The era of quick-fix solutions VS the future of story sustainability

Transmedia in Singapore — look back on 2014, trends for 2015

This interview was conducted by Simon Staffans and first published in his annual media industry report about the state of media: ONE YEAR IN NOW MEDIA Vol. IV. Read the full report here: http://www.slideshare.net/Simon99/one-year-in-now-media-vol-iv

Marco Sparmberg is a South-East Asia based transmedia producer and emerging media content strategist who is heading the transmedia initiative at Singapore’s National Broadcaster, MediaCorp. Follow him at @MarcoSparmberg.

What were the highlights for you, looking back at 2014? Any projects, creators, conferences etc that stood out?

Having moved from Hong Kong to Singapore in late 2013, I dedicated most my time in 2014 to building a local transmedia creators community. Unlike the years before, I took a break from traveling abroad, not visiting any festivals or conferences. My sole focus was on the Singaporean market, and to a certain extend Malaysia and Indonesia.

While building the community I came across a number of small, yet fascinating projects. Often we were able to team up with local talents and artists to deliver another workshop or meetup session for the community. There were two projects that stood out for me.

One was Filament Forest by Lennard Ong. A project that started with 2D mapping of human emotional states by means of a swarm of computer generated bugs. Lennard moved the project into the 3D space this year and developed it to a point where he needed to crowdsource ideas what meaning this spacial design he created can adopt. We conducted a workshop where participants could fuse storytelling with spacial design creation. A very unique approach.

The other Singaporean project came from Don Bosco, a children's content writer and maker. Don used to blur the line between written stories and interactive features in his books using QR codes or augmented reality apps. This year, he created an open source project where he conducts storytelling workshops for kids at schools or community centers, combining his rich local story world of “The Legend of the Cardboard Heroes” with comic and cardboard hacking.

I was deeply fascinated by these two projects as they tackle new forms of active (literally hands-on) story creation, yet almost entirely leave aside all the new media technology that one would expect in a transmedia project. Adding to this, both projects were able to find universally accessible yet very Singaporean stories. Something that is quite rare in the local media landscape.

You’re actively promoting transmedia storytelling and multiplatform creation in Asia — how would you describe the environment there? To what extent is it coming along, what are the greatest challenges?

Transmedia storytelling in Asia in general is hitting a very dry streak currently as the term transforms into an industry buzzword. Not only for the entertainment sector but also for advertising. Often it is seen as the bag of magic tricks to guarantee the quick viral success every brand needs to have. Yet, only few understand what transmedia encompases, let alone what infrastructure and resources are needed. Often, “transmedia” is tackled with a set of traditional media tools, played out on social media and disguised in sales rhetoric.

The main reason why it is picking up slowly is mainly due to the fact that best practice scenarios from the West can barely be translated into a local, Asian context. Hence, the desperately needed big commercially successful proof of concept to declare transmedia as the next best thing is still missing. Transmedia in Asia has to function on a commercial level first. Academic experiments are irrelevant to the market.

One of the biggest challenges, especially in Singapore is cultural and language diversity. In order to create an inclusive transmedia project, a creator has to choose a story that resonates strongly with Singapore’s cultural melting pot, is delivered in at least four different languages and does not offend any racial or religious sentiments. Finding such a one-size-fits-all project that also plays out on different devices and platforms is beyond challenging and at this point in time financially implausible.

The answer rather lies with serving niche communities and finding a sweet spot between local relevance and commercial brand values. One way to get transmedia projects up and running has been in the corporate space when a brand is driven to redefine its customer relationship building process. By means of content packaged in stories and delivered with interactive features, brands turn into online/mobile broadcasters of their own branded entertainment whereas they transform customers into an audience. This has particularly worked well in the space of Corporate Social Responsibility in South-East Asia.

In this respect, Singapore content producer Isaac Ray Thomas created a concept that he calls Empathy Led Activation. Essentially, he combines elements from transmedia storytelling and design thinking to offer a new, very audience centric content approach for brands.

Looking ahead — what are your expectations for 2015? What are you looking forward to the most? What would you like to see come to pass?

For me, story starts with the audience. Content development starts with distribution strategies.

Working in the TV field, I’m personally interested to see the use of ARG and VR as immersive extensions to TV shows. Adopting concepts like Coca Cola’s “liquid content” into the mainstream entertainment sector is absolutely necessary. Experimenting with fragmented narrative formats as well as responsive storytelling is something that will emerge alongside naturally.

Having gradually build one of the leading cities in terms of big data use, Singapore is making real quick progress in the smart nation direction. 2014 has seen several broad initiatives where maker culture was merged with urban development as well as national security.

In a media context, the implementation of an audience centric approach to programming and content creation dictates the use of audience profiling data and behavioral pattern mapping. However, at the heart of this must still be a strong community building initiative in order to support growth and sustainability for own content IPs. I hope that the age of quick-fix solutions comes to an end and resources for projects get deployed in a more strategic manner, building properties for the long run.

Big data will soon become the heart of the overall decision making process in Asian media. We will see a whole range of new job scopes popping up. Content creators that can manage a large scale cross-platform production, hold a hybrid understanding of local stories and know how to interpret audience data will be in huge demand next year. Being it Singapore, these new specialists will also have to bring the right sensibility of political equilibrium plus cultural and religious finesse.