As we noted in today’s story on Massiverse, transmedia storytelling, or telling stories across different media, is catching on. Entertainment properties that succeed in one medium are being translated into other media, such as a film being made into a game.
Sandi Isaacs, a former Paramount Digital Entertainment executive (and a judge during our MobileBeat 2008 conference), is starting a new company today to help major brands and entertainment companies manage their properties across media. The three-person New York company is called Allied Red and it has received funding from integrated marketing firm Allied Integrating Marketing, a big company with lots of clients across 22 offices nationwide.
Allied Red calls itself a strategic brand licensing and representation company. Its first client is Paramount Digital Entertainment. Allied Red will work with Paramount to make sure the company can fully exploit its movie properties across new platforms such as video games, Facebook, MySpace or the iPhone.
It’s one more entertainment agency among many. But it shows that the thinking about creating cross-media properties from the start is happening in a number of places in the entertainment industry. The future of media is about transmedia, where the point is to have more “touch points” with consumers where they can interact with a brand, Isaacs says. One consumer may have no use for a Star Trek-branded video game on a console, but that consumer might like to play a Star Trek app on the iPhone.
Some entertainment companies have been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Isaacs says her job is to make the right connections between people so that high-quality projects come together. Isaacs has been joined at Allied Red by Laurie Windrow, a veteran licensing expert, and Marc Berman, who will oversee finance and operations. Isaacs worked for Paramount for nine years and before that was in the video game industry at Activision and Disney Interactive. Beyond Paramount, Allied Red also has some undisclosed clients. At the very least, it will be interesting to see Paramount get more involved in games and digital media.