No Mimes, JUXT Use Transmedia on a Global Scale With a New Team-Building Alternate Reality Game

LOS ANGELES, Jan 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second straight year, transmedia storytelling pioneers No Mimes Media has partnered with award-winning creative shop JUXT Interactive to craft a hugely successful Alternate Reality Game (ARG) for Cisco Systems' annual Global Sales Experience (GSX). This year's GSX marked Cisco's first major hybrid global event, fusing both virtual and physical components into a seamless interactive experience for 21,000 participants around the world.

Cisco wanted to use new forms of storytelling to focus their sales staff on company-wide collaboration, creativity and new products while engaging them in the company's annual sales meeting. Once again, they turned to No Mimes and JUXT, makers of The Threshold, the groundbreaking Alternate Reality Game created for last year's Global Sales Experience.

This year's transmedia story, The Hunt, served as the cornerstone of the event's engagement strategy, which also included a suite of collaborative online experiences. According to Angela Smith, Senior Manager of the Global Sales Experience, "The engagement strategy was absolutely crucial to this hybrid program's success. Giving a highly competitive audience an exciting challenge satisfies multiple goals, including collaboration across boundaries."

Part high-tech thriller, part treasure hunt, part social-media experiment, The Hunt transformed thousands of Cisco employees into active characters in an exciting storyline that unfolded over two weeks and across five continents. The experience utilized action-packed video and audio (co- produced with LiveTribe Productions), photos, email, phone messages, live event, social media and an array of Cisco tools to foster team building, problem-solving and interactive learning. Characters came to life through social media, posting Facebook and Twitter updates to drive the story in real-time, and engaging participants with one-on-one dialogues. Players even used GPS- based geocaching techniques to track down a clue in a real jewelry box hidden in Oslo, Norway. Throughout the experience, participants from around the world, communicated across departmental, disciplinary and language barriers, and immersed themselves in Cisco collaboration technologies that were instrumental in solving The Hunt.

Using transmedia storytelling in new, often unexpected ways – meaning, among other things, that narrative threads introduced in a video clip might be picked up in audio, then move to voicemail messages, online clues, social media and so on.  "Sometimes we'd be making updates at 3 a.m., because it fit the time zone of a character's location," explains No Mimes Media Founding Partner (and content Co-Director) Behnam Karbassi, who adds that The Hunt's new-media depth was matched by stellar production values. "We had parkour-style stunts, a beautiful heroine, and

a former Bond villain to help tell the story."

As an added bonus, Cisco executives took time out of their busy schedules to make cameo appearances. "And this time," continues Karbassi, "they revealed a critical clue."

This epic, truly international adventure demonstrates not only the power of transmedia interaction for advancing the goals of brands like Cisco, but also its ability to expand our conception of storytelling in astounding new ways.

A case study of this transmedia entertainment experience is available at: www.NoMimes.com.

NO MIMES MEDIA

No Mimes Media creates engaging, narrative, transmedia entertainment experiences, delivered across multiple platforms—web, phone, video, audio and even the street where you live.

No Mimes Media has been a part of many groundbreaking, multi-award-winning projects, including the biggest and best Alternate Reality Games ever made, and is available for consulting, concepting and production throughout the world.

www.nomimes.com

twitter.com/nomimesmedia

JUXT INTERACTIVE

JUXT is a company that specializes in creative, digital solutions.

We offer award-winning design coupled with proven interactive strategy and branding.

JUXT is a wholly owned subsidiary of the George P. Johnson Experience Marketing interactive services offering.

www.juxtinteractive.com

twitter.com/juxtinteractive

SOURCE No Mimes Media