[Promo piece about the WWE]

TB: We pulled this piece together to help explain the power of the brand. ...so clearly there's a lot of excitement in the wrestling community and it spans across age demographics.

IA: So that's three different transmedia approaches. It raises an interesting question. Sharon, what is the relationship between the three terms - "franchising," "extensions" and "world building"? Are those about the same thing to the audience?

SR: I don't think so. When viewers think about "franchising" it connotes commerce and manipulation that's not in a fun way. When audiences talk about "franchising" and "branding" it turns them off. "Worldbuilding" is about community, bonding, the creative aspects, being able to experience the story - it's beyond participation. You become a part of it as a story teller or as a character. "Franchising" feels more limited, even though it's a big part of how it ends up organically working from a business perspective. You don't want to say "narrative extension" to an audience member because it sounds stuffy and not about the pure visceral pleasure - that anything could happen. Narrative doesn't quite encapsulate that. So "worldbuilding" is the draw from a fan perspective.

TC: Soaps for a while tried to franchise by using more moneymaking schemes, like "shop the soaps" or writing novels and working the novel into the story, like the character would write a novel and it would come out in real life. They were successful in that they made money, but the fans took it as a manipulation, like you said. After the fact they growled about it and weren't happy about it. They want to feel like they're part of the community. It's not about extending the franchise in terms of making money, it's about extending the franchise creatively.

IA: So there's this question of - you can argue that transmedia starts as a marketing proposition. You need to build interest. You're starting with an audience that doesn't know anything about it and it's a way to generate interest. Is transmedia fundamentally about marketing? Is there a difference between content for promotional purposes and content promoted?

LW: I'd love to see it move beyond just promotional purposes. When I'm building things, I'm thinking about creating a story world, and I try to design layers of interactivity. I don't ever think about things as if they're just marketing tools because they impact the way I write projects - the way I think of writing stories has totally changed. It feels weird when you come up with the marketing ideas of transmedia after the original idea.

GH: Well, it's tough to separate the two - story and marketing. When we went into Blair Witch, marketing was not the plan. We came into it because there were all these other aspects of the story we wanted to tell and that was a way to tell those aspects that we knew we'd never get to do in the film itself. As a kid you'd grow up with an idea that Star Wars was not just the movie so I grew up thinking as a filmmaker "there's the film, and there's also all the other stuff I'm going to tell." It's definitely commerce; we're a business - but with True Blood we tried to write the prequel in such a way that we would find it entertaining as a fan, and try to approach it first from entertainment/storytelling value and then hope we can shape it so that it becomes economically feasible. And that's what I always thought was cool about wrestling as a kid - I always thought about those wrestlers a shaving lives where they were still wrestling, if they saw each other in a bar they'd fight!

TB: One thing we tried in the wrestling world, we're always looking for new channels, and how do we bring the world to them, to try and explain these superstars and what the rivalries are about. How can we reach people in a more fun and engaging way? One of the mandates we have for a lot of new products are "is it fun?" It has to be something that kids are interested in. And we did a brief program... we sampled and did promotions in a number of virtual worlds. We worked with Millions of Us, and they introduced us to Gaia Online to promote Summerslam.

[Video about Gaia Online WWE promotion - they came up with special avatars for each of the wrestlers and had them make a big fake flame war which eventually had 800,000 active participants!]

TB: We wondered about our virtual world strategy and we decided to look at real world events - we wanted to capture the feel of being at a wrestling match where people really do engage. So we used virtual goods, like John Cena's hat, a folding chair, a sledgehammer that you could put on your avatar and "walk around" with. It brought the WWE into an environment where kids were comfortable and let them really participate.

IA: So it's worth doing away with the idea that marketing is always a negative thing - that you can market and make good content. So there was at the end of the day a promotional imperative? For example: if people just engaged in Head Trauma's free parts, or True Blood if they never turned out to watch the show, or didn't do anything but raise the WWE's profile, is it still successful?

GH: Well, for HBO it wouldn't be successful and we wouldn't get to do it again. Lance probably has more flexibility because he generates the projects from the beginning.

