A Novel Idea

Going about my regular routine of shoving in my ear buds and listening to NPR while walking about the city, I came across a thrilling story.  Eli Horowitz and Mac Barnett wrote a novel called The Clock Without a Face.  The title is intriguing and exhibits excellent wordplay, but the desired mission of the novel is worth a closer look.  The description reads:

The call comes in from the shadowy Ternky Tower: 13 robberies, one on each floor, all the way up to the penthouse, where obnoxious importer Bevel Ternky has been relieved of the numbers garlanding the legendary Emerald Khroniker, his priceless, ancient clock. Readers must conduct their own investigations, scouring detailed illustrations for hidden clues and knotty puzzles. All your answers can be found within this book: whodunit and how… and where the real numbers are buried now.     

That last part seemed a bit odd until I realized their intent: transform a fictional, whodunit mystery into a real-life treasure hunt.  I had never heard of such a thing in a novel before.  The authors want the readers to find the actual numbers in real life, and nine numbers have already been discovered…that’s amazing!  After arriving home, I immediately went online to find GusTwintig, a blog chronicling the readers’ discovery of the nine buried numbers.

This all made me think about the general trend to takes things from one world and bring them into another (or as my colleague Sarah likes to say IRL, “in real life”).  In PR we often see this translation from an online world into the real world (whereas 10 years ago it was the reverse).  Consumers have taken online relationships to real relationships (through services like Match.com), online ownership of land to real ownership of land (if you haven’t seen the Detroit Loveland project, please take a look).

Messieurs Horowitz and Barnett offer an excellent reminder though that we should not only look for ways to engage our audiences and allow them to be a part of our story, but to discover new methods to take concepts from one world and place them in another…to make it easy for our audience to interact with our clients in real life.

-    Randy Gray