Marketing May 14, 2009, 5:00PM EST

Giving Products a Good Backstory

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Gomez has created origin myths for Transformer robots, Hot Wheels, and Jack Sparrow Brad Trent

For Coke's Happiness Factory ad, an Oz-like world

Story Tools

At Coca-Cola, Starlight Runner created a backstory based on the Happiness Factory, a TV commercial featuring flying fish with propellers and furry creatures that toil inside a vending machine filling Coke bottles. Gomez's team dreamed up an Oz-like world, where the characters represent the soda's original seven ingredients and are happy only when they are making fizzy drinks. "At first we weren't sure how we were going to work with them," says Coke's global advertising strategy chief, Jonathan Mildenhall. "Within 20 minutes we were dreaming up all kinds of ideas." Coke is considering using the characters in comic books, video games, and a slew of new ads, says Mildenhall, who predicts that the heightened visibility will also hike drink sales.

What's next for Gomez & Co.? Starlight Runner has been hired by Disney to help conceive the backstory for a planned remake of its 1982 science fiction flick Tron. Gomez has been meeting with Titanic director James Cameron about his upcoming 3D space adventure Avatar. For Hasbro, Gomez is helping create a backstory for the shape-shifting robots that starred in the 2007 hit movie Transformers. When Microsoft wanted to expand its Halo game franchise, Gomez helped "bring alive some pretty dry ideas," says Frank O'Connor, the Halo development chief. O'Connor is open to working with Gomez again. "The guy loves his science fiction," he says. "And he's always got great ideas."

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Spinning a Yarn in the Age of Convergence

The practice of using a narrative across multiple platforms—books, television, the Web, and so on—to boost brands and extend franchises has its own buzzword. It's "transmedia storytelling," a term coined by Henry Jenkins, who runs MIT's Media Lab. Starlight Runner's Jeff Gomez discussed the concept at a TV industry conference last November.

To view a video of the panel, go to go to http://bx.businessweek.com/movie-industry/reference/.

Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek.