iMedia: Let's start with transmedia in entertainment. It's emerging, but maybe not quite here yet. What do you think might be the catalyst that could make transmedia storytelling take off?
Jenkins: As "Madge the Manicurist" used to say in the old Palmolive commercials, "You are soaking in it." The transmedia revolution has been building over the past decade. There is now an expectation that transmedia content is going to be produced for certain kinds of programs, and the range of programs (and audiences) that are expecting transmedia is expanding dramatically week by week. Much of contemporary transmedia is designed to help satisfy the needs and interests of hardcore viewers, but this strategy is based in part on a theory of social influence. For every hardcore fan, whose interest is fed by transmedia, there are many other more casual viewers who get pulled to the program so that they can engage in conversations with the hardcore fan.
iMedia: Can you give an example of what you consider to be a great transmedia campaign?
Jenkins: I would say that some of the really successful ones in the past year or so would include the campaigns that launched "District 9," "True Blood," and "Glee." Each, in its own way, built audience awareness. "District 9" and "True Blood" used the web (fake websites, online videos) and physical space (billboards, park benches) to expand our understanding of the world where the story is taking place and its connections -- literal and metaphorical -- to the world of our everyday experience. By the time you got into the theater, you already knew that "District 9" was set in a world where aliens and humans are segregated (not unlike apartheid-era South Africa), that there was growing political disagreements on alien regulation and alien rights. Not bad for a film that might otherwise not have even registered on the public consciousness.
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"Glee" has deployed transmedia performances -- the songs and performance numbers as distributed by iTunes -- and embraced participatory culture -- the songs as recorded as lip sync and karaoke-style performance videos on YouTube. The first might be modeled on the "Rock Band" video game -- using the television show to generate awareness of music, and vice-versa; the second builds on the success of Soulja Boy and others who have empowered the audience to perform their music, and thus increased their visibility.
iMedia: With budget cuts and an overall reduction in studios' marketing budgets, are there opportunities that today's entertainment marketers are missing out on? Are simpler, more cost-effective tactics like social media doing an adequate job of replacing the big, flashy websites and alternative reality experiences that were so common a few years back?
Jenkins: There were reports a few months ago that showed that the Twitter flow surrounding the release of a movie may be the best single indicator of how big the film is going to open. In the past year, we've seen a number of sleeper genre films -- "District 9," "Paranormal Activity," "Kick-Ass" ("Splice" looks to be next) -- that opened bigger than expected because of the buzz they have generated in the most hardcore and socially networked fan communities. I am not sure there's a magic solution here -- the solution has to emerge logically from the specific media properties -- but any brand marketer is making a mistake if they are not paying attention to the potential for internet buzz to expand the base audience.
iMedia: Speaking of mistakes, what would you say is the most alarming trend in entertainment marketing today?
Jenkins: In general, I have declared war on the concept of "viral media." As a model, it leads media producers to think in the wrong ways about the value of their content and its relationship to the audience. Taken at face value, it offers us a smallpox-soaked blanket approach to media distribution: Unknowingly infect your consumer and let them spread the germs to their friends and neighbors. In fact, in a world with many media choices, consumers are actively selecting what content is meaningful to them and circulating it consciously to people they think may be interested. They are deploying media content as gifts for their personal networks, as resources for ongoing conversations. Until marketers understand the consumer's active agency and the social mechanisms shaping their circulation of content, they are doomed to insult and alienate the very people they are hoping to attract.
Beyond that, I am very concerned about trends in social networking sites that take away the public's ability to set their own privacy settings and to govern what kinds of information they send out to the world. Here, the word "viral" may be more accurate, but the behavior is making many people ill.
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