The Essence of What I’ve Been Saying…

In a long piece on plans by Warner Bros. to launch an Essence Magazine branded web presence I read this:

“Although the letters “TV” make up the Warner Bros. unit’s name, WBTVG president Bruce Rosenblum said that the group has a wider mission these days. “For the last several years, we haven’t considered ourselves as simply being in the TV business. We view ourselves as being in the content business, and whether that content is delivered over the television screen or for the cell phone or a computer, that distinction doesn’t matter.”

This is the sort of platform-agnostic approach I have been making for the past year.  My only addendum is that all content does not work on all platforms.  I still see far more repurposing of existing content for emerging mediums than the creation of content organic to the new platforms.

Does that mean one can be platform-agnostic and still serve multiple needs?  Sure, but it is a lot harder than making “Extra on Essence” – the first big move by WB.  Really?  Yup.  They’re taking the TV entertainment “news” show “Extra”, cutting it down to only a few minutes an episode, giving it black hosts and an urban twist and calling it “Extra on Essence.”

If this is forward thinking, I’m gonna cry.

Why ARGs are a Marketing Killer App

Earlier today I mentioned a new ARG making the rounds.  In that post, I mistakenly attributed that game to a company and was pretty quickly corrected by a reader (this alone is pretty interesting, since I don’t actually have many readers – so this person must have found me due to searching for links connected to the ARG I mentioned).

Anyhow, I followed the link left by my commenter and it led me to a site that has been set up, seemingly independently, for people to collectively work to solve the game’s puzzles.

So, a game that has been released with what appears to be zero traditional marketing less than a day or two ago, already has independent sites dedicated to it and a fairly large number of blog posts (largely due to the fact that some very influential bloggers were sent game “kits” annonymously).

Seriously, this is some genius shit.  It definitely takes a lot of planning and setting up and I can totally see how it can fail if it is not done very well, but this sort of immersive  gaming/marketing has endless potential thanks to that amazing new ingredient, the internet.