Mad Men, a failed transmedia experiment?
by Nicolas Bry, published on 20.12.2010
Simon Pulman looked for the book of Roger Sterling’s memoirs on Amazon and stumbled upon Sterling’s Gold: thinking he’d found the famous memoirs, already excited to learn more about his favorite series, he was incredibly disappointed to get a boring book of Roger’s quotations from Mad Men scripts.
Simon Pulman drew four lessons from this failed encounter between the cult series and transmedia:
- Transmedia is not marketing
It enriches the creative universe and has to be in line with the original creators; this was not the case for Roger Sterling’s book, neither for Mad Men characters on Twitter.
- This is where the “transmedia producer” comes in linking marketing with original property
- You don’t want to risk disappointing the community of fans
By developpping heterogeneous quality between media, in other words “If Roger Sterling’s book sucks”, this damages the whole property. By the way, the iPhone Mad Men App is not bad at all (personal Transmedia Lab assessment
)
- Transmedia has to be integrated from the start
Transmedia producer and his writers should be involved from the start, transmedia being a development cost rather than a marketing task.
Simon Pulman article: Sterling’s Gold – Important Lessons.
