Everything old is new again: Transmedia goes traditional

According to the LA Times, Trent Reznor is in talks with HBO to turn the Year Zero campaign, a marketing ARG developed to promote and narratively augment the last NIN album, into a two-year limited series.

There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years about how marketing is becoming increasing about giving viewers and users valuable content and interactions, and coming to resemble entertainment more and more. With transmedia and ARGs making their way into the marketing toolbox, we began to see something that was technically developed as “promotion,” though in a way that provided a rich, innovative means to developing and expanding the story in over a range of platforms and media in ways that were limited by “old” media.

Now, we’re seeing these stories cycle back, getting developed further by traditional broadcast media, reminding us that it is not these mediums themselves that are limiting, but the insistence of fitting increasingly complex stories and rising demands for more robust user experiences into any single form. We are not moving from old to new media, trading in one for another, but adding to our repertoire. Media in transition, media in accumulation: this is the age media multiplicity.