TC: There's something really organic to the stories being told about all 3 though. Audiences are savvy and they can tell if it's part of the story and they're getting involved. It's when they say "quick, we need to bring in a bigger audience, let's shoehorn transmedia into an already established storyline" that they rebel.

LW: And there's something enjoyable about it! It's hard to separate things out. How do you put a price on people's enjoyment? And the level of engagement. Constantly having a flow of stuff that you're putting out there and trying to give people endless possibilities. And there's some questions about the ownership of the story - how do you let people in? There has to be a balance. And some things might be purely emotionally driven and fail from a marketing standpoint, but you do want that emotional content to be there. So sometimes you put something out there that's free but if you follow it they might bring you to a place you didn't expect.

IA: From the backchannel - from Eleanor Baird: "How do you set goals for and evaluate a campaign like the one for True Blood? Is it the # of people who participate in the viral component? The extent of the participation? The numbers of people who watch? What did HBO want to see?" And for lance - what were you looking for surrounding Head Trauma?

GH: Well I'm not the metrics guy at Campfire. We looked at total engagements; some of that was in a PR impression kind of way - how many people were being made aware of True Blood; but really, it was great, Alan Ball came to us and let us know that there was this big backstory and the show starts 2 years after this has happened and they do very little saying how or why it happened or how we got to this point so Alan Ball wanted to use marketing to inform people about this world. There's like 8 or 9 novels and this part of the story doesn't even really exist in the novels. But the big thing was how many people watched the premiere, that was what really mattered in the end. I should point out of course that we didn't do everything with True Blood, a lot of elements were executed by people other than us.

LW: Well, and when I did the live events I was able to raise the price of admission because they were live events and make more money that way. The game touched into the VOD release by Warner Brothers and I saw increased sales there and also DVD sales. In terms of our more creative work, we did a project with MySpace & Hammer Films "Beyond the Rave." We could literally tell how far people had gone through the various parts of the world and where the various pass-off points were. So we had really detailed metrics around the performance of that and were able to shape the story in real time based on those. From a creative standpoint being able to see the ebb and flow around it makes lots of sense. The more inspired someone is around the work, though, the more likely they are to bring other people into it - so creative + marketing are really connected.

IA: One more promotional question - With the writers' strike behind us now, have those issues been resolved?

TC: I was a huge supporter of the strike, on the picket line every day. Something had to be done and a lot of fellow writers thought it didn't involve daytime TV but it did (iTunes). A lot of daytime shows got around it because things are reality TV based when it's promoted online instead of writing something fictional - trying to involve fans in behind the scenes stuff in order to get around having to work with writers. It was worth it in the end even though we're all suffering for it, but in the long run it had to be done, even if we don't see the gains for a few more years.

SR: When I was doing research for my book it was right before the strike. Writers kept stressing to me that all of this transmedia stuff, whatever angle you're coming at it from, is about bringing words together and new models need to emerge. From a business perspective, which is about metrics and what can I see on paper, there needs to be a way to build in unpredictability. The business side has to be able to embrace the "can't prove this" in order for this to truly be successful and for writers to get their due and actors get their due. That's where the real clash is happening - the business side isn't there. It's interesting that we're talking about the "illegitimate" entertainment sides - wrestling, soap operas, indie films - and that's where the innovation happens so I'm surprised that the soap opera world hasn't been an innovator.

TC: It's an industry running on fear; demos are below the 1.0 mark and everyone's currently in sheer panic mode. Trying something new is just - they're too afraid to try that. But I think they have to. Talking to fans online, there's a real stigma on daytime that the fans are uneducated, but they're not at all! They aren't delusional, but they care about the characters, they grew up with them and they really care about what happens to them, and they are so ready to latch onto anything else we can possibly give them, they don't care about the reality TV promotions. But the business people are looking at immediate return and because they aren't getting it...

