Mindhunter (S2): Interactive Press Kit
Netflix • Creative Marketing Production
Interactive Production, Microsite, PR/Publicity
2019
A special interactive microsite for press to explore exclusive photos—a Netflix-first for publicity.
In June 2019, I teamed up with the Netflix creative marketing team to execute on showrunner David Fincher’s vision to create a special interactive experience for press to obtain first-look photos from the second season of MINDHUNTER, based on a motion video that was in development for the teaser marketing campaign.
The concept: create a press-only microsite experience that invites users to explore, examine, and download photos, inlaid on film cards spread across a lightbox table. It was a thematic extension of the MINDHUNTER world that also elevated the show’s brand for our press partners. This was later released to consumers as the Lightbox Experience (optimized for both desktop & mobile).
Why this was different:
Traditionally, press partners receive a handful of preselected first-look photos through a download link. This “interactive press kit” for MINDHUNTER took a different approach, intended to:
Take the first-look experience to the next level while intentionally making it more challenging and engaging;
Offer exclusive access to 200+ photos – more than is ever provided ahead of a title release;
Encourage press to “curate” their own set of first-looks, in the vein of the show’s protagonists who have to thoughtfully and deeply examine their subjects.
Creative partners:
We partnered with HAUS, an award-winning creative digital studio based in Los Angeles. Their lean but powerful crew was led by an executive producer, creative director, and director of technology – while I helped coordinate the Netflix team of creative marketers, publicists, and engineers.
The process:
Visual design inspiration for the site was taken from What’s Wrong With Complicated (WWWC), a separate microsite that began development (and was concurrently in development) since the start of production on the second season of MINDHUNTER. Creative assets like the photo cards were provided by Neil Kellerhouse.
Using these components as basis, I worked on a creative brief to get HAUS acquainted with the goals of the project, what we envisioned in terms of visual tone and style, and the milestones we needed to hit in order to deliver by our extremely tight launch date. And because we were making this experience for press and journalists specifically, we had to be mindful of crafting a user experience that worked for this audience.
Our photos were initially divided into three thematic clusters.
The center (where the user would land) contained the key set of photos.
The entire experience was predicated on the notion that the user was searching through a lightbox full of photos – and we had well over 100+ photos to include. This made the layout of the lightbox one of the most challenging aspects. How do we organize it so that users can intuitively search three distinct, thematic areas of the lightbox and know what to do with the photo cards? We eventually landed on a layout similar to the above.
Early motion demo of how the user would interact with the cards, and how the cards would move and “collide” with one another.
We explored three potential ways for users to enter a detailed view of the photo they selected.
Little nuances, like this “drag” indicator, were important to the user experience – letting the user know that they can drag the screen to start searching around.
Additional features we implemented:
The ability for the user to download a limited number of photos.
Time-locking the experience to just 90 minutes from the start of entering.
Special easter egg splash screen with teaser trailer upon reaching predetermined conditions.
The deliverable:
We launched the press kit on July 17, 2019 and after just 4 hours, 50+ outlets ran first-look stories, with a reach of over 1.4 million – which was especially remarkable for a show’s second season.
We also had a tie-in with a mailer stunt which involved sending a package to top press outlets containing 24 of the most downloaded photos from the site.