In the ad created by Ted Horton’s Big Red, Buble makes a cup of tea for a busy mum relaxing with his music after a busy day.

The ad will be promoting Sydney’s smoothfm 95.3 and Melbourne’s smoothfm 91.5 from next weekend.

The launch campaign runs TV, print, magazine, digital and mobile.

DMG marketing director Tony Thomas said of Buble: “He’s such a great personality for the station. It made a lot of sense.”

In a recent Mumbrella interview Thomas called Big Red’s Ted Horton an ‘advertising genius’.

The shows will be pre-recorded and will feature music selection from both Bublé and station programmers.

From advertising campaigns to online video series, the term ‘transmedia’ gets quite the work out. But what does it actually mean? Cathie McGinn trawls the media landscape for a definitive definition.

Transmedia, all media and multiplatform are terms often used interchangeably when referencing modern storytelling techniques. Yet, depending who you speak to, there are distinct differences between them.

According to industry experts Encore spoke to, the key elements that define transmedia can be summarised as follows: platform, time, audience, adaptation, and creative collaboration.

“Transmedia projects involve the use of more than one medium to tell multiple stories from the same story world,” says Christy Dena, author of the first PhD on transmedia practice. But the main differentiation between transmedia and multiplatform is whether the content is adapted for each platform or simply syndicated. Each storytelling element must be shaped for individual platforms, operating independently but contributing to a richer experience of the whole. Mike Cowap, investment manager of Screen Australia’s All Media fund, says: “One of the main problems with the term ‘transmedia’ is that the terminology is over-thought to the detriment of the advancement of storytelling techniques. We prefer the term ‘all media’ because it implies the consideration of any media.”

Another factor is the idea of contemporaneousness; in general a transmedia production has the intention of telling the story across several channels from the outset. This could be a re-engineering of a piece of content, but still adhering to the idea of extension across platforms, along with a focus on audience. For example, the South by South West award-winning SBS-funded documentary Goa Hippie Tribe began life as a Facebook community but the story unfolds through film and online.

Marcus Gillezeau, producer of transmedia project Storm Surfers, which began as a TV series with a strong online presence and has a 3D film currently in the works, says: “Transmedia isn’t a noun; it’s almost a verb. It’s the notion of transferring a story across platforms.”

“Unlike the traditional Hollywood system, where you make a film then a game of that film, here we think about the whole universe from conception. Consider the audience first, not as an afterthought,” says Frank Verheggen, co-founder of production house Chocolate Liberation Front. It has recently been nominated for global interactive awards the Webbies as well as commended by the UN for its project Asylum: Exit Australia, an online interactive simulation, developed in tandem with the SBS documentary Go Back to Where You Came From.

“Understand how users connect with that service and create content to fit,” says Cowap.

One misconception that dogs discussions of transmedia production is that it requires a bewilderingly complex set of skills. “Traditional producers find the highly technical nature of multi-platform production confronting,” says Gillezeau. Cowap agrees: “One obstacle to successful projects is a lack of technical understanding on the part of the producer, a lack of knowledge about who to partner with. Producers overestimate how difficult it is – the best approach is to jump in and try. Bringing a good multi-discipline team together can produce the richest work.”

As Ridley Scott’s innovative approach to the release of new feature Prometheus demonstrates, content and commerce can work cohesively. By releasing teasers online and on mobile platforms, bringing characters from the film into the real world alongside traditional marketing, the principles of transmedia production are applied to marketing efforts and advertising becomes a part of the story itself.  “Transmedia production is about creating a universe you can get lost in, engage with characters, where you really feel you’re a part of the story. Don’t start with the limitations; first think of the possibilities,” concludes Verheggen.

•  This piece first appeared in Encore magazine. Subscribe to the print edition here or download the iPad edition here. 

Negotiated by Arclight Films, A Few Best Men will be released across Britain and Ireland at the end of August by Buena Vista International.

Directed by Priscilla: Queen of the Desert’s Stephan Elliott, A Few Best Men is about three British best men visiting NSW’s Blue Mountains to support their friend as he marries into a rich Australian political family.

