This is the original blog post that will be edited into a bullet point post later this week for the “Trends Lab” weekly post which is featured every Friday on the Ogilvy PR blog:

It’s the year 2001. I wake up from a deep sleep to my alarm clock radio. It’s Z100-FM in New York City and a commercial for Pepsi is on featuring music from Britney Spears. I don’t think much about it as I get ready to go to work. I leave my apartment and walk to the subway. The billboard above the elevated N train in Astoria has a Pepsi Generation ad featuring Spears on it. I run through the turnstile to get to my departing subway train. On the train I see another ad for Pepsi. My final stop is Prince Street. I get out of the subway car and see more ads on the platform for Pepsi Generation. I pick up the Daily News. While flipping through it page 63 has a Pepsi ad including a coupon for $1 off the purchase of a six pack of cans at C-Town. I get to my office and perform my daily ritual of turning on the Today show to see what the top stories are. During a commercial break a Pepsi commercial again with Britney blares away. In the three short hours since waking up, I’ve been exposed to the brand six times on a variety of advertising platforms. Most of them with the general narrative copy from the brand telling me the joy of being young happens when drinking Pepsi.

It’s the year 2011. I wake up from a deep sleep to my iPhone Spotify app streaming music. I don’t hear any commercials. I leave my house and walk to the train. I see a few billboards all with local merchant ads, no mention of large global brands as the recession has cut into advertising expenditures. There are ads on my train platform but this time it’s for high speed internet. My final stop is Penn Station. I get out and see no ads until I hit street level and they vary from a big billboard for H&M to a small street sign for the Irish Times pub. I don’t pick up the Daily News anymore because I engage with information on my tablet and smartphone devices much of which offers no coupons unless I “like” their brand on Facebook. I get to my office and perform my daily ritual of checking out Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+ and various blogs for what’s happening in the world. I don’t pay attention to any ads (some platforms like Tumblr and Pinterest don’t even allow them) and instead check out what my Aunt Carol in Florida posted about the seven nominations at the Grammys for Electronic Dance Music artists. I decide to share this content across all of my social networks because I have a personal interest in the story. In the three short hours since waking up, I’ve been exposed to minimum brand narrative in the waning traditional media sphere. Nor was I exposed to anything similar in the social ecosystem. Instead I simply shared some content that I found relevant.

It’s the year 2012. I remember the blog post I wrote in 2007 about Alternate Reality Games as a thought leadership piece for A&E and USA Network. One of the ideas I covered was the “Why So Serious” marketing campaign to promote the new Batman film “The Dark Knight.” The transmedia marketing campaign played out over 15 months on a variety of media platforms from billboards to a scavenger hunt to various clues hidden across the web including then burgeoning social platforms. The campaign was the primary driver of building up the Facebook community for the film which numbers at 9.5 million members. This transmedia marketing narrative that weaved the story of Harvey Dent running for mayor of Gotham City was pretty revolutionary at the time and has led to something marketing execs dub five years later as, “the future of marketing.” But in the evolving scheme of advertising and marketing, it is something grander.

Transmedia marketing is a lifeline to revive traditional models that have seen better days because of the popularity of online social engagement. Because transmedia weaves a storyline across a variety of marketing channels, it has the ability to use traditional in a way that traditional never had been used before. To drive a piece of the overall narrative for the engaging consumer who is jumping from platform to platform with no bias on how they engage with a brand both online and off. Traditional paid media can be the piece in a transmedia storyboard that can then drive the consumer to additional narrative within a Twitter feed or Tumblelog. Transmedia may be played out heavily in the digital realm, but it’s a savior to the decaying paid model. The model that existed in 2001 could be revived in a refreshing and innovative manner with the right marketers behind the curtain.

