Choose your own adventure marketing

Do you remember the Choose Your own Adventure books from when you were a child? Maybe you need to ask your parents about them!

Time to choose:

1. Read this article as text? (continue below)…
2. Watch this content as a Vlog?  (Click to watch the video and see ‘choose your own adventure‘ in action at the very end! – please watch on Desktop!)

OPTION 1:

They were books that at the end of the page or chapter, you, the reader, were given a choice of what should happen next… ‘Advance to the castle – turn to page 12’. ‘Defeat the dragon – turn to page 87’… They were exciting to read and put you in charge. Yes, you could cheat and read both but you were in charge of the story.

The modern day equivalent of the book, was the Netflix movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. This brought that same format to the TV screen.

You watch the movie and using your smart TV, you choose what happens next at various points. It was pretty slick and hailed as ground-breaking TV. The fact it has been the only Choose Your Own Adventure/ Interactive movie made might point to the fact it wasn’t hugely well received or maybe too costly/ time consuming to produce. 

Rotten Tomatoes said:

While Bandersnatch marks an innovative step forward for interactive content, its meta narrative can’t quite sustain interest over multiple viewings – though it provides enough trademark Black Mirror tech horror to warrant at least one watch.  (ranking: 72%)

Now imagine this in a marketing world…

Your content has to work hard, reaching the right audience with the right message at the right time is HARD! So why not put your audience in the driving seat and make it interactive? Allow them to decide what information they want next?… Move themselves along the buyer journey?

Sweat your assets off!

Think about the nurture tracks you run or assets you already have you link to… can they be combined into a choose your own style document?  Interactive PDFs can be simple to produce but highly effective. Re-purpose your content and make it more engaging and exciting by making it interactive! Squeeze as much ROI as possible or create new ideas and collateral to spice things up and play to the format.

Watch it!

Record a simple and easy personalised video and offer choices throughout the video or at the end. Use the Bandersnatch idea and digitise the offering. The technology is there, you just need to be creative (or have a kick ass agency to do it for you!.. ahem…).

Your move!

Time for YOU to choose what you want to do next dear reader…

1. Go away and look at my assets…
2. Contact Challenge to help me with my next adventure…
3. Share this awesome article with a friend or colleague…
4. Ignore this for now… my assets are just fine thank you…