Transmedia

Sometimes you need a new word, but most of the time there is a perfectly good word that you don't know or maybe just don't like. Corporate America loves new words, and I'm not sure why, after all, they don't treat the words they have particularly well…

Take this word: Transmedia. While it sounds like the transexual porn section of the video store, it's actually a marketing term that refers to storytelling, where 'content becomes invasive and permeates fully the audience's lifestyle.' (wiki).

Which means omnipresent storytelling, or cross-media, or just plain pervasive media.

Creating a word to describe your idea isn't new, but we used to call it 'branding.' You would come up with an idea for a new soft drink, coin a term, trademark it, and create Coca Cola. Eventually the word Coke means any soft drink. The generic word 'soft drink' is still there, but the mainstream use of 'Coke' only happens after the brand, and therefore the word, is established in popular culture.

The prevailing thought now is to create a word, and use it enough that you force it into popular culture. It almost never works, as seen with the broken trail of words and jargon.

The problem I have with making up words is based in one of my basic maxims: This stuff is complicated enough, we don't have to make it more complicated. The process of explaining your concept of pervasive storytelling is slowed down by creating a word that could be gay porn or a Soviet telegraph.

I'm not saying that 'pervasive storytelling' isn't a mouthful, but if I look up the words on Dictionary.com or, lord help us, in a book, the words have meaning and I don't need a wiki or a jargon dictionary to figure out the concept on my own.

Now take your crazy talk and get off my lawn…