Mattel uses Transmedia to Capitvate 'Tween Market

Mattel has a hot property this holiday with Monster High, a new line of hip Twilight-esque teen dolls packaged as the children of legendary monster characters like Frankenstein and Dracula. (For example,"Frankie-Stein" is Frankenstein's daughter; "Draculaura" is Count Dracula's teenager.) 

According to trade reports M.H. dolls have been flying off store shelves since their debut in July, so much so that shortages now have fans hunting for them on eBay and Amazon.

Fashion dolls are just part of the Monster High franchise, however. Licensing already extends to electronics, novelty toys, cosmetics,costumes, fashion apparel and accessories, plush items, chapter books, pop music, and more.

Monster High is backed by a hefty transmedia marketing campaign, according to Ad Age. Traditional media – one TV spot and print ad – play a minor role compared to internet-based buzz and engagement activities that converge to give M. H. fans a vivid, multimedia experience.  

MonsterHigh.com serves as the brand's digital hub, loaded with ghoulish games, interactive activities plus an animated webisode series. Additionally, there’s an active Facebook fan page, dedicated YouTube channel, and a wiki platform where fans meet up - and where Mattel streams brand news and promotes big-budget entertainment like the recent Halloween TV special on Nickelodeon. Indeed, grand scale entertainment is integral to the company's marketing strategy. A full-length Monster High musical movie is in the works for release by Universal in 2012. 

Brand stories help focus and funnel social messaging

Artwork by Louise Campbell 

An effective online communications program requires more than a neat web network.  How a brand conceives and then conveys its sales pitch using Facebook, Twitter, email, and the like, matters far more.  A cohesive brand story, like an elevator pitch, is essential for connecting with true audiences - for whom the social web is increasingly very noisy. .

In the latest  Brand Week, Donald Friedman, principal at the branding and marketing consultancy Sequel, writes about messaging “dysfunction where everyone in an organization is working hard, but the brand is going nowhere." The root of the problem he says may be employees spinning their wheels in silos without a common communications goal or clear brand narrative.

This speaks to the absolute need for team integration and a disciplined approach to honing a  core message that can then be woven into a sticky brand story ... one that translates consistently across all channels.  

Should “sin” brands steer clear of social media?

Should some brands be unsociable?  That is, are some products and services better off being wallflowers at the social media ball?

Rob Marsh, author of the branding blog Brand Story, ran an interesting post recently about the difficulty so-called “sin” brands (i.e. distilled spirits) have keeping social conversations socially responsible and reasonably on theme.

The front-end of social marketing involves pumping out contextual content to engage fans and get them talking.  But as Marsh rightly points out, the end game of any social campaign is the online chatter it generates. For some brands (and product categories) the prospect for robust viral  publicity is offset by the possibility that fringe fans will dominate online conversations in ways that actually malign the brand. 

Martha Stewart Living publishes first multimedia magazine

  

On November 10, Martha Stewart Living magazine launched its premier digital edition created especially for iPad. Like most things Martha Stewart does, jumping into digital publishing is bound to be a very “good thing.”  In this video Martha explains her decision to add a digital edition of MSL, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary. 

There is plenty to like about MSL's digital format, with its dynamic how-to's, rich photo panoramas and slide shows, and documentary-quality video features. It's an extraordinary example of what can be done editorially thanks to advances in electronic publishing and camera technology. 

For example, digital MSL has two video features: one on artisanal cheese making and another about fishing in Alaska, each shot using one camera (i.e. RED camera) that captures still and moving images. Now, a subject can be covered for an array of media platforms, working quickly, economically, and to very high editorial standards. 

According to Eric Pike, MSLO's creative director, Adobe’s digital publishing suite makes it easy to incorporate moving images and interactive elements into a digital edition that's based on the print edition's layout. 

The challenge for print-trained editors, says Gael Towey, MSLO’s editorial director and creative chief, is conceiving stories for multimedia by anticipating how and where digital readers will view them. Publishing MSL on an iPad makes it a mobile magazine and toolbox that can move from armchair to the kitchen counter, into to the garden and out to the local supermarket. 

Ralph Lauren's amazing 4D augmented reality light show in New York and London

Ralph Lauren's flagship store in New York

This week Ralph Lauren boldly pushed the publicity and merchandising envelope with an extraordinary 4D light show, billed as “The Ultimate Collision Of Fashion, Art, & Technology,”  that superimposed lush cinematic effects on the company's storefronts in New York and London.

The roughly seven-minute light show celebrating Ralph Lauren's 10-year old online business was an eye-popping, multi-sensory happening powered by the latest in augmented reality and "architectural mapping." 

In one sequence the illusion of a grand staircase unfolding from inside the building's belly set the stage for 3D models who descended catwalk-style while towering chandeliers lowered from the night sky. Fade to black and seconds later a row of silk ties appeared, almost Dali-like, flapping gently in the virtual breeze. 

Next, a lizard skin belt stretched the building's width and cinched its glamorous waist. Again, momentary darkness until a giant crocodile handbag popped up and revolved 360-degrees. Fade once more and ... boom! Like a wild band of ghosts the brand’s signature polo players thundered across the store's facade, dashing in and out of sight.  

The big 4D moment arrived when four Big Pony fragrance bottles appeared and on cue one bottle spritzed the crowd below.

 RL's old-line image belies the fact that it is one of only a few luxury brands with a significant digital footprint. In addition to cross-channel advertising and an array of online catalogs, the company maintains a video-centric lifestyle website called RLTV, offers iPhone apps, and boasts more than one million friends on Facebook. Indeed, video of the 4D light show, now posted all over the social landscape, is neatly integrated across the Ralph Lauren's own digital network. 

What brand storytellers can learn from John Barleycorn

In medieval Europe some ballads were composed, then cheaply printed and sold as broadsheets.  

This post is devoted to the artful use of words and verse to convey, powerful, imaginative, cohesive, and memorable narratives. Ballads, for example, a narrative form often set to music, trace back to medieval times when many were composed, then cheaply printed and sold across Europe as single sheet broadsheets.

The ballad has evolved over the years, though it remains characteristically narrative - a concise story using vivid imagery rather than description. The central theme is often anchored in repetition, sometimes in the fourth lines in succeeding stanzas. 

Today we talk about the value of word-of-mouth marketing and brand narratives. How might a great balladeer tell a brand story?

An especially old and wonderful ballad is the English folksong "John Barleycorn," in which the character of John Barleycorn personifies the cultivation of barley for making beverages like whisky and beer. The song is set at harvest time, and it chronicles John Barleycorn's demise during the process of reaping and malting. It's a grizzly story, true, but it is told provocatively and beautifully. 

It's hardly surprising that some versions of "John Barleycorn," date back 500 years; many of us may know it as the song John Barleycorn Must Die, recorded in 1970 by the English rock band Traffic. Theirs is a fantastic rendition, and it is best enjoyed by listening and reading (or singing) along.

- Ballad-Lyrics - 

There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try

And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They've plowed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in
Threw clods upon his head
And these three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead

They've let him lie for a very long time, 'til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head and so amazed them all
They've let him stand 'til Midsummer's Day 'til he looked both pale and wan
And little Sir John's grown a long long beard and so become a man
They've hired men with their scythes so sharp to cut him off at the knee
They've rolled him and tied him by the way, serving him most barbarously
They've hired men with their sharp pitchforks who've pricked him to the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he's bound him to the cart

They've wheeled him around and around a field 'til they came onto a pond
And there they made a solemn oath on poor John Barleycorn
They've hired men with their crabtree sticks to cut him skin from bone
And the miller he has served him worse than that
For he's ground him between two stones

And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl and his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John and the nut brown bowl proved the strongest man at last
The huntsman he can't hunt the fox nor so loudly to blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle or pots without a little barleycorn

New "curatorial" tools help brand story creators harness authority content on social networks

The abundance of authoritative tweets, video, blog posts, white papers, graphics, etc., make it easy to source elements for a dynamic multimedia story.Then what? Assembling choice bits into a cohesive narrative takes time and some editorial skill.

Publishing platforms like Posterous and Tumblr make it fairly simple to plug social content into multimedia blogposts. Now, new “curatorial” tools such as Storify go a step further, enabling story creators to search the likes of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Photobucket, and then drag and drop selected content into a linear flow wrapped in their own commentary. 

Storify co-founder Burt Herman, a former reporter for the Associated Press, says his service enables working journalists to weave original sources from the social web into their news stories. For example, The Washington Post used Storify to aggregate tweets from candidates after last week’s midterm elections. Storify's simplicity makes it suitable for non-journalists, too, like educators, marketers and publicists. 

A number of curatorial tools are currently in alpha or beta testing, notably Curatedby and Keepstream. Another platform called Qwiki is quite unique in the way it sources and assembles social content into amazing visual presentations. The company’s website has a slick demo portfolio featuring glossy, pithy profiles about Madrid, the Eiffel Tower, Vincent van Gogh, and more.