Engaging with Tranmedia Storytelling

I asked Andrea Phillips an award-winning Transmedia writer, game designer and author, Marketing has moved from being a medium to get the message out, more as a medium of engagement. Storytelling may be the only way to engage people totally.

Related Podcast and Transcription: A Primer on Transmedia Storytelling


Andrea Phillips:  Absolutely, 100 percent. I’ve been talking a lot lately about how we’re in a war for attention. Marketers are fighting for the same attention that entertainers are, and let’s face it, that people’s jobs and families are fighting for.

Every one of us only has a limited amount of attention to give. No matter, what kind of message you’re trying to put out there, whether it’s an entertaining one, whether it’s advertising or marketing, or something completely different and personal, you have to try and make it worthwhile of somebody’s attention.

In the case of Transmedia, what you’re doing is, once you hopefully create something that people care about enough to give their attention to in the first place; you’re expanding that to provide more opportunities to keep their attention on you. Every minute that you let someone forget about you and focus their attention on someone else is an opportunity for them to find something else that they love more than you, and maybe not come back to you next time.

It’s perhaps a really cold way of looking at it, but I really think that this is a true thing. If somebody loves you and you don’t give them more of the thing that they love, eventually they’re going to find something else to love.


Transmedia Storytelling is a story experience both for and with an audience that unfolds over several media channels. Author Andrea Phillips provides a fantastic introduction in this podcast and her new book, A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling.

Related Podcast and Transcription: A Primer on Transmedia Storytelling

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