PORTFOLIO : Winchester Mystery House

Challenge

The Winchester Mystery House is the subject of an upcoming major motion picture. In preparation for a surge of interest, the WMH wanted a website that would leverage the house's mystique and captivating story as well as its appeal to a huge and zealous potential audience for the movie. We set out to encourage the public to share stories of their experiences at the house. We were also engaged to monetize the opportunity with new merchandise.

Process

• Competitive audit of haunted places, relevant movies and architectural destinations
• Helped shape a new brand positioning
• Exhaustive house visits and photography shoots
• Wrote, designed and executed a cinematic site intro
• Devised "Spirit Sightings" to track and graph paranormal activity
• Look and feel incorporates design details from the house and motifs from its story
• Hidden content features to appeal to moviegoers

Result

We shifted the tone and feel of the site from a quaint tourist attraction to legendary paranormal hotspot. Within days of launch, the new site had been lauded in The Silicon Valley Hotlist. The client is thrilled with their new web "presence" so far. It is especially exciting to see visitors sharing ghost stories through the new spirit sightings web tool. The site has been selected as a 2010 Webby Award Honoree.

Tags

Creative Direction, Information Architecture, Look & Feel Design, Audio & Music, Flash, Photography & Video, Entertainment, Consumer, CMS

Next Up: YMCA Los Angeles

Spooky, Victorian details from our field study of the mansion

Cinematic intro sequence offers a glimpse of the captivating true story

Homepage with rotating promotional areas

Spirit Sightings: the data is creepy

Woman of Mystery

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