Producer Laurence Malkin said: “It’s great to see a comedy travel so well. The reaction is similar to what we had on Death at a Funeral. Dean, Stephan, and the entire cast and crew have created a hilarious and universal comedy that really speaks to audiences worldwide.”

Gary Hamilton of Arclight Films said: “We’re thrilled at the film’s international success and the box office numbers A Few Best Man is bringing in. We’re looking forward to equally successful openings in Europe and South America soon.”

The film stars Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Olivia Newton-John and Rebel Wilson.

Globally, the film has taken nearly $US10m so far with Australia taking $US5m of that and $US2.6m from Italy, according to Box Office Mojo.

Locally, the film took $1.8m on opening weekend.

The app lets users find out what shopping deals and retail promos are nearby their current location.

Rebekah Horne, DMG’s chief digital officer said: “Combining the location services of the smartphone and power of broadcast radio, we will have a very compelling offer for both our clients and audience alike.”

A free app, ShopperNova aims to capitalise on Nova’s 18-39 targeted listenership with deals able to be shared on social media and provide an advertising opportunity for sales clients.

Horne said: “For the first time we are going to see the ability for clients to highlight an in-store offer on air, and then follow it through to the point of purchase with a location based app.”

The location-based technology was developed by Sydney mobile agency Creative Licence Digital, the founders of QuickerFeet, on which the concept for ShopperNova was based.

Darren Winterford, director of Creative Licence Digital, said: “Smartphone use in this country has exploded. Each month almost 2% of the population buy a smartphone, and as competition with online heats up, the app will prove itself to be the powerful weapon that retail has been looking for to attract shoppers and drive them into store. Combining it with leading radio will further increase its power.”

The launch comes the day after Google released a survey revealing smartphone penetration in Australia is now at 52%, and that 24% of Australians take their phones with them when shopping to research products. However, 22% of them change their minds while in-store.

Felony is written by, and set to star Joel Edgerton. The film will be directed by Matthew Saville.

Executive producing the film will be Lisa Wilson and Myles Nestel of The Solution Entertainment Group who will handle international rights to the film at the Cannes Film Market.

Rosemary Blight of Goalpost Pictures said: “Felony is a distinctive project with exceptional creative talent attached, with Joel Edgerton as both actor and writer and Matthew Saville directing. We are thrilled to be working with The Solution on this exciting film.”

A thriller, Felony sees a decorated police officer, played by Edgerton, run a young cyclist off the road in his car after celebratory drinks with his colleagues for busting up a major gang. As he administers CPR, and on-duty police arrive, he changes his story about the accident which will alter all their lives.

Shooting is due to begin in October.

Saville last week won two awards at the Australian Directors Guilds Awards for best direction in a mini-series for Cloudstreet, and best direction in a series for The Slap. He was also the director of Noise, with Brendan Cowell and tele-movie The King.

Edgerton also co-wrote The Square with Matthew Dabner. The film was directed by Edgerton’s brother Nash.

Roadshow Films will distribute in Australia and New Zealand.

Creative Artists Agency is handling the US rights and introduced the film to The Solution.

PostClick also has offices in Sydney and Auckland.

PostClick MD Andrew Lockwood said of the Brisbane offering: “We believe the online media industry here is definitely ready for an ad network dedicated to local advertisers and publishers.”

Dodd was previously communications director at MEC London where he led planning across clients including Lionsgate Films, Colgate, Sony Ericsson and whiskey brand The Famous Grouse. Prior to MEC he was a communications planner at the UK’s Goodstuff Communications.

He will work on brands including MasterCard and Brown Forman and report to UM national chief strategy officer Stefan Burford.

Burford said: “We are very excited to have someone of Tom’s talent onboard to be part of the team.”

Dodd starts on Monday.

Time-coded over three episodes, the series’ top episode was the seventh highest rating show for the night.

With just over 1m metro viewers, Celebrity Apprentice – Winner Announced took 1.036m, according to preliminary metro results from OzTam.

The finale was down by nearly 0.6m on last year’s finale when 1.6m viewers tuned in to see comedian Julia Morris win.

