Coined by MIT professor Henry Jenkins in his 2006 book Convergence Culture, the term “transmedia storytelling” involves an evolving narrative told across multiple media platforms, playing to each channel’s strength, and each one contributing to create a story world larger than the sum of its parts.
The concept has long been embraced by the entertainment world, in which a story – man grows up to avenge parent’s murder, for instance – takes on a life of its own as it is elaborated and extended via film, videogames, animations and comic books. Recently, brands have started to experiment with developing their own story worlds and narratives across various media touchpoints.
General Mills Canada, for example, with AOR Cossette, recently created a viral soap opera campaign for its Old El Paso brand featuring a dramatic Spanish family. The online vignettes star Roberto, who is also featured in the TV commercials, carrying story consistency across multiple channels. Consumers can insert themselves into the plots, and pass the results on to friends.

For Frito-Lay North America’s Smartfood brand, Toronto-based Juniper Park developed In a Woman’s World, a series of animated webisodes that follow four friends’ funny moments and rituals involving food, relationships and exercise that women can relate to. The site also includes games, cartoons and avatars women can create to cross over from one world to the other.
The approach is contrary to the traditional campaign model, which is based on one concept or a distinct USP that’s simply expressed across multiple platforms. That practice was all well and good when the bulk of advertising targeted a TV-fixated generation, but not so much anymore, says Faris Yakob, formerly EVP/chief technology strategist at McCann Erickson in New York, given that we’ve transitioned into a media-rich world, where attention is scarce and a new “idea consumer” is coming to the fore.
“Previously, the audience was like a Victorian child – seen and not heard,” says Yakob. “That’s simply no longer the case. Now, whether you’re making traditional advertising, or doing social media, people have a role in the cultural discourse, and I think you should probably respect that if you want them to be involved in what you do.”
In a thesis he wrote in 2006 for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Yakob borrowed from Jenkins’ concept of transmedia narratives to propose a different way of thinking about media planning to engage this new consumer: transmedia planning. It’s a model for the development of an evolving, non-linear brand narrative, in which different channels and platforms are used to express stand-alone elements to create a larger brand world.
“We need to realize, increasingly, the audience is a participant. That changes how we have to do what we do, not just in terms of building narratives, but everything we do,” says Yakob.
It’s not a new concept. As consumers have been changing their media habits, brands have steadily been changing their thinking over the past decade to find more engaging approaches. Developed in 2001, DDB’s (now-defunct) Downtown Partners worked to bring the “Bud Light Institute” to life by unconventionally using various media touchpoints to create a narrative that built the sense of a physical presence without an actual building.
OOH executions depicted the opening of the “Institute,” which was portrayed as a grandiose structure dedicated to promoting fun for guys. The agency placed mock employment ads seeking a CEO in Toronto dailies, directing applicants to the campaign website where they could acquire applications and register with the Institute database; an audition for the job was actually held at a golf course in Toronto. A music CD was available for purchase, featuring songs about guys having good times, while TV ads hawked fictional “Institute” products like a perpetually steaming cup of coffee that gave the impression that a guy was at his desk at work when he was, in fact, playing hooky.