LW: A general question for the panel - you have audience collaborators now - with the idea of intellectual property, where is that going to head? In some cases we're talking from a marketing or brand perspective, but when I'm creating these worlds, so spread out, if I start to create all these assets, where does the ownership of that lie? How does it work? That may be holding back some of this other part of how this transmedia works outside of the marketing question even. The promise is there, the outlets are there, the audience is ready. So how do the IP issues effect it?

GH: Well when you're working with all these companies and their parent companies the legal restrictions they put on you in terms of how you can accept something from someone else, when it becomes official, etc etc is a pain and I'd like to have more freedom, but all those restrictions do clarify those things - just not in the way you'd want to in terms of fair use and collaboration. It's all "we own these things forever." And you kind of can see it from a corporate legal perspective, but there has to be a balance, somehow. What would happen if you wrote a movie but themost popular character was somebody you didn't write, right?

SR: It's the old fashioned clash of art and commerce. Creative impulse vs. business impulse. How do you start to teach this? We have a TV writing program and we've just started an internet/mobile track - how do you teach creatively motivated people to keep these business questions in mind and still make good art but understand the bottom line?

IA: There's a question on the board: "So what happens to us creative marketing people when entertainment IP showrunners start thinking in these terms and conceptualize the digital narrative channels? Will I have to write a Tide ARG?" from Braccia. No, Gregg will write it for you!

IA: Another question from Sam Ford: "WWE extends itself in many ways, but it's one of the most active censors on YouTube. How do you manage how fans are "supposed" to interact with the story world and now they are not, when it comes to IP?"

TB: Well, there's a lot of ways to address this. The WWE has a variety of pay per views every month and we have to block the fans from putting that up so we don't lose money. We want to empower our fans, so we think of YouTube in multiple ways. PPV/movies/currently actively selling: we don't want people to pirate that. But we have a YouTube brand channel that we program as if it's a regular TV show to help fans get up to speed on what's going on. So what we do there is increase awareness of the storyline but also increase awareness that WWE.com has a brand new hi def video player and Hulu and you can view way more things on those tools. So we actively use YouTube and feed our brand channel for promotional purposes. We want fans to know what the matches are, and what's the back story on the PPVs, to prevent people from actually putting up the PPVs.

IA: A question for the Toms about soaps and wrestling which are not so different: the idea of immersive story worlds - soaps and wrestling have both been doing massive story worlds for a long time, too big for any single text. The stereotype is that you turn these things on and you have no idea what's going on because it looks overwrought and alienating and the storyline is so long. So to add on to that intimidation all this transmedia stuff that makes it bigger - how do you strike that balance? Is transmedia about reorganizing existing content to make it more accessible or is it catering to the heaviest superfans and making it deeper?

TC: I don't know why you can't do both. We spend so much time in the writers' room trying to explain what's happened before in the soap - there's no reason why you can't store that kind of information online. I think serialized storytelling exists everywhere, and people will seek it out if it's good and be happy to go online and check out the backstory. If they're riveted by it they'll seek it out.

TB: Yes, I agree. We did something in Habbo with 60 superstars whom you were randomly assigned and that helps people understand who they are and how the Royal Rumble works. But it also makes the superfans go "yes, I got the superstar I wanted," etc. You have to embrace the hardcores who help spread the world - the key is it has to be fun. If it's not fun, both sides will walk away!

IA: So Alice Marwick asks: "How do you negotiate multiple audiences for the same property? For soaps, cross-generational properties, one problem is engaging casual viewers while retaining long-time fans. Can transmedia narratives assist with this?"

TC: Right now there's a big issue with As the World Turns which started a young gay romance last year. It was highly publicized. Suddenly fans were vidding and an entire gay audience discovered them and now started watching JUST those scenes on YouTube! There was a big issue with the conservative audience, there was a nationwide controversy... what I don't understand is why didn't anyone ever say "why don't we do a loop-in series on our website, a 12-part web series where they could explore this?" That would allow some fans to check it out and those who didn't want to watch that didn't have to and it wouldn't take away from their enjoyment of the rest of the show and it might bring in newer viewers. But there were money issues and fear.

