I just read a great post by James Carter over on ArtsFWD, where he very correctly identified the benefits for arts organizations when it comes to using transmedia storytelling methods to find new ways to market their projects, interact with audiences and ”never be dark” (i.e. constantly provide relevant output in different forms).

I’ve been fortunate to be able to work quite a bit with corporate storytelling over the past few months. Fortunate especially in the sense that I feel this is an area that has a lot of potential, and a lot of touchpoints with the real world, points that can be used and exploited in ways that make definitive sense for anyone taking part of them. I absolutely can testify to the benefits for anyone involved in telling the story of a company or a product to use transmedia storytelling methods when developing and writing these stories.

By building the story world as accurately as possible from the company’s point of view you will be able to represent them in the best possible way. You will give voice to stories with aspects and facets that resonate with the audience and ”fit” the image of the company. Often, these aspects and facets are variables that the companies themselves have not identified, or at least not identified as important enough to be included in the narrative.

By populating that world with the characters the company wants to represent it you give a human and approachable angle to the company’s presence. As you are basing these on the world you’ve created, the characters speak with the same voice, the same tone and feel, as the overall feeling of the company. This keeps everything working in sync and supporting each other. This will also give you an array of characters (who, naturally, often are real persons working for the company) to use in future narratives the company wants to give voice to.

By incorporating into the narrative different products or services and tying them to the story world or characters in the story world, you will be able to give them their natural place in the story of the company. Thereby you will be able to take support from all of the narratives you’ve already given voice to to further the knowledge about any particular product or service. Everything keeps in sync, everything supports each other.

And, finally, when you have built all of this, the choice of media platforms to use is up to you (or the company in question, of course). But basing it all on a carefully crafted campaign, as outlined above, will give you clear pointers as to which platforms would be most suitable for the narratives you need to distribute.

Cheesy meme ahoy! No, really, it is actually quite simple. And the beautiful thing is that every little bit helps – a full-fledged transmedia campaign is of course preferable, but every thought you think and every word you write along the transmedia storytelling lines will help you tell better stories in the end.