Page 543 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Transmed a Storytell ng and Med a Franch ses

amusement park rides all simultaneously functioned as entertainment and as
advertisements for every other Disney product. Disney’s characters were not the
first to be featured on merchandise or appear in multiple media, but they were
almost certainly the first characters designed to serve as entertainment “brands.”
Today, Disney continues to expand its total merchandising model, using almost
every film and television series it releases as the basis for a franchise, complete
with toys, amusement park rides, merchandise, comic books, and fast-food tie-
ins, not to mention resale on DVD and VHS.
Star Wars, too, proved a watershed moment in the evolution of both block-
buster films and blockbuster synergy: Star Wars toys sold like few other con-
sumer items in history, producing over $100 million in profits for toy company
Kenner and selling over 42 million units in their first year alone, and the fran-
chise later expanded to include several spin-off television shows, multiple video

the lost exPerienCe: transMedia narratiVe
as interaCtiVe teleVision

Lost’s most ambitious transmedia experiment to date was, without question, a summer-long
interactive narrative campaign (or “alternate reality game”) called “The Lost Experience.”
Developed as a collaborative venture between the show’s producers and broadcasting affili-
ates on several continents, the Lost Experience required players to work together and seek
out clues both on and offline that would advance an original narrative developed for the
game, which provided a wealth of insights and clues into the core mysteries depicted on the
television series. In order to fully immerse players in Lost’s narrative world, the Lost Experi-
ence unfolded across a wide range of media platforms and sites, including the following:
• Lost’s fictional Hanso Foundation ran fake advertisements on television and in na-
tional newspapers, providing URLs and other clues for players.
• Players could “hack” into voice-mail systems and e-mail accounts to access private
messages and hidden content, and could exchange instant messages with several of
the game’s characters.
• Content was distributed on a range of preexisting commercial Web sites, including
Amazon, Blogger, MySpace, and YouTube, to make the game seem more real.
• More than a dozen fictional Web sites were launched, including sites for the Hanso
Foundation, a blog for one of the main characters, and several message boards for
players to share “conspiracy theories.”
• A series of podcasts was released, culminating in a live event where players could call
in, share their theories, and interact with one of the characters.
• Several of the game’s characters appeared in public: one character was interviewed
on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, while another interrupted a Lost panel at the San Diego
ComicCon 2006 to accuse Lost’s producers of participating in a conspiracy.
• Fake “Apollo Candy Bars,” which had appeared on Lost, were distributed in public
locations around the world, with over a thousand containing codes that needed to
be entered online to complete the story.