TB: We look to WB.com to address the issue. We show recaps that take place. But, we also stream the entire program. You can watch the whole show or the recap. By keeping it on WWE.com we can make it hi-def and still keep control.

GH: You try to build as many touch points into things that are broad and accessible so people can interact for a short period of time and get what they want out of it, which is just what we did with "True Blood." HBO On Demand has a recap of what had happened that week, 3 or 4 minutes. But part of it is also - and this is challenging - building the whole thing so that if you want to dig deep you dig deep but the casual fans - whatever the core experience is that has to be left intact enough so you can watch that and enjoy that and not feel like "what the hell happened at the end of the Matrix because I don't understand because I didn't play the video game and read the comics and etc."

IA: Next question from Derek Kompare: "How do you manage the "layers of interactivity" to keep a spectrum of interested viewers/users (i.e., from "just" watching, to full participation in ARGs, etc.)? Is one at the expense of the other?" For instance - the NUMB3RS case where they started out with ARGs and then pulled back. So, are there strategies to balance things and make it satisfying for the hardcore and accessible for everyone else?

LW: We're looking at a new project, 4-6 minute episodes with rabbit holes where you can drop off for other micronarratives. The episodes are beginning, middle and end and the other bits are like achievements you get in gaming. So when you're on you let people drill down if you want to and have some degree of discovery, see what your friends are doing as far as that goes... so as we script it out, you can go off and say "this is something we can play with," but the challenge is remembering "here's the through line of the story." The most interesting part is that sometimes that comes from where the hardcore audience will be. So you set the tone and the rules of what the story world is, and then... when you empower some of those hardcore fans, they start to bridge some of those gaps. Then how do you best mine that? In some cases they reach out and bring in people who are totally new, like from MySpace where there isn't really an ARG community. Alpha fans quickly turn other people. So I'm leaving room for the audience to participate within the world I'm creating with the idea that then they'll bring other people in and hopefully bridge the gaps. You have the passive viewing experience, but the easier it is for someone to catch up - we've joked about putting together compressed reels so they can see all the images down and putting them to music. But - what is the audience really interested in?

GH: We typically try to do something in the campaign, a "chronicle," so you can get one big overview of everything that's going on. Whether that's a website or whatever. Lance is talking about expansion, but what we're talking about is finding a way for people to just pop in - so we try to build a tool that feels like it's in the story.

TC: This reminds me of when there were webisodes that you had to watch on one show in order to understand what was going on with the show. It was required viewing, which was a problem - older viewers didn't like it. But if it's not required...

GH: It has to do a lot with the type of fan. With your hard core fans, you could not go deep enough. I always think about Star Wars and its incredible depth. But whatever you say about the last 3 films people don't have to drill down to undersatand them, they don't have to know that so and so's armor is Maldorian or whatever.

SR: And you have to put yourself in the mindset of several kinds of viewers. This is where the internet can help. You have to design a website that doesn't scream total immersion - the last thing that you want to do is shame a viewer that doesn't want to be an immersive fan. You have to enable people to not be totally immersive because you don't want to alienate them. But also - people want to share stories, want to hook their friends. You can use fans as an asset: how would you catch someone who's never watched the show before?

TC: I see this all the time on message boards! Someone says "watch this, it's really good right now," and the fans will do bullet points to catch people up.

IA: Are there some genres/narrative styles that are best for transmedia? Ex: soaps haven't turned transmedia yet, WWE hasn't gotten to the extent.

TC: I'm intrigued by the horror aspect.

LW: I think it depends on how you do it! If the characters are compelling there are a lot of options, it's just increasing the tool set of what you work with. I often do psychological thrillers, but it isn't only good for that. Once the road map, the language becomes a little clearer, that will be easier.

IA: There's a question of whether transmedia is good for people who aren't just children, teens, and geeks.

LW: I think that it's clear that there's lots more opportunity than that. Clarify the question?

IA: Well, I think the question is that there's not been transmedia that goes beyond the stereotypical demos.

TC: The problem is that there are lots of older women, for instane, online, but their shows' sites don't want them! They aren't targeted to them so they don't go there, they know that it's not made for them.

