To: Steve Burke, CEO NBCUniversal
From: Susana Benaim, Strategic Planning Committee
Subject: The Art of Immersion, How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories, by Frank Rose
Frank Rose is “a leading writer and speaker on digital culture.” He writes a blog called Deep Media, which covers advertising, entertainment and storytelling developments and is a contributing editor for Wired magazine. Mr. Rose’s book, The Art of Immersion is an example-driven analysis of how new technology is changing the media industry. His theory is founded on the fact that stories are universal – however, the way we tell stories seems to change with emerging technology. People want to be immersed. They want to be involved in a story and make it their own. The question is, how can media companies accommodate this desire? Rose provides a plethora of examples, ranging from interactive marketing schemes from movies like the Dark Knight, to the creation of Wookiepedia, the Wiki of all things Star Wars. Through these examples, one can see the consistent thread of consumer immersion successes and failures that are affecting the advertising, film, television and videogame industry. For NBCUniversal’s interests, the book provides insight into immersion projects that could yield ideas for marketing content and creating a lasting relationship with consumers.
The Art of Immersion starts off with a story about a cryptic email sent from a human resources office at whysoserious.com. The email was sent to people who applied to work for the new batman movie The Dark Knight. When logging onto the website, people found a carnival game with animals that had addresses written on them. Online forums filled up with people trying to figure out what the website meant. The website also exposed there was a special treat for Robin Banks. One of the addresses was a pastry shop in Boston. A local couple went to the pastry shop and asked for a package for Robin Banks. The employees gave the couple a cake with a phone number written in the frosting. After calling the number, the cake started ringing. The couple found a phone and a charger with a playing card – the joker. They were instructed to keep the phone charged at all times after calling the number on the card. They were now accomplices of the Joker in robbing banks. After all the animals on the carnival game disappeared, the website provided the option of clicking on one of two playing cards. The first showed the new poster for the film, and the second gave away tickets for a special screening of a few minutes of footage from the movie – where it was revealed that Heath Ledger was going to play the joker. The immersive advertising campaign of whysoserious was a success. There was buzz about the movie months before it came out, and it provided a great opportunity for Nokia – the company that provided the phones. The campaign got one of the most prestigious advertising awards at Cannes that year. The “otaku” – those consumers that Rose characterizes as super fans – enjoyed the game and the immersive nature of the campaign. The response in online forums, and the buzz created, helped make the movie a huge success. In the case of NBCUniversal, it might be beneficial to consider advertising campaigns that immerse the “otaku” in the content produced by the film studios in the same way that whysoserious did for The Dark Knight.
An example of TV viewer immersion that Rose presents in the book actually focuses on NBC’s show The Office. The show’s web presence was represented in the form of Dunder Mifflin Infinity – the paper company’s website created by the obnoxious character of Ryan Howard in his attempt to reinvigorate the company. The site welcomes users to become virtual employees at Dunder Mifflin. Users had weekly tasks and were paid in “Schrute Bucks” (inspired by the character of the show Dwight Schrute). Once a user has $2000 “Schrute Bucks” they could apply to one of Dunder Mifflin’s 100 branches. Dunder Mifflin Infinity was also a social networking site where fans could communicate with the show and with each other. Out of the 260,000 visitors of the website, there were 20,000 power users – or “otaku” – that kept up with weekly assignments and were active voices on the site. Later on, Dwight’s blog was introduced in the site. This was a place where Dwight blogged about what he knew best – Dwight. Additionally, the producers of the show used the web space to present “producer cuts” of episodes of the show – since the episodes have to be cut down to 22 minutes per episode to fit broadcasting standards. This gave visitors access to extra content from the show – something “otaku” viewers seem to prize. What The Office did was give viewers a second screen immersive experience into the show: they got to discuss the show amongst fans and the show itself, they had assignments every week, they read a character’s innermost thoughts, and they even got to see extra footage from the show. TV series like Parks and Recreation or even NBC dramas can benefit from an immersive experience like Dunder Mifflin Infinity. Even though TV 360 – the interactive campaign NBC created after the success of Dunder Mifflin Infinity – did not succeed as hoped, a non-formulaic immersion campaign catered to each prime-time show might have the same success in the future of the network.
The two last examples that come forth from The Art of Immersion are linked by the fact that it was user generated content stemmed from Start Wars and Mad Men. Characters of the hit show Mad Men appeared on Twitter, and grew a huge following. Nevertheless, Betty, Don and Roger – characters of the show – were not controlled or created on Twitter by the network or the producers, they were created by viewers – the “otaku” of the show. AMC contacted Twitter to shut the accounts down, since under the Millennium Act, Twitter and YouTube are protected from being sued if they take down content from users that contain infringing material at the request of the copyright holder. The Twitter followers of the characters crowded the social media site saying how clueless the network was – the characters were creating excitement about the show before the second season and had a massive following. AMC’s marketing agency, Deep Focus, advised the network to let the viewers continue Tweeting as the characters. The accounts went up again the next day. A crisis of authorship has spawned from digital media. Although fans have always created stories about their favorite characters, up until recently, only few people had access to their fan-fiction. LucasFilm had a more tactful approach to the many videos, fan-fiction, and products created by Star Wars “otaku.” They created a web space for all fan created content, with the condition that anything uploaded would become LucasFilm’s intellectual property. This way, exerting a certain degree of control over the “otaku” creations. With new media, networks have to be prepared for user-generated-content to appear and see it more as a tribute rather than exert unneeded control over it. However, taking note from LucasFilm, NBCUniversal could put forth certain kinds of limitations so that the content created by fans is not commercialized.
Although Mr. Rose goes over many other examples that affect all sorts of corners of media, the cases of whysoserious, Dunder Miffiln Infinity, and consumer-created content, apply best to the business of production and distribution in a world that is acclimating to new media. The aspect of storytelling that has obviously had an impact in the industry, with the rise of the Internet, is consumer desire for immersion. All sorts of content that suspends the viewer in disbelief have the potential of creating a crowd of “otaku” wanting to further immerse themselves in the story. For this reason, NBCUniversal should look into creating immersive experiences alongside their content to draw and maintain the relationship with the audience.
Works Cited
- Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion, How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories. 1st edition. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print.
- Rose, Frank. “Frank Rose: Digital Anthropologist.” . <http://www.frankrose.com/bio.html>.