Digital Archeology

Ouroboros Entertainment Industry Interview with CEO Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner...

3. How do you see brands approach to transmedia changing in the next couple of years?

Companies large and small are now realizing that they are no longer in control of their story. There is more discussion about any brand between consumers in social media than there is “official story” from the brand owner by an exponential factor. Look how tarnished the AT&T brand has been in the wake of the rise of the iPhone. The company perceived this as a glitch—after all, only a tiny percentage of their customers owned iPhones. But the discussion about dropped calls and shoddy service by those users infiltrated social media like ripples through a pond, ripples that washed up on the shore of big media. Suddenly AT&T is tarred and feathered. They were unprepared for that, because a century of traditional media made them believe they had control over the narrative. They didn’t. No one does any more. You can say the same thing happened to Mitt Romney, the NRA and the GOP.

So it used to be that the corporate narrative, the totality of a company’s Story World, was a pie that was mostly controlled by the corporation. Now it’s mostly controlled by people and their perception of that narrative. The corporation today only controls a sliver of that pie. It’s an amazing reversal....