GH: Well, I think that sci fi, horror, fantasy fans want to dig deep and are used to digging deeper than some other fans. And they're comfy with the technology. But you can do this for anything! We could do this for a consumer packaged good, for instance. It just hasn't been forcefully explored yet.

SR: I think that some genres are primed for transmedia, but not every transmedia experience has to be the same transmedia experience. You have to admit that it's not all going to be the fanboy mentality. But women haven't traditionally announced themselves as much when they explore transmedia worlds - there's some stigma attached to women engaging in that. And as we see teens age - they won't suddenly throw this out the window, and we have to be ready to undrstand that.

TC: They've done diaries, but they've always given it to the interns to write. And they weren't really all that interesting. But then when I knew who was doing the writing, that it was just busywork...

GH: The quality of it... we've done extensions for TV shows that say "you get the writing intern," and that's the only person we get! I understand that they're in production and they don't have time to talk to those marketing guides, but the situation is totally different when a show runner is involved.

TC: I was so impressed by Kim from Ghost Whisperer yesterday.

GH: And when it works it's all part of the same creative package as the show, by the same authors.

Question: Most transmedia examples seem to use the same media. What is the role of movies in transmediation, and TV shows?

IA: And I'll add from Derek Kompare: "Will we ever reach a point in transmedia where the "core experience" is immaterial, where there is no core, but still a successful venture?"

GH: It depends on the measure of success. Artistic vs. economic success. I wish I could be art guy and just make art, but if you don't make money you don't get to make another one. There are probably already examples of transmedia successful beyond the core - but if you can't monetize an ARG... like the Beast for AI. Not a successful film monetarily, but the ARG was a successful artistic expression.

LW: You see the ITVS funded "world without oil" that had no show or film associated with it. What's interesting is the way people are trying to use transmedia or ARG to mobilize people for social change. So there are successful things happening in that area that aren't rooted to TV or film. I think it will be possible to not have to have the movie. A lot of my talks are about building an audience and then being better positioned to make the show. And you might then be able to have a better share of royalties as a transmedia storyteller. So now I'm developing properties that might someday touch into film or TV and setting the stage for it, so if I want to in future execute on that level I can.

IA: So something I'd like to ask - someone said "fandom is now the standard mode for media consumption" on another panel, or at least that it's an increasingly common mode. What's your perspective on that? Do you feel it's true?

TB: It's definitely there and whenever we test the response is amazing. We've knocked out servers on three virtual worlds within the first hour of starting the show, our growth whenever we enter somewhere - the fans are signing up for it. For wrestling, absolutely.

LW: You're always hearing about measurement of success in terms of things crashing. Maybe transmedia's fortunate because it doesn't have the infastructure to support it. How do you serve this thing? How do you make it a quality experience? As an audience member something crashing is frustrating!

GH: Somehow fandom has been elevated - look at the importance of Comic-Con. But it's been elevated to be some sort of more important type of consumption than others that can then be used to leverage other users.

TB: And the behavior's rewarded! That hasn't historically happened, but we love that you love the product. Here's more, sing louder!

SR: I always ask people how they define fandom and we're starting to see viewers talk about levels of fandom - are you a hardcore fan? Or just a fan? Re-establishing hierarchies of who counts as most important among groups of viewers. If you aren't hard core enough... you aren't a real fan?

TB: We did a contest, "WWE's biggest fan" - the submissions were amazing! Entire houses were taken over by wrestling merchandise! Other fans are like "that's great, but I can rattle off everyone who's held the intercontinental title in two languages." How people value the participation is an interesting question. All the submissions were so different and it was a real insight into the fan base.

Question: The real question for hardcore fans and producers is the anonymous "they" - what are the other people doing and how can we reach them? Both sides can engage with each other but there's always a sort of "what do THEY think?" The hidden third group - the casual viewers - are the mysterious group now. Also, fans invented transmedia in many ways. Can producers and marketers use the collective intelligence, resources of fans to make transmedia work better, to reach the mysterious "they?" New ideas come up all the time. Fan cultures that aren't being catered to as much as sci fi or horror often think "if only fan ideas were taken up more by marketing and producers these would reach larger audiences."

