One of the areas I'm fascinated by is how digital media can be used to extend story telling beyond the traditional entertainment channels. This 'extended reality' takes a TV or film story, characters and situations and builds on them in the digital space. The creators can be the story makers, advertising/marketing agencies or the fans themselves.

There's some great examples in US TV, with Lost and Heroes being two examples that spring immediately to mind. Heroes in particularly extends the story across many media, through online comics, video episodes, an ongoing Alternate Reality Game (where you're expected to 'do' things instead of just watching the story unfold) and even onto the packaging. I'm also loving the site associated with Spooks Code 9, Liberty News, which gives you a different point of view on the events that happen in the programme.

A recent ARG (Alternate Reality Game, where fans generally have to solve problems and challenges to proceeds) associated with The Dark Knight,the new Batman film, recently completed. The game was conceived and run by 42 Entertainment, one of the main companies associated with this genre. But from an advertising point of view, it was interested in the number of other companies that got involved, producing content that supported them as well. Creativity Online has a great behind the scenes report on how this worked. Nokia provided phones, Comcast produced 'election films', one of the puzzles took place over 225 Domino's Pizza locations. One of the problems that products can have if trying to do an extended reality is they have no story in which to play. Getting involved in someone else's allows the creativity to flow.

Another area that digital media has allowed to flourish is it the realm of fan-generated stories. Fan Fiction, taking characters and situations from your favourite shows, has been around for years, but web publishing made it all so much easier than ever before. There are millions of extra stories out there, of all sorts, that demonstrate the desire for people to write their own stuff around the shows. Almost all of it exists in a realm of slight dodgy copyright. But it doe not have to be a full story. Over the last few weeks, the characters of Mad Men have been getting out and about on Twitter, such as Don Draper, or at least people pretending to be them. AMC's fist reaction was to issue a take-down notice to remove the accounts but they were later re-instated, apparently at the urging of their agency Deep Focus, a company that has been heavily involved in extending brands into story telling. Alan Wolk has a great post on the full saga. Isn't that every brands target - to get people talking about them?

With extended stories, you have more room to create things - you're not confined to the 30' TV spot, or the 5 seconds you have to grab attention on a website. You've got more room to try things but also more room to make mistakes. Entertainment properties have it easiest but I'm seeing more and more product brands getting involved in this type of marketing. So who's next?