The document summarizes a transmedia storytelling experience created for a UFO festival in Roswell, New Mexico. The experience involved games and activities encouraging visitors to learn about the town's history through the lens of an alien. Visitors could participate through check-ins at local businesses to unlock content. The experience engaged over 30% of its target audience and saw high interaction rates. Critical success factors included designing for existing behaviors, understanding visitor dynamics, and integrating the experience with the town's overall marketing and social media strategies.

1. The Roswell Experience
Transmedia storytelling for
America’s small towns
Robert Pratten
CEO & Founder, Transmedia Storyteller Ltd
@robpratten

2. The Roswell Experience
• The Brief
– create a pilot experience for 2013 UFO festival
• Goals
– introduce visitors to wider local history
– incentivize visitors to visit local businesses
– discover critical success factors

3. Overview
• True history of town told through the lens of a
fictional alien from outer space
• 2-week game based on location check-ins
• Simple (5min) SMS-based casual games
• Conducttr managed all sign-ups, publication
and interactivity… and kept local retailers
informed

4. Experience components
• Live activities:
– crop circle
– UFO sightings
– radio station interruption
– prize draw
• Conducttr:
– range of casual and deeper interactive games
– story publication to social media
– personalized content
– points-based leaderboards
– merchant outreach & notification
– marketing contact list
– mobile app

5. Audience acquisition & entry points
• Local flyers & check-in notices
• Noticeboards at certain locations (mall, stores)
• Website sign-up (via Conducttr)
• Mobile app (Conducttr)
• Local word-of-mouth
• Local media (TV & radio) and social media

6. Crop circle

7. Mall noticeboard

8. Location flyers

9. 3-fold flyer

10. In-world (e.g. fake) newspaper (flyer)

11. Give-aways

12. Mobile app

13. 2-week game
Find GPS coordinates of alien
landing.
Daily question emailed to
subscribers for 14 days.
Answers unlocked via check-
in at local stores and points-
of-interest

14. Example casual SMS games
• Alien encounter readiness (on next slides)
• (more challenging) Hidden message
– Reply with the hidden msg to win Oppenheimer badge:
hygpkijhgvgtfrthUm&nszw1LLzb3zr3pl&c3dz6yzm&chin3sy
h76deswnhyga
• (more challenging) Anagram
– Reply with the answer to this anagram to win the Billy the
Kid badge (5/8/6/6) ONSLNCRIFTGICDAYAIEINBEFL

15. Alien encounter readiness (SMS)
TEST your readiness for alien encounters!
Reply TEST to answer two questions that will
reveal more about yourself than you knew!
– Q1: You suffer an alien abduction but are returned
to Earth. What do you do? Reply keep SECRET or
GO PUBLIC
– Q2: You find yourself impregnated with an an alien
child. What do you do? Reply give BIRTH or KILL it.

16. Results create personalize
experience
SECRET PUBLIC
You are a PERFECT HOST for alien You are an EXHIBITIONIST who
BIRTH explorers. Your willingness to seeks celebrity in two solar
keep an alien lovechild and tell systems. We are wary of you but
nobody has been noted and will we may use you if it suits our
be rewarded. cause.
You are an EARTH WARRIOR -
KILL You are a SILENT RECLUSE. You
ready to make a stand against
crave alien attention but are
alien invasion and exploration.
afraid to show your affection.
You are not to be trusted.

17. Results of last 4 days
(following several iterations)
• 30% of target demographic in daily visitors
• 3.9 interactions per visitor

18. Critical Success Factors

19. Engage, don’t explain.
• Design story to be location-aware but not location-
dependent
– requiring physical travel creates big barrier to adoption
– represent stores “virtually” on online platform and entice
journey to real store (not the other way around)
• Assume nobody wants to read a set of rules. Start with
direct call-to-action (“do this!”) and have visitors discover
the “rules” as they explore
• Give rewards early and frequently – make it fun and
surprising
• Keep it simple, frictionless and fun
– minimum intellectual demands, physical demands, time
commitment, technology demands

20. Planning
• Design for existing behaviors
– What do visitors already enjoy?… enhance it
• Understand visitor dynamics, demographics, habits
– public transport vs driving? Open road or gridlocked?
– visitor metrics – age, size, income, education, volume, frequency,
occupancy
– technographics – familiarity with social media, smartphones etc.
• Know the geography
– foot traffic/pedestrian friendly?
– wifi? 3G?
– hot climate? rainy climate?

21. Business as usual?
• Local retailers must help with audience acquisition
(discovery), not solely expect to benefit from it:
– in-store staff involved in call-to-action
– consistent and clear presentation (e.g. flyers displayed in window, not
inside store e.g. like “wifi inside”)
• Integrate the experience with town website & marketing
materials with early audience capture during vacation-
planning stage
• Use interactivity to capture “visitor heat maps” and other
market research
• Integrate with the town’s social media strategy
• Iterate

22. Transmedia Storyteller Ltd
http://tstoryteller.com
USA: +1 415 287 4150
Europe: +44 207 193 4567