GH: I think it goes back to the gigantic companies, the gatekeeper. They're protecting their IP. The artistic side of me says "of course you should let them write a character," etc. Theoretically awesome. To a corporation, which owns these properties, a nightmare of epic proportions because they're getting to the core of their business. So I think people like Lance will figure it out because he is the gatekeeper to his IP, not a corporation.

LW: When you really hit on that core and you start to realize that there's such control over the property in the ownership and the authorship both - it's almost like this living breathing organism, the fan culture. It will either overtake you or you can go with it. It's almost like R&Ding certain things. Some great ideas from letting fans feel some ownership!

GH: I'm really looking forward to seeing the collaborative filmmaking thing - Undead Nation, Undead America, Zombie Nation? -

LW: There's another one called Lost Zombie that used a Ning backend for it so they had huge scaling potential. They built this thing up and now it has 6,000 members, a user generated zombie documentary. Now the barrier to entry is - they can have more market penetration with certain web series. They're working towards flashmob type things, big outbreaks, hundreds of people...

GH: But they're pushing the boundaries. "Here's the core IP, go crazy, then we'll help you compile it."

Question: On an adjacent topic - I was curious about meta trans media. TC, you're on a blog talking about soaps even though you're not working on right now. Ding blogs, podcasts, that are about the text - multiple media forms building commentary about a text that isn't actually transmedia. What's that about?

TB: We had a lot of people blogging so we developed "WWE Fan Universe." So fi you want to read a superstar's blog you know where to go and that it's legitimate. We gave them tools to communicate with the fans. The problem we were running into were finding pages and proving it was legit on other spaces. We wanted to bring the experience back to WWE.com so it was easier to control, digest, populate with content. It's not necessarily the final answer but we're seeing how it works.

TC: I wish I could say that there's strategy to my blogging, but there isn't - as a former superfan and then having worked my way into working in soaps and wanting to talk about what it was like I started it, I never really publicized it. Then the strike happened and someone discovered it and our whole team got fired and overnight I had 20,000 hits. So I don't have a plan for the blog! For now, I feel like I need tokeep going with it because clearly there's a disenfranchised audience out there who feel like they're beating their heads against the wall. Just feeling like there's someone on the other side of the fence, employed or not, who's fighting for them is probably good.

GH: I think sometimes metatransmedia can be amazingly powerful. I mean the biggest part of Lord of the Rings fandom was harnessing meta information. But then he did it with King Kong and nobody cared. Ultimately, it has to aim towards something that in and of itself is valuable.

SR: I think it ties into that it helps you when viewers want to get involved. If they understand the production context they aren't going to come up with some of the cracky ideas they sometimes do and then get mad at you when you don't incorporate it.

Question: This is for TC - You've been in the writers' room. What do they say about soap fans in there?

TC: Depends on the show! The exec prod of As the World Turn said flat out in the press "I don't care about internet fans, I don't care what they're saying." Daytime cringes at superfans and that's why they're dying. Younger people have a lot of love, but the ones in the business for 20-25 years - I don't want to generalize, but there's animosity and resentment when fans write fanfic, "they they're better than us." When fans say something isn't in character, they say, "What we say goes!" People who are younger and were in that fan crowd in high school, don't feel that way at all and are trying to change it, but it's tough.

IA: To wrap up: FoE always has had a transmedia panel. In three years, we've become much more mainstream re: transmedia - it's more common. What should FoE 4 look at re: transmedia?

SR: Backlash. I'm interested to see what happens when the fans push back and say "if everyone's here at Comic-Con, it's not as special any more." If everyone takes their show to Comic-Con, what's the point?

IA: There was a blog that called out that there were 9 fake protests for different brands and people had to schedule which protest to attend.

GH: I think it'll be about the Tide ARG. [laughs]

LW: Hopefully there'll be some degree of seeing the transmedia shift to where there's demonstrations of people making money from transmedia, not just the core properties.