brings us to one of our best-loved shows … this bridging campaign

was actually the first project I worked on when I joined TVNZ and it was a

phenomenal eye-opener in terms of the level of viewer engagement (or just

genuine fan-crazy) there is in this country around Shortland Street. This

campaign went on to win Gold PROMAX Awards for Best Integrated

Campaign here and in Australia, and a Global Excellence PROMAX Award in

New York for Best Interactive Application up against Comedy Central and a

Hannibal dual-screen app.

One of the greatest aspects of this project was the epic cliff hanger storyline

that SPP had worked up, which saw a cluster of Shorty’s most loved

characters holed up at Chris Warner’s bach for Christmas, and a deranged

character with a hero complex who set a bomb beneath the bach, intending

to diffuse it (and save the day) but instead got waylaid and everything went

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up in a burning inferno … including six characters. A 90” finale promo went

to air as soon as the finale episode ended, which set up the mystery of who

might have died in the explosion. This was followed directly afterwards with a

promo to encourage people to engage with the digital campaign.

Shortland Street Clues – Digital CTA Promo

SPP were wonderful and agreed to let us reveal the names of four survivors

over the five weeks that the show was off-air, so we created a transmedia

clue hunt, anchored around a responsive website, which released a daily clue

at midnight that teased out the dramatic storyline. We had so much fun

doing it and fans (in their thousands) were literally waiting up until midnight

each night to get the next clue. Some of the clues were purposefully obscure

– i.e. where we’d record a phone call between two characters, reverse it and

obscure the audio so it was inaudible … all with the intention of releasing the

cleaned-up, ‘reveal’ version the next day. Invariably, within an hour, someone

would have extracted the audio, uploaded it to an audio software program,

cleaned it up, flipped it, transcribed it and posted it in the comments section

on the website. Once we understood the extent and level of commitment

fans felt towards the clue hunt, it made our job more interesting to make the

content live up to their expectations. We had to be extremely nimble and

alter content and clues on the fly to be reactive and responsive.

We saw fantastic engagement figures across the 34 days of the campaign,

with an average of over 17,000 visits to the site per day and an average of

4.5 minutes per visit spent exploring and commenting on the clues.

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The 2014 return episode was the highest rating premiere in over a

decade with a 53.5% audience share

Over 3 million page views

602,030 visits to the site

An average of 5 pages viewed per visit

6,840,900 total reach (organic/paid) on Facebook

3,085,400 clicks on Facebook clue posts

107,583 total likes on Facebook

313,336 views of YouTube clues

11,723 comments on the site

Shortland Street Clues – Case Study

The Holden integration in the clue hunt was another notable aspect, and

we’ve built on it for future Shortland Street projects because it worked so

well. Holden and Ogilvy were planning a campaign that would align

Shortland Street characters/demographics with their vehicle range. Their

campaign would launch just as our ended so when we met with them to tell

them about the clue hunt, it meant they could take that into consideration

creatively when planning their idea, and we could provide opportunities for

integration. Holden featured in four of the clues, ranging from subtle product

placement to overt integration, such as the second-to-last clue, which had

fans clicking through to a teaser Holden, Shortland Street Car Park site to

search through a virtual vehicle to find that day’s clue.

It was the second most trafficked day to our site across the campaign and

one of the most loved clues by fans. We had wondered initially if there might

be push back or cynicism from fans around overt branding but it was the

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opposite. So that was insightful in terms of understanding that as long as the

commercial integration stays true to the story world and doesn’t detract from

the user experience, then consumers are far more tolerant and commercially

savvy than we might sometimes give them credit for.

Which brings us to the platform extension case study, Our First Home,

which launched this year on TV ONE. It is a world-first reality show format

created by Eyeworks, which sees three family teams (made up of parents,

their child and their child’s partner) face the challenges of the NZ property

market and the graft it takes for the younger generation to get into their first

home. The parents put their equity on the line to buy a ‘do-up’, and the

family team then lives together for 10 weeks whilst they renovate, and

eventually sell the house at auction. The team with the highest profit margin

at auction wins $100k, and all teams use the profit they make at auction to

help with the younger couple's deposit on their own first home.

