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"Golden Compass" Finds Your Inner Demon

Creative Posted on May 29, 2007

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May 29, 2007

New Line Cinema wastes no time building buzz for its December-release, "The Golden Compass." See how sound, video and personalization combine to prepare young viewers to join Lyra's World.

Creative Notes

Firefox and Opera compatible

Campaign Details

Client: New Line Cinema

Campaign Insight

The release of Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" may still be far off, but that hasn't tapered the interest of its fans. New Line Cinema has created a beautiful site dedicated to immersing the audience in a fantasy world -- Lyra's parallel universe -- providing intriguing insights to the movie and artful downloads for the fans.

Downloadable wallpapers are hidden throughout the site for your PC or iPod; the trailer is also downloadable for iPod and can be embedded on a blog.

You can explore the different meanings of the symbols on "The Golden Compass" and take a quiz to find out the unique name and meaning of your "Daemon."

The site delves into the different characters and subplots of the film exciting the mind and whetting the palate, making the idea of waiting till December to see the film torturous.
-- Krisserin Canary, associate editor, iMedia Connection

Editor's Note

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

The Panel

Probably one of the most beautifully orchestrated movie sites in a long time, the "Golden Compass" micro-site presents a rich and engaging tapestry that unfolds in a choose-your-own-adventure style.

Most companies don't really get the importance of sound on the web; it makes good creative great and great creative ooze with involvement. I also like the fact that the voice-over has a text companion to start the adventure. My only concern is that we get to the meat of the story a little too quickly, almost like arriving at a play after intermission. If the "About the Movie" trailer played first to set the stage, then I think New Line would prevent some confusion."
-- Matt Wright, director, online video strategy, How Stuff Works

The website for the upcoming film "The Golden Compass" is decisively simple in its design and mission: to present Lyra's world and to introduce a couple of narrative concepts that will clearly matter to those future young moviegoers that New Line hopes will pack the theaters. Going live well in advance of the film's December release, the site is obviously set to get the buzz started with kids, asking questions like "what's your daemon?" (a variation of the "what's your sign?" that I used to ask little girls when I was a kid) and "can you work the Althieometer?".

Instead of presenting the trailer on the homepage, the site uses audio to introduce the characters of the film and their respective daemons, and then provides a prompt to "Meet Your Daemon". Twenty questions are presented which promise to reveal "your true character and the form of your daemon." Once you complete the questionnaire, you can send your resulting daemon to your friends, presumably to build a community of young daemons who will all later commune at the theater. The site does a commendable job on its decidedly simple mission by not overwhelming visitors with a bunch of extraneous features, and is a good example of how restraint in design can actually improve intended results.
-- Jason Scheidt, director of marketing, EyeWonder, Inc.

Footnote: Submissions are judged by a panel of industry experts from and based on the following criteria: how the creative captures the specific customer; how it meets the brand's business needs; impact of execution; and creativity. If you would like your creative considered for Creative Showcase, send an email to creative@imediaconnection.com.