Client: New Line Cinema
Creative: Claire Gillis, Andy Ferguson, Amanda Wise

The global marketing website for New Line Cinema’s movie ‘The Golden Compass’, based on author Philip Pullman’s bestselling and award-winning novel.

Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy has millions of fans around the world with the same passion for and knowledge of the fantasy world as Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter fans. Our challenge was to bring alive this alternate world – before any imagery was available from the movie itself – without compromising or ‘dumbing down’ its unique mythology. Our strategy was to bring the most fascinating features of the story alive online and allow people to engage with them. Fans can complete a personality profile to find out what ‘daemon’ animal they are and then embed this avatar on their own website or MySpace page, use it as their AIM logo, or download it as a desktop wallpaper.

The website www.goldencompassmovie.com first launched on December 7, 2006, exactly 12 months before the official movie release this year. Our objective was to connect fans who already loved the book, as well as bringing the story to a new audience. We also delivered the website in 21 different languages.

Nine months after release (and with 2 months to go before the movie premiers in London on 7/12/07), the Golden Compass site has generated over 8.6 million views and approximately 5 million trailer views. 360,000 daemon avatars have been created, generating 15 million page views on daemon content. The Golden Compass site is now the fourth most trafficked movie site of all time.