Our First Home – Launch Promo

Our Media Solutions team led by Lyndsey Francis built up Our First Home as

a 360° content brand, and as one part of that content offering, we designed

a native iOS/Android game (with a browser-based version) that took the

show’s story world into the virtual space4.

To inform this gaming approach, we looked at player demographics in NZ

(females make up 47% of gamers, of parents who play games, 90% play with

their children, the average age of video game players is 33 years5) and we

took on board insight from a recent Colmar Brunton AdReaction survey that 4 TVNZ Blacksand worked with InGame to build the game. 5 Digital New Zealand Report, CONVERGENCE: Game Tech in New Zealand Households. Source.

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argued one of the biggest multiscreen opportunities is not necessarily,

“simultaneous connections between screens, but rather ensuring a presence

across screens to build multiple touch points and amplify content.”6

The premise and format of the game mirrors the show. Players have two

gameplay modes: The Property Market mode where you can renovate

houses with specific target buyers in mind and then take those houses to

auction to get maximum points, which get transferred to My Home when the

auction is complete. The My Home mode lets players renovate and decorate

houses in any way they like. This is the ‘sandbox’ level, where players can

personalise their home renovations however they desire.

Our First Home – Game Promo

One of the key outtakes for us on this project was how crucial TV was in

driving uptake of the game. You can see in the graph that those red spikes

are Sun, Mon, Tue activity peaks whilst the show is on-air. We found that

players were playing the game between 1930 - 2030 when the show was on-

air, with slightly higher activity happening at the end of each episode from

2015-2045 towards the end of the episode when the game promo and pop

ups would appear.

The three top-tier show partners (BNZ, Fly Buys and Toyota) were woven into

the game, each with a distinct approach depending on their objectives. BNZ

featured with contextual in-game pop-ups showing their in-show talent, Tash

Paora, providing financial guidance as players were making financially-

motivated gameplay decisions - reflecting BNZ’s ‘Be good with money’

6 TV still No 1 as brands home in on multiscreen sweet spot | Link

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messaging. As players bought items from the game store, they would be

rewarded with virtual Fly Buys points (not real ones), that would allow them

access to exclusive items in the game store (that could only be bought with

virutal points), mirroring Fly Buys ‘earn and burn’ points approach to their

real-world product. Toyota featured in the game when players had to match

the right Toyota vehicle with the house target buyer profiles, reflecting

Toyota’s core messaging around finding a Toyota that’s “right for you”.

Our First Home – Game Video

The families’ renovated floor plans unlocked in the game when they were

released on-air, which meant we could invite viewers to have a go at

renovating the families’ homes themselves, and one of the key ways we

invited them to do this was via contextual on-air pop ups. So for instance, if

there was a pivotal moment in show when The Wardlaw Family didn’t finish

their master bedroom, we featured a pop-up inviting players to finish it

themselves. These pop-ups displayed towards the end of each episode in

order to maximise our ‘extension’ approach that encouraged viewers to

migrate from TV to online once the episide had finished and further engage

with Our First Home.

Our First Home – On-air Pop Up

The results have been remarkable:

26,045 downloads

619,370 screen views

76% returning users (85% in the final five weeks of the show)

27m session duration

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#2 simulation game and #2 strategy game in the Apple App Store in

the first month of launch.

A final outtake to end on here is that these projects start and end with the

story. Whenever we look to define a transmedia approach to our content, we

never start with the digital platform, we start with the story. That’s what

makes the work so rich and diverse because that story could be anything

from an obs doc series, to a murder mystery thriller, to a reality cooking show

… so we start with the heart of the story and work outwards from there.