News of this year’s winner Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson published briefly on Nine’s website on Tuesday night could be a reason for the drop in ratings.

Ben Watts, head of TV and video at ninemsn said: “A video clip showing the winner of tonight’s Celebrity Apprentice season final was accidentally published on the website late last night.”

The other two episodes from the series to air last night, The Boardroom and The Challenge placed 11th and 12th respectively on 0.901m and 0.837m viewers.

While Seven News won the night on 1.369m, followed by Nine News on 1.24m and Today Tonight on 1.174m, Nine’s The Block was the highest rating non-news or current affairs show in fourth place on 1.104m followed by Australia’s Got Talent on 1.072m.

Ten’s top show was Masterchef Australia, under 1m, on 0.933m, behind ABC News on 0.951m.

Wednesday’s top 15 shows
1. Seven News – Seven 1.369m
2. Nine News – Nine 1.240m
3. Today Tonight – Seven 1.174m
4. The Block – Nine 1.104m
5. Australia’s Got Talent – Seven 1.072m
6. A Current Affair – Nine 1.041m
7. The Celebrity Apprentice – Winner – Nine 1.036m
8. ABC News – ABC 0.951m
9. Masterchef – Ten 0.933m
10. Home and Away – Seven 0.911m
11. The Celebrity Apprentice – Boardroom – Nine 0.901m
12. The Celebrity Apprentice – Challenge – Nine 0.837m
13. Bones – Seven 0.817m
14. Offspring – Ten 0.774m
15. Hot Seat – Nine 0.701m

Wednesday’s channel share
Seven: 24.0%
Nine: 20.5%
Ten: 14.5%
ABC1: 10.1%
SBS1: 5.3%
7TWO: 4.3%
Eleven: 4.1%
GO!: 3.6%
7mate: 3.5%
Gem: 2.6%
ABC2: 2.4%
One: 2.3%
SBS2: 1.0%
ABC News 24: 0.9%
ABC3: 0.8%

Prior to her new role at the ABC, Sedgwick was director of the Adelaide Film Festival which backed the award-winning film through its investment fund.

Also joining Sedgwick are Sarah Shaw and Anna McLeish from Warp Films Australia, who produced the controversial film. They will be joined by Allison Meadows, senior casting director, Mullinars Casting Consultants.

Snowtown tells the story of Adelaides bodies in barrels murders. Unusually, the casting included a large number of local people who had not acted previously.   

While the film was controversial because of its dark content, it has won several awards including best direction in the Australian Film Institute’s AACTA Awards.

The session will be moderated by Mumbrella managing editor Brooke Hemphill

Mumbrella360 takes place on June 6 and 7. More details and tickets are available on the Mumbrella360 website.

With magazine circulations plummeting, FHM closing and rumours rife on future ownership of ACP Magazines, Paul Merrill says the only way forward is launching new titles.

Eight years ago in the UK, nearly a quarter of all magazine sales came from magazines that were less than four years old. In Australia, the figure was slightly lower, but still significant. Today, the situation is very different. For a start there are so few new magazines. Yes, Masterchef briefly flared, and Top Gear made an initial impact. But Grazia and Alpha fizzled, and now ACP has shelved their plans to launch Elle.

In any industry, innovation is the lifeblood. Without it, existing markets falter and decay without the renewal essential for survival. And the magazine market is decaying faster than most.

Yes, there has been investment in the digital sphere, but that just isn’t enough.

The men’s market is a case in point. Four years ago, there was a weekly selling 120,000, and two monthlies both bubbling just under 100,000. Now one monthly (Ralph) has closed, another (FHM) is closing and the weekly (my old mag, Zoo) has lost nearly half of its sale in those four years.

It’s not the fault of the individual mags, as they all have a finite life cycle, but it does mean the sector could soon be wiped out as there is nothing to take their place. Even the still-buoyant Men’s Health is showing signs of plateauing.

The volume of women’s mags has declined by a smaller percentage, but by a bigger volume. Where will the next major weekly come from? Zoo and Famous were the last two six years ago.

The recession is partly to blame, but it is no excuse to stop investing in the future because the future has a nasty habit of becoming the present.

