It goes like this:
- Invent a bunch of fiction characters. Boys, girls.
- Set up a location. Could be more than one.
- Create a story around them - one being friend of the other, dating a girl freshly parted from her boyfriend, being a friend of another and so on. AKA: a script.
- (up until now - nothing special, right? but her goes:) Make the story unfold using the internet. Books, plays, TV and movies - Out. Internet story-telling - In.
How is that done:
- Create fake Facebook profiles people can befriend and follow.
- Create YouTube movies showing parts of the story from different points of view - one character’s friend (both on Facebook) filming another talking about his side of the story (translation: dating and having sex with a new girl).
- Create Twitter accounts for the whole bunch.
- Create blogs, each telling the story from the character’s mouth.
- Create a blog giving a bird’s-view on the tale, excluding the details. Sort of a “Previously on LA Law”.
- Let people from the outside interact with the story and characters. Make friends with the characters in Facebook, follow Twitter feeds, subscribe to RSS blog feeds and comment to the lot of them.
Sounds interesting? I agree. But it’s not my idea.
Meet Story2Oh!
If you hurry up, you can jump on the wagon, the story just began.
you can have a taste of the tale in the following link (18+ only :), taken from one of the “actor’s” blogs, and the following video from YouTube:
The story is very underground. Little traffic is coming to the site, few link and discuss it (Google them and see how little results you get), not many friends are following on Facebook or Twitter. They seem to be just a bunch of people with an idea and with zero PR. It’s a shame if you ask me.Actually, they did get a bit of publicity. Mashable (the only main-stream internet blog that picked the story) wrote about them. Actually, they didn’t “write” about them. They slaughtered them:
Some days we get notified around here of really bad ideas. We give a soft chuckle, toss it on the pile, forget about it and move on. Then we get notices like the one for Story2Oh! that seem so bad, they aspire to be “lame”.
I beg the differ. Big time.
It’s a superb idea. Mashable’s main point against the initiative is the attention span required to follow it. “Mind-bandwidth” if you like. True. It’s time consuming. I personally won’t follow. But I don’t watch TV either. And I don’t read Tom Clancy. They’re all time wasters if you ask me. But people like stories about people, romance, sex. And they follow people sharing that info on the web. They starve for it. Otherwise, tools like twittertale would not have existed.
A smart marketer would take that to mind. Remember everyone talking about web 2.0 marketing? building brands around social networks? opening “fan pages” in Facebook? Now imagine Nike doing this:
- Create a global spy story (Jason Bourn style) with Nike branded into it.
- Let people find clues to make the story go (If they see a YouTube movie of someone hiding a clue under a bench in Sydney, they will find that long lost friend in Australia to go fetch it. Did anyone say “Viral”?).
- As the story unfolds, using the surfers, Nike will give them gifts. Expensive ones (Treasure-hunt style).
- Enjoy tons of PR. Globally. For novelty and the story.
- Enjoy people’s envolvment with the brand and other fancy marketing words of the kind.
And how about reality shows? Movie trailers?
A new story-telling media is born. Jason Bourn.
12 responses so far ↓
1 A new story-telling media is born (Marketers of the world - Rejoice!) | Links Makers // Jan 17, 2008 at 6:41 am
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2 pod // Jan 17, 2008 at 8:30 am
” A smart marketer would take that to mind…
If I may be so bold, I dont agree that this has any valid marketing potential whatsoever. The only value this would have, is if it was REAL people. And even that, would be pushing it.
Who has time to follow up on the lives of fake people ? The problem with this concept is that you take a REAL platform (facebook and myspace are full of real people) and put on it, fake characters. It ruins the ‘fantasy aspect’ essential to the lives of soap opera stars. Something is fundamentally missing here.
From the get-go you know its not real, so you don’t get ’sucked in’ like you would on a real soap opera.
All of this = Zero marketing pull IMHO.
That’s my two bits.
The Original Pod
3 Elad // Jan 17, 2008 at 8:35 am
It’s a virtual world, baby. You really think all profiles in MySpace are real?
And in Facebook?
The answer might surprise you.
And people love following the stories of fake people. That’s what movies and books are all about. This is the same - only the delivery platform is different.
4 pod // Jan 17, 2008 at 8:49 am
I know, but you are missing the fundamental point I made above. Fantasy is fantasy. Reality, is reality. The human mind can’t really enter fantasy when reality is mixed in… it doesnt work. I think the internet can most definitely be a platform for such a concept in particular, via the marketing aspects of 2.0 … but NOT via facebook. It doesnt work because basically… it has one major problem…it’s lame.
5 Elad // Jan 17, 2008 at 9:07 am
Maybe.
But Nike’s Marketing SVP sounded different on the phone 15 minutes ago.
6 pod // Jan 17, 2008 at 10:36 am
That may be so. But then, what do Nike know? Tiny company like them…. but seriously…. just cos the big boys are saying it/selling it - doesnt mean they are right… just look at the fall and fall of Vista. I rest my case…
7 pod // Jan 17, 2008 at 10:38 am
And lets not even GO there with regards to Tablet PC projections and failures. But… you ARE the hi-tech guru not I. But … I may just surprize you with my gut feeling. Weirder things have been known to happen… happen… happen….
8 Elad // Jan 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I know. I remember the time you played with that silly Voodoo doll. Can still feel the pain….
9 pod // Jan 18, 2008 at 8:28 am
If I really had made a voodoo doll of you - you’d be dead by now… no human could ever survive that amount of torture….
10 Doodee // Jan 31, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for sharing
11 InfoseImmorce // Feb 9, 2008 at 8:04 am
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:
12 InfoseImmorce // Mar 23, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well.
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