The Age of Engagement
From the marketers point of view, the message is that things look bad. But from the audience’s point of view, things are great. They can receive content in a variety of ways. I have heard this a thousand times this week. People have no problem checking email, doing a search, watching TV, sending SMS, and playing video games. They do a variety of things on a variety of devices.
This panel pointed out that when you are playing a video game on a console it is impossible to watch television. They use the same screen. So when the kids are playing on the game console they are not reachable with TV ads. This is obvious. But in thinking about market dynamics I am reminded of household dynamics. We only have one big TV. The console is hooked up to it as is the DVD player. We have a couple of smaller TV’s in different rooms. There are often arguments about who gets the screen.
One child wants to watch Harry Potter and one wants to play Zelda. I have to intervene and say work it out. It is natural for there to be several ways to consume digital media in one house. From the market perspective you just don’t have the zombies in front of a box. This point is coming through loud and clear. So the need for cross platform strategy follows.
What interested me in this case was the concept that story telling has always been one-to-many. That it is impossible to tell a story and have it be interactive. Jim Banister introduced the concept of story hosting where interactive takes place through choices like in a video game and predicted that story dwelling would be the future.
Story Dwelling in his mind is people who become so immersed in the story that they live it. It is the many-to-many interactive. I am not sure this will ever be mainstream. I remember there.com and am not sure they are still there. I know that people marry in Everquest and have many avatars. Personally it is tough to keep up with my one life let alone having many separate virtual lives. Sounds confusing.