And if some of our biggest magazine publishers are keen to sell, a prospective buyer might wonder about investing in a company so shy about ring fencing its own long-term future.

Most recently the editor of Zoo Weekly, Paul Merrill has been in magazines for 18 years.

•  This piece first appeared in the April issue of Encore. Subscribe to the print edition here or download the iPad edition here. 

From July 27 to August 12, the Australian media will go sport crazy as the Games of the XXX Olympiad, aka the 2012 London Summer Olympics, unfold. The games will be the most televised sporting event of our time as broadcasters look to master every manner of technology at their disposal.At the front of the media pack are those who hold the official rights for the broadcast and here on Aussie soil the three key commercial players are Channel Nine, Foxtel and the Macquarie Radio Network. Also broadcasting from the event is ABC Radio. At the centre of it all is Gary Fenton, head of the Olympic Unit.

The International Broadcast Centre at London’s Olympic headquarters

“This is the largest off shore broadcast in Australian television history,” says Fenton. In order to secure the rights, he explains: “Nine and Foxtel decided to make a joint bid to the International Olympic Committee four years ago.” They won the bid before negotiating with the Macquarie Radio Network to give them access.

The modus operandi of the IOC dictates that a representative for the broadcasters must facilitate the relationship with the committee and other Olympic organisations. “They seek a gatekeeper for each of these contracts,” says Fenton, who is ideally qualified for the role of heading up the Olympic Unit having worked for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games in 2000 and covering a number of Olympics in association with the Seven and Nine networks. His job entails overseeing a number of initiatives key to the broadcast including the build of studios and facilities as well as the all – important accreditation of personnel.

“The Olympics have gotten big, bigger and bigger,” Fenton explains. “Accreditations are at a premium.” Foxtel alone has a crew of 150 they are taking to London to facilitate the 3,200 hours of content it will broadcast on eight different channels as well as streaming via a tablet app. There are only 400 passes to divvy up between the various broadcasters and it is therefore necessary for the networks to share resources. The Macquarie Radio Network, who in addition to broadcasting the event on Sydney station 2GB will also provide content to 80 regional stations, plans to share behind the scenes staff with ABC Radio and Fox Sports. On-air talent is also multitasking with commentator Ray Hadley calling the swimming for both Foxtel and 2GB.

It’s a similar situation with Nine and Foxtel as the two broadcasters share their commentary team, including Eddie McGuire, who will present from the studio for Foxtel as well as calling specific events for Nine. “I’m hosting the Olympics for Nine and for Foxtel and I’ll be doing my radio show over there so I’ll be pretty busy,” McGuire told Encore in March.

A number of local technical staff will also be hired on the ground in London and tonnes of equipment needs to be shipped to the city. “Logistically, this is an enormous undertaking. Our team has been working on this since last year,” says 2GB’s David Kidd. Foxtel has had crew on the ground in London for the past year and Fenton says he’s been working on the broadcast for four years. “It’s a bit like D-day,” he says of the countdown to the event. For many of the staff involved, like Fenton, this is not their first rodeo.

“I’ve been to every Olympics since 1992. It’s the hardest work I do,” says Hadley, who will start each day at 6am and work through to midnight, London time, every day of the event. His long-time producer, Chris Bowen, will work alongside him.

As one of the most experienced members of the team, Hadley is more than just the voice of the broadcast. “The station looks to me to make decisions on the run,” says Hadley, and this will include choosing which events to cover when there are scheduling conflicts, a problem Foxtel does not have to contend with. “There’s been a lot of talk that these will be the social media games,” says Graham Burrells, Foxtel’s creative director and executive in charge of production. “But I think it’s going to be the multichannel games.” While Burrells says coverage by the free-to-air networks for past Olympics has been excellent, it’s simply not possible to cover every event with just one or two channels as is the case with Channel Nine who will broadcast on their main channel as well as in HD on the GEM channel. Compare this to Foxtel’s eight channels: each will be dedicated to a specific selection of sports. For instance, channel LONDON 1 will air all of the pool sports including the swimming, diving and water polo while LONDON 2 covers the cycling events to be held at the velodrome. With the Olympic venues spread across the city, this channel allocation makes sense for technical and logistical reasons. “The security will be very intense getting in and out of venues,” says Foxtel’s Burrells, who sees transport as one of the greatest challenges.