Recently while on Facebook I saw some content from Coca-Cola in my newsfeed with a very futuristic online video called “Coca-Cola Content 2020.” The marketers at Coke have told the trade press that they want to “create ideas so contagious that they cannot be controlled.” Those of us in social/digital have been executing interesting initiatives like this for years and asking our traditional brethren to become involved as pieces of this game in a more dynamic and integrated manner. Many in the paid creative space seem adamantly opposed about allowing the brand narrative to be owned by the fans. But those of us in social have seen that brands not only must be more transparent and open with their advocates, but allow their advocates to sit equally at the table working in a collaborative manner to push the brand message forward in the 21^st century. Much of this logic is because those of us in social see that consumer-generated stories outnumber brand-generated stories and have more of a stickiness factor when ultimately originating from brand advocates rather than planted or seeded by the brand.

However, social media agencies can only perform transmedia storytelling in one sphere of the media platform universe and that’s in earned. But this only tells 1/3^rd of the story of the world we still live in when it comes to this unique dynamic. The same scenario applies to digital shops that can only tell another 1/3^rd of the story in owned properties. In 2012, agencies with the know-how in all three areas of paid, owned and earned can truly create a dynamic transmedia narrative using all forms of marketing tools at their will. Plus what many social agency-only execs lack is that we as humans still bridge the divide between the physical and online worlds. And while that is still the case and will be the case for as long as we remain human in our current state, ad agencies who have strength in the paid, owned and earned disciplines will have the ability to become major futurist innovators in transmedia storytelling overall. Only the proper execution of 360 degree transmedia campaigns where social drives to paid which drives to earned which drives to owned which drives back to paid which drives back to earned and so on will confirm which agencies will take full advantage of the white canvas that requires the “creation of stories that are to be expressed through every possible connection.”

The Coca-Cola Content 2020 example is pieces of content that fans will become consumed with by involving them in the evolutionary process of the brand marketing narrative. This process allows fans (who live across a variety of networks and online communities, not simply on Facebook) to add tags, comments, replies, photos, videos, etc. to keep the brand narrative storyline constantly evolving. It also allows a smarter brand to hide clues in its traditional ads including augmented reality billboards, QR codes, text for clues or subliminal dialogue or clues in a television ad that instigate the search for a particular theme online to unlock a hidden community with exclusive yet rewarding content.

While the paid space can be revived through this future of marketing model, we cannot turn our attention away from the power to evolve the earned space. Such transmedia narratives require the establishment of visual hubs to take advantage of the emerging visual world of the web. Flickr, Instagram, Socialcam, Color, Path, Tumblr and Pinterest are all communities that lend greatly to the transmedia fascination. Smarter brands realize it’s best to be in as many as possible and to urge fans to create content. But in my dialogue with many brand executives, too many are stuck on only wanting to concentrate on one earned space. And this is where they are missing the point of the transmedia model. The web is an infinite universe where people play in a variety of playgrounds that fit their digital identity. To only concentrate on Facebook and Twitter misses out on many of the other relevant communities. This is why although transmedia can help revive certain traditional platforms, it can really help launch new emerging platforms on the social web where new brand communities can be created as part of the larger story. Taking this “we need to be everywhere” approach allows new and uninitiated fans to engage with other people who like a brand on a platform they most enjoy.

Transmedia storytelling is the next frontier for marketers. However, because only certain agencies have collaborative paid, owned and earned practices, it is up to these said agencies to create unique consumer touch points that weave together a story to ensure the brand narrative has the best capability of success within this future of marketing universe. This is the one last great area of hope for paid advertising models to continue to remain relevant in the 21^st century. Because in a transmedia environment, rather than simply telling the same story in multiple channels ala Generation Pepsi, each platform instead plays its own unique role in moving the story forward as part of a well-choreographed presentation. As a result, “story architects” who have brilliance and intelligence in all three of the main practice areas and plan out the story in full, can use a variety of mediums in these said paid, owned and earned areas to their fullest advantage.

If the Generation Pepsi marketing campaign existed now, the central narrative theme wouldn’t be created by Pepsi for us or even include a celebrity like Spears. Rather it would be defined by us as consumers through our collaborative interaction with the brand on a variety of platforms in an untold amount of spaces. Because of this, we now know the true equation to a successful transmedia experience is the equation paid + owned + earned x consumer engagement and content creation = brand message.