My PSFK Salon LA presentation at the SoHo House in West Hollywood. The event was a lot of fun and included some fresh thinking (and great examples of different transmedia efforts) from J.C. Christofilis, Ben Rock, Scott Walker and Kristen Olson.

1. MULTI-PLATFORM
STORYTELLING:
4 levers, 4 use cases.
Presented by: Gunther Sonnenfeld 4.29.2011

2. simulation

3. projectTRUST

4. OBJECTIVE(s):
- understand what trust really means across
industries by seeking out emerging stories
through topics & themes in videos &
conversation; use current events as
‘metafilters’
- identify behavioral, media consumption
and socio-economic patterns through
content communities; draw out new
correlations & insights
- use insights to weave together a new
narrative, with various extended threads &
user profiles
- serve up an experience (such as a game)
that uses select media to simulate the
dimensions of trust using real-world
situations as context; can be used for
brands, communities or both.

7. ARCHAEOLOGY FOR KEY THEMES:
PROPAGANDA
FAITH VS. TRUST
RECIPROCITY
TRUST & MONEY
RESPECT VS. AUTHORITY
TRUST & SCIENCE

9. START
HERE.

12. persona

14. OBJECTIVE(s):
- use Algren estate assets & feature
documentary to tell a ‘metastory’ around
artistic influence; allow the narrative
(chapters & verse) to dictate channels &
reinvigorate personas
- leverage celebrity artists (writers,
photogs, musicians, directors, etc.) to tell
their own renditions of the relationship to
Algren, using select, immersive media
- invite people to participate in unique
extended narratives found in games,
eBooks, webisodes, etc.; blend fiction &
non-fictional elements (& characters) in a
new, dynamic storyworld
- develop a ‘franchise’ around these
coordinated media & co-created assets

15. Algren Early Trailer Cut

20. extraction

22. OBJECTIVE(s):
- resurrect lagging sales from the first game
(“Red Dead Revolver”) with an entirely new
strategic approach; leverage the strength of
the writing & central characters
- audit game components and extract
current marketing assets; rebuild the John
Marsten anti-hero archetype into a new
storyworld with its own mythology; align first
with Hollywood icons from the Wild West
- use different media types - billboards,
street pop-ups, hyperlinks, graphic novels,
rich media, etc. - as critical entrypoints into
the storyworld; elicit curiosity, advocacy &
participation
- create added cultural relevance by aligning
emerging themes to cause-related
components or modern history

23. Red Dead Redemption Official Trailer

25. (rich media depicting Dali-esque trainwreck)
(outdoor media depicting Bronson-esque showdown)

26. (graphic novels told as prequels)

27. (serializations told with modern history; Polish Solidarity)

28. context

29. OBJECTIVE(s):
- create a game-like experience in which
search queries are driven by topical or
sentimental affinities
- conversation pieces emerge as ‘fractals’,
or clusters of reorganized information; those
are matched to different media types
- the fractal/media match-ups
recontextualize the topics & sentiments &
reveal new content communities
- users are then given free online tools with
which they can remix content as they please
& they can syndicate it to their interest
graphs (social networks)

34. TAKEAWAYS:
stories are everywhere; we have unlimited
opportunities to curate and contextualize them
at scale... for profit... or not.
the most success is found at the intersection
of media, technology and culture; we should
liberate channels and methods, not be confined
by them.
anything is commercially possible provided
that we use storytelling as a means for better
understanding the human condition, not just to
push messages or media agendas.
marketing or branding is not the same thing as
storytelling, but it can be; be unreasonable in
the quest to tell that better story - it is the
only way you can earn meaning, relevance &
scale.

35. thank you