Scary site dares you stay at haunted hotels
Ros Horner checks out this microsite showcasing seven spooky hotels, complete with horror movie-style posters for each one.
If there's one thing I hate it's a holiday-themed brief for a brand. But if there's one thing I absolutely love, it's movie poster design. Summing a whole movie up in a static graphic form, booking.com made a fantastic site that merges content, technology and design in a totally appropriate way.
W+K Amsterdam commissioned illustrator Akiko Stehrenberger to create horror movie style posters for booking.com's seven most haunted hotels. The campaign idea? 'Stay if you dare'. There's a TV commercial and printed posters were rolled out in movie-theatre lobbies just before Halloween, but the campaign lost nothing in its digital translation.
The site is all beautifully rendered HTML5 and scrolls upwards. The URL lets you know you are at booking.com rather than a movie site and each hotel has a direct link to its booking page and also social buttons.
Edu Pou, W+K head of creative innovation, explains the idea of 'stay if you dare', saying, "It's as integrated as it gets. The TV ad teases and defines the mood, the print intrigues and shows range, and the microsite is the ultimate interactive experience."
Words: Ros Horner
Ros is a senior designer at digital agency SapientNitro. Based in London, she spends her days designing websites and apps, and her nights trying not to look at a computer. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 250.
Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access
Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription
Join now for unlimited access
Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
Get the Creative Bloq Newsletter
Daily design news, reviews, how-tos and more, as picked by the editors.
The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.