Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

From beginning to end, a transmedia story should be a social phenomenon, one which draws people together and unifies them through shared experiences. At present, the industry is obsessed with creating toys and applications which are too exclusive. They do not address the primary goal of storytelling—bringing individuals together by revealing some truth about the world around us. 

Like the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ stories of the 1980s, these gimmick driven products isolate rather than connect your viewers. Well designed alternate reality games are popular because they immerse players within the same social experience (the same way big talent shows like Idol or The Voice do but on a smaller scale). The players are unified toward a common goal against a common evil.

If transmedia is to be even more successful in the future, we need to concentrate on designed experiences that are socially inclusive which have the power to bring people together through common interests and goals. This will require that we take more care in designing the path along which our readers and viewers access our stories. Transmedial producers have a tendency of creating interactive experiences that are overly complex which ultimately deter audience engagement across every available piece of content. We need to define the ‘path’ between audience access points much like the map function on a video game so that audience members know where they are in relative to the story as a whole and where they’re going, regardless of which piece of content they’ve accessed.

Uncovering history as well as displaying statistics is really challenging and tricky, since traditionally both of them are associated with something boring and insipid that no one loves. However, it is hard to deny that we prefer visual over text, so why not turn this inclination into an advantage and reveal a series of facts and past events in a visually-appealing, engaging and alluring way thereby making a journey through history/story a really enjoyable and rewarding pastime. Besides, you do not have to reinvent the wheel, the solution is already here: visual storytelling is considered to be a new language for effectively and attractively communicating information.

The approach involves the utilization of modern techniques such as parallax scrolling or lazy loading animations that bring to life fascinating and impressive scenes built with the help of different themes and styles. There are no hard and fast rules: thus, websites that reveal history can be executed in a modern flat style or can be populated with glossy vector graphics, there is no obligation to bear a nostalgic feeling at all in order to become a masterpiece and draw attention.Want to see firsthand? Then explore our list that contains 10 informative and captivating visual storytelling online projects....