From a technical perspective, Foxtel’s content is being compressed for broadcast in London and being directly delivered to Australian audiences without additional processing back home. “As far as we’re aware, that has never been done before,” says Peter Campbell, Foxtel’s director of sports and Olympic games.

The time difference between Britain and Australia’s eastern seaboard has 2GB salivating as the scheduling of events, including Australian favourite swimming, falls in the prime timeslot of breakfast. “People will be waking up with a real appetite for Olympic results,” says Mark Noakes, Macquarie Radio Network’s group sales and marketing director. “It’s perfect for breakfast radio.” Noakes predicts many commuters will be glued to their car radios which makes for an easy sell to advertisers. Big brands, he says, are keen to get involved with the broadcast and many advertising campaigns are being extended to include airtime prior to the games.

Noakes says: “It’s certainly a sell that gets advertisers’ attention.”

While Noakes is busy selling ads, 2GB’s on-air talent have some issues to contend with also. “The challenge is to make sure you preserve your voice,” Hadley says. “That’s something you’ve got to be conscious of.” There is also the danger of getting caught up in the excitement of the event. “It’s important you don’t go too early,” Hadley stresses.

But perhaps the most notable concern for presenters at the games is pronunciation. With more than 200 countries competing, there are bound to be some curly names on the call sheet. Hadley says the best approach is coordinating with other Australian broadcasters so they are on the same page. “You like to get it right,” he says and often compares notes with Nine’s Ray Warren over a cup of tea at the International Broadcast Centre.

While this all sounds terribly collegiate, with the sharing of resources, pronunciation tips and the broadcasters describing their offerings as “complimentary services”, there is still rivalry between them, which is to be expected for competing media outlets. Foxtel’s Campbell says: “Everyone’s got their competitive pride.”

•  This piece first appeared in Encore magazine. Subscribe to the print edition here or download the iPad edition here. 

But it has brought international headlines for the Fitzy & Wippa breakfast show, not least in the LA Times.

(Hat-tip: @Rove)

Directed by Ben West, who comes from a visual effects background, the film follows the fortunes of a Japanese salaryman who turns into a puffer fish after eating a live one in a restaurant.

West’s production company @Radicalmedia, is shopping around for a distributor and considering looking for a sponsorship tie-up.

West told Mumbrella: “It’s a film with edge, and is probably not for mainstream audiences. But there’s potential for the film to become a branded entertainment series if we get a sponsor.”

West used to work at post house Animal Logic on visual effects before moving into directing. Commercials he has directed include work for 5 Seeds and Australian Directors’ Guild.

Nicole Sheffield: making changes

In what could prove to be the biggest senior editorial changes in magazine publishing all year, the new boss of News Limited‘s expanded lifestyle publishing Nicole Sheffield has announced the departure of Vogue Australia’s editor-in-chief Kirstie Clements, lifestyle group editor Mark Kelly and editor of home and lifestyle title InsideOut, Richard Waller.

Sheffield is just two months into her role as boss of NewsLifeMedia.

Rival title Harper’s Bazaar editor Edwina McCann is to step into the role of Vogue editor. Clement had held the post for 13 years.

McCann moves to Vogue Australia in July, after three years at ACP Magazines high end fashion title Harper’s Bazaar. Harper’s recently announced its new deputy editor was Georgie McCourt-Abay, who had previously worked at Vogue Australia.

A spokesperson for ACP said in a release that “ACP had begun the search for McCann’s successor and would announce a new editor for the magazine in due course”.

Sheffield said in a release: “Edwina McCann is highly respected in the industry with a strong fashion background and extensive media experience. Vogue is an outstanding brand. Harnessing our multi-platform offering through Vogue Australia, our extensive digital solutions and events will change the style and fashion media landscape in Australia. Our centralised multi-platform approach will create unparalleled editorial and marketing solutions for all Australian women.”