Cherryflava

7 Myths about Transmedia

Posted on 14. Apr, 2011 by Jonathan Cherry.

Transmedia – have you hear the term yet? If not – you will.

Essentially it’s just a fancy word for the idea of telling a story across many platforms. Think of titles like the Matrix that was a movie, a comic book and a video game. Multiple stories are set in a single universe, each is told via different media and they complement each other to form an overarching narrative.

But with all things new and out there, it’s being misunderstood and the hype surrounding the buzz could derail the potential value the work can create.

Henry Jenkins, writing for Fast Company outlines 7 of the myths surrounding the buzz:

Read more…

State of Grace: Hostage situation plays out over two weeks within large South African company

Posted on 29. Oct, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

On 1 October 2010, the employees of one of Africa’s biggest ICT organisations were sent links to a website that promised “a huge leap in business communications” using a projection of a charming client liaison avatar called Grace.

What it really offered was a leap into the deep end of a world of rampaging holograms, umbrella men, slinking LOLcats, stinking hackers, epic battles and a lot of tricky puzzles.

Hundreds of players from Dimension Data made their way through the game, which turned a dry presentation about corporate values into an epic and unforgettable quest to save the world from a hologram avatar turned eeeevil!

We here at Cherryflava are often asked about the type of work that we do in the field of commercial experience design – and this alternate reality game (or ARG) is the perfect example of how we’d turn the mundane content of a typical year-end sales conference into something memorable, engaging and effective; using multi-layered media, a great story [written by the award-winning extremely super-talented novelist Lauren Beukes] and an intriguing game involving a puzzle-filled treasure hunt played out on the Internet and in the real world with fake websites and specially filmed video sequences.

Alternate reality gaming isn’t for everybody, but for innovative brands that are open to taking their event to a far deeper, fantasy level – you should get in touch with us.

Check out the series of videos that were part of the game here.

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Credits:

Conceptualised and produced by: Cherryflava Media

Cherryflava team: Heinrich Hattingh, Jon Cherry & Isabeau Joubert

Story: Lauren Beukes and Sam Wilson

Gaming design: Cherryflava Media & Clockwork Zoo

Video production and direction: Pixel Warrior

Actors: Sarah Terry and Garth Breytenbach

Client: Dimension Data