Month: February 2012

NYC Post-Advertising Summit Provides Hands-On Look at the Future

February 27, 2012 / Jane Doh

On March 29th at Cult Studios in New York City, marketing agency Story Worldwide will attempt to put the nail in the coffin of traditional advertising with the Post-Advertising Summit, an immersive, hands-on conference to explore the future of marketing designed for strategists and storytellers keen on producing branded content in a new age. With a focus on how audiences control and consume brand messages, the Summit promises a full day of exciting discussions about a future beyond advertising.

â€œIn todayâ€™s post-advertising world, brands can only communicate with audiences by producing content that people actually want and can share,â€ said Keith Blanchard, Executive Creative Director of Story Worldwide. â€œWeâ€™re looking forward to exploring how any brand can create useful, entertaining media that tells a compelling story, resonates with audiences, and serves a brandâ€™s objectives.â€

There is no doubt that the relationship between audiences and brands have changed over time, trending toward more engagement and even invitations for audiences to collaborate. At the Summit, The Wharton Schoolâ€™s Future of Advertising ProgramÂ will unveil its study ofÂ â€œWhat Makes Ads Go Viral?â€,Â providing groundbreaking insight into how brands can capture audiences and buzz in the highly competitive realm of online video marketing.

Panels and keynotes will discuss the complex emerging landscape of social, mobile, and digital solutions while providing the experience and expertise of industry leaders producing entertaining content in the post-advertising age.Â But true to this new emphasis on audience engagement, participants in the Post-Advertising Summit will be treated to two workshop sessions where together they will create entertaining content, a hands-on way to see firsthand the power of engagement and internalize techniques, strategies, and methodologies to navigate brands through the post-advertising world.

Check out the Post-Advertising Summit’s schedule for more information and to register for this full-day event in New York City. Early bird registration ends on February 29, but whether you register before or after that date, remember to take advantage of ARGNet’s media sponsorship of the event by using the discount code ARG for an additional 30% off registration.

Take A Walk On The Wired Wild Side with “Bear 71”

February 17, 2012 / Celina Beach

A bear walks through the Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies and is ensnared in a trap where she is tranquilized, tagged, and collared with a GPS device. She has now become Bear 71, and joins a group of wired wildlife who document the interactions between nature and their increasingly encroaching human neighbors.Â Bear 71Â is a new interactive project produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s digital studio, and includes an interactive web documentary site, a social media microsite, and a live installation piece that launched in conjunction with the Sundance Film Festival.

The main part of the project consists of an interactive web documentary created by NFB’s Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison, which introduces viewers to Bear 71 and then drops them into an interactive map of the Park, where they encounter other wired creatures that live in Bear 71’s home range: golden eagles, Big Horn sheep, wolves, and deer mice, all similarly tagged and under surveillance. The animals’ movements can be seen as they move about the park, and clicking on their markers reveals a video feed and information about the animal. Viewers can click on their own marker as well, which launches a group of surveillance feeds including their own (the site requests access to the viewer’s webcam and microphone, which can be denied) and any other viewers who happen to be browsing the site at the same time, tagged and tracked like the animals. Landmarks such as the freeway and railroad that run through the park can be seen, cars and trains moving on them as the animal’s markers cross back and forth, highlighting one of the project’s main points: when technology and the wild intersect, it is often to the detriment of the wildlife. There are also video feeds and observation points marked on the map, showing actual pictures and videos from their real-life counterparts in the Park.

Guidestones: A Mystery Stranger Than Fiction

February 14, 2012 / Jane Doh

Sandy Rai, an Indian exchange student, comes to the journalism program at Toronto’s Ryerson University and teams up with fellow student Trevor Shale for an assignment. However, what starts off as a college photojournalism assignment quickly plunges Sandy and Trevor into a deep mystery revolving around the suspicious death of a scientist, the enigmatic Georgia Guidestones, and a shadowy conspiracy still to be discovered.

While not necessarily the first interactive web series, Guidestones, created by iThentic and 3 oâ€™clock TV, promises to raise the bar for the web series genre, experimenting with different methods of presentation. With a very polished look, including on-location filming in India, the independent series is presented in two versions: a 50-episode “push” version with built-in interactive elements, and a “linear” version that will debut in the spring. The “push” version went live this week, and viewers can sign up at Guidestones.org to keep up with the episodes as they are released. Offering different levels of engagement, the casual viewer can watch the web series as it unfolds, while those hungry for more can follow clues embedded in the videos which lead on to further online assets, hidden storylines, and other in-game/in-story extras.

The series blurs the line between fiction and reality by bringing in the very real mystery of the Georgia Guidestones, a megalith that suddenly appeared in 1979 in rural Elbert County, Georgia. Dubbed the “American Stonehenge,” the Georgia Guidestones stand nearly 20 feet high, are inscribed with four ancient languages, and feature a rather perilously balanced capstone on top. It’s the stuff conspiracy theorists, millenarians, and idle gawkers like me just eat up.

Mark of the Spider-Man Lets Fans Walk a Mile in Parker’s Shoes

February 11, 2012 / Michael Andersen

Images by Phoebe S.

When Sony released the official trailer for Marvel’s franchise reboot,Â The Amazing Spider-Man, on February 4th, fans tapped into their inner spidey sense, barely perceptable letters spelling out “MARK OF THE SPIDER-MAN” at the 2:28 mark. This message led to a viral website displaying six static video feeds and a Twitter account.

On February 10th, the @MarkofSpiderman Twitter account started posting lost and found notices, broadcasting GPS coordinates to eleven different locations in six cities: Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Seattle. Fleet-footed fans found Peter Parker’s backpack, containing everything you’d expect the film’s nerdy protagonist to have: Physics and Chemistry textbooks, safety goggles, keys and a MetroCard, and a notebook loaded with class notes. Parker’s photography gear also found its way into the backpack, with the occasional film canister, photograph, or film negative scattered throughout. Parker even left his running shoes in the bag, leaving the recipients of each backpack with the singular opportunity to step inside Parker’s size 11 shoes.
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A Fond Farewell to “This Is Not A Game”

February 6, 2012 / Michael Andersen

This Is Not A Game. This seemingly simple mantra, coined by a collective of Microsoft Game Studios employees, has served as a rallying cry for alternate reality gaming fans and developers alike. And yet, it is also one of the most misunderstood aspects of the genre. As alternate reality games have evolved, so too has its nomenclature: puppetmasters have gradually given way to game developers and transmedia producers, and “this is not a game” itself has fallen into disuse. Perhaps it’s time to make the term’s retirement official.

Everything Starts with The Beast
The Beast was not the first alternate reality game: the term was coined months after the game’s conclusion, with the launch of Lockjaw. Similarly, promotional campaigns for The Last Broadcast and The Blair Witch Project introduced many of the storytelling elements that would later be embraced by the genre. What sets The Beast apart were its players, who referred to themselves as Cloudmakers.

Jay Bushman, a former Cloudmaker who now works at Fourth Wall Studios, compares The Beast to the Sex Pistols’ concert at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4, 1976. There were only around forty people in attendance that night, but something magical happened, and those few attendees went on to form Joy Division, The Smiths, The Fall, and The Buzzcocks, creating a renaissance for the genre. The Beast has sent similar ripples through the community as Cloudmakers and developers alike have gone on to found many of the companies and resources dedicated to the genre. And one of those ripples was the phrase “this is not a game.”

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