THE WITCHER: MAP OF THE CONTINENT

TitleTHE WITCHER: MAP OF THE CONTINENT
BrandNETFLIX
Product/ServiceTHE WITCHER: MAP OF THE CONTINENT
Category B01. Websites / Microsites
Entrant MEDIAMONKS Hilversum, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation MEDIAMONKS Hilversum, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation 2 HENRIK & SOFIA Västerås, SWEDEN
Production MEDIAMONKS Hilversum, THE NETHERLANDS
Credits
Name Company Position
Markus Gerdemann Netflix Global Creative Marketing
Valeska Lugiery Netflix Global Creative Marketing
Vincent Quak MediaMonks Senior Creative
Henrik Leichsenring Henrik & Sofia Senior Creative
Sofia Gillström Henrik & Sofia Senior Creative

Background

The Witcher saga has an extensive fan base—lovers of the books, games and now, the Netflix show are incredibly active on reddit and other fora where they discuss the saga (and their opinions on it) at length. Understandably so, the show was one of the most highly anticipated of the year. At the same time, the Witcher introduces a new audience to this unknown world of people, places, customs and creatures. That, and an achronological story, is what moved us to create this map. We wanted to tell everything there is to tell about the Witcher world, allowing fans and first-time watchers to dive deeper into the lore with an easy-to-use exploration tool. As Reddit is a Witcher fan’s go to source of info, we had but one goal: become trending on Reddit and reach the front page. That would prove we’d truly made a tool that mattered to fans.

Describe the strategy

The experience is meant for and aimed at fans of the Witcher saga—whether they’ve been fans for years or became fans after seeing the show. But Witcher fans are a unique breed, they’re incredibly involved and have their own network of fora, channels and fan content. To make sure our experience would be accepted and embraced by them we needed to speak their language. That meant becoming incredibly involved fans ourselves and launching the experience where the fans are: Reddit. To acquire expert-level Witcher knowledge, we dedicated weeks of our time to dive into the Witcher world. We lived and breathed the scripts and the show—we even read the books and browsed every forum page out there—to make sure we didn’t miss a thing and did the saga justice.

Describe the execution

The link to the experience was spread via the official Witcher subreddit, Netflix’s social accounts and some of the online news and entertainment sources that covered the experience. For each event, character, creature and location on the map we created extensive explanation, so-called cards. With over 125 unique cards to explore there is a lot to learn and each card is connected to several others, creating a network that users can navigate instinctively. From the tone of voice to design elements we made sure that the map of continents resonates with the unique style of the Netflix series. Even the map itself contains a little bit of magic on its own. If a war broke out in a certain city during the series, that city would leave a permanent burn mark on the map. Additionally, the weather conditions also changed according to the happenings in the series.

List the results

Fans of the saga explored the interactive map worldwide sharing the events of the series in different fora and dove deeper together into the Witcher world. New audiences of the series and are now able to break down all major events of the Witcher’s saga and re-discover their favorite moments of the series. The interactive map spread all over reddit in a couple of days after launching and made it to the front page. Here’s what people say about it on on reddit: ‘’This interactive map is incredible. I don't think anyone will be confused about the timelines or lore anymore.’’ ‘’I love this map because I have never read the books. Everything becomes so much clearer now!’’ ‘’This is really cool, kudos to everyone involved in making this. I hope they’ll continue to expand this with every following season, that would be awesome!’’