Transmedia vs Social Media
It is the year 2012. Warragamba Dam, which supplies Sydney with fresh water has now reached critical levels, holding only 15% of its capacity -- and the city has been placed on Level 8 water restrictions. Country towns, meanwhile, are struggling to survive.
This is the setting for Channel 9/NineMSN's new drama series, Scorched. Gordon Whitehead has an excellent post explaining the digital strategy that has been put into place to support the series and to transform it into an immersive online experience. But he also asks, "is this social media?" -- provoking some interesting discussion with Craig Wilson. After taking a look at the Scorched.TV site, there seems to be quite some distance between the stated aim of allowing users to contribute content and the activation which requires you to send your ideas for video submission via email/form.
Perhaps it is still early days, and the social media strategy is yet to kick in. However, there is clearly some good thinking around transmedia digital strategy in place, or what Faris Yakob calls "converged communication" (see below). But with an airing date of August 31, Scorched have only a couple of weeks to begin really building and activating their viewing community. And if the plan is to extend the storylines into web-only episodes post-August 31, the success (or otherwise) of this effort will be available for us all to see. The clock is ticking ...
