We Are Organized Chaos

Flash Forward Interactive Marketing – Leveraging Emerging Media & Technology For A Next-Gen Experience

I previously wrote about the ABC series Flash Forward’s interactive marketing efforts in a blog post entitled – A New ARG Or Standard Integrated Entertainment Marketing Campaign.  I was wondering if Flash Forward would be a standard ARG or raise the bar for interactive storytelling.  After watching the series premiere (which looks promising btw), I went back to see how Flash Forward’s online efforts have evolved.  Needless to say, they have a good handle on how they want their fans to interact with the show online and have created a compelling experience using the latest emerging media and technology tactics.  This is by far one of the best integrated marketing efforts I’ve seen in quite some time.

If you want the overarching strategy and insight into the campaign from ABC, you can view it at AdAge here.  And I would also suggest checking out Liz Miller’s breakdown of the Flash Forward tactical executions over at NewTeeVee.  The campaign utilizes some of the newer emerging media and technology components for Interactive Marketing including:

• Integrated real-time chat
• A standard Facebook Connect experience at The FlashForward Experience
• An Augmented Reality experience (which admittedly feels rushed and not connected with the campaign – where’s the social media integration with the AR?)

Though most of these components on their own aren’t mind blowing, it’s the sum of all the parts that makes the campaign a very integrated experience.  However, one component that stands out is the Mosaic Collective as it holds the most promise to make the weekly viewing of Flash Forward a more personal experience.

(VERY SMALL SPOILER ALERT BELOW)

In the series, the FBI has setup a site where people can post their Flash Forwards with the hope that the FBI can then start to link clues together through people that are common to each Flash Forward.  The Mosaic Collective site functions in the same way allowing people to sign up and upload information.  On the surface, this is standard UGC content being uploaded to the site but the various methods of connecting content (through data visualization) is engaging and worth checking out.  This is also where there could be a potential tie-in to the show with UGC content slowly being integrated into the show through essential storylines or secondary characters.  This is obviously difficult to pull off but it would help break the boundaries between how these entertainment support sites interact with their viewers by taking the reality and integrating it with the fantasy.

The overall campaign borrows quite a bit from Lost, but that is a good thing as Flash Forward is targeting the same fanbase.  I’m hoping this campaign evolves some more especially with the Mosaic Collective.  It’s definitely worth checking out though to see how interactive can be leveraged to create a compelling integrated interactive campaign and enhanced story driven experience.

What Fox Did Wrong With The Fringe / Twitter Social TV Experiment…

We’ve been very big advocates of Social TV for awhile, so it was quite surprising to see a recent high profile Social TV launch fail.  Fast Company has the details here. Cliff notes version:

“Fox ran reruns of Fringe with Twitter integration so people watching the show could comment on the show in real-time.  The Twitter overlay took up 1/3 of the bottom portion of the screen and as would be expected, drew outrage from viewers.”

While Fringe has been a show that’s not afraid to use the latest innovative interactive marketing programs such as ARG’s, it did seem odd that a show built on the success of these types of innovative and alternate interactive marketing initiatives would receive the backlash it did.  However, it’s not the idea that’s the problem here but rather the execution.

As the screenshot above shows, Fox was going for a VH-1 Pop-Up Video Style Integration.  Big mistake.  Anybody who’s ever watched this show (which is basically X-Files 2.0) knows that you have to pay attention to keep up with the plot so any type of animated interruption in the form of oversized graphical tweets, is of course, going to hinder versus enhance the interactive viewing experience.

Fox should be commended for recognizing a trend with Social TV and trying it out with one of their most popular new shows.  However, Fox does need to revisit how they’re using Social TV with a program (and genre) like Fringe. I don’t think just reducing the size of the Twitter integration and focusing on Fringe trivia will help overall.  Nor will using viewer’s Twitter conversations that are just feeds pumped into and overlaid on the broadcast itself.

Fox should be using Twitter integration (ala Social TV) to provide sub-stories on the characters in Fringe and continue using alternative marketing methods that appeal to the core demographic.  Fringe is a unique show (like Lost and the upcoming Flash Forward) that has a built-in audience that is expecting to find and participate in alternative story lines, engaging puzzles and other enhanced content to create a richer, more satisfying interactive story driven experience.

Social TV has already been a huge hit on the web from Barack Obama’s Inauguration to a recent Jonas Brothers Online Concert on Facebook / UStream so it was only a matter of time until Social TV moved from the web to broadcast.  Social TV has already proven a success in other areas as well with theaters using MuVChat which encourages audience participation via SMS, so the overall idea of Social TV definitely works and is definitely a trend – 57% of internet users already surf the internet while watching TV.  Hopefully more networks give Social TV a shot to provide a more interactive viewing experience.

On a side note, I thought the Observer / MLB All-Star Game integration was great and showed how a subtle cross promotion can help spread awareness and build an audience for television series such as Fringe.

Flash Forward – A New ARG Or Standard Integrated Entertainment Marketing Campaign?

Fans of Lost might have caught some interesting promos for a new show called Flash Forward that ABC is hoping will take over Lost’s audience after the final season next year.  Details on Flash Forward from Zap2it:

“The show is based on Robert J. Sawyer’s novel and follows the fallout from a cataclysm in which the world’s entire population blacks out for just over two minutes. In addition to dealing with the chaos that ensues when everyone wakes up — everything from car crashes to people walking off rooftops — people soon come to realize that they all had a vision of their futures. The network says that those investigating the event will have only “a huge mosaic of people’s flash forwards” to go on — hence the Mosaic Collective title for the aforementioned site.”

Yep, definitely sounds like one for the Lost crowd, especially given Lost’s strong character development through use of Flashbacks.

Admittedly, I didn’t initially see the promos but according to the LA Times Show Tracker for Lost, they were images of someone surfing, a sonogram, a group of kids leaving school, a bride and groom kissing and pallbearers carrying a coffin.  A fan site called FlashForwardTV also has video clips of the images.

A promotional site for Flash Forward is at Mosaic Collective and I imagine somehow the site will evolve  through stories around each image.

I’m definitely a fan of ARG’s (Alternate Reality Games) so it will be interesting to see how this campaign evolves and if it can become more than a standard integrated entertainment marketing campaign.  ARG’s in entertainment have a long history going back to the likes of A.I. and ILoveBees and have gotten more sophisticated over the years.  Fringe is the latest example of this with their commercial break images and symbols forming some type of alphabet code…