We coined the project “Playing Lynch: A Collaborative Mediation on the work of David Lynch,” and turned it into an immersive, gallery-worthy online film experience, with Malkovich as 7 different characters, all on a stunning Squarespace-powered site. With PlