Best Media Website

A&E was challenged with launching Bag of Bones, a mini-series based on an award winning Stephen King novel, within a cable landscape saturated with average and downright kitcshy horror adaptations. A&E needed to create a unique promotion that highlighted Stephen King’s involvement and was accessible and interesting to both a broad base of their key A25-54 demo as well as to horror genre and Stephen King fans. Darkscorestories.com was a visual and interactive site that highlighted the stories and characters featured in Bag of Bones. The site was designed as prequel to the actual series, a parallel narrative to the show both in characters and storyline as well as mood and feel. The site featured a simulated photo essay captured by a writer one year before the story begins. Through striking portraits, subtly animated cinemagraphs and oral histories, the essays explored the residents of the Bag of Bones’ setting, Dark Score Lake. The site was seeded out to key sites and influencers for pickup and carefully placed on discovery mechanisms like StumbleUpon. Success was measured in the shows overall rating, the buzz generated around the site and for A&E, and finally in the number of people who came to the site and how long they spent once there. Bag of Bones was the highest rated cable mini-series since A&E’s own Andromeda Strain in 2008 scoring a 1.6 rating in A&E’s main demographic of A25-54.

Contributors:

Guy Slattery:	SVP, Marketing, A&E
Lori Peterzell:	VP, Brand Strategy and Consumer Marketing, A&E
Pamela Krawczyck:	Director, Consumer Marketing
Elizabeth Luciano:	Sr. Director, Media
Stacy Krusch:	Director, Integrated Marketing
Steve Coulson:	Creative Director, Campfire
Michelle Crum:	Associate Creative Director, Campfire
Joachim Ladefoged:	Photographer, Campfire
Christopher McLallen:	Print Producer, Campfire
Jen Larkan:	Producer, Campfire

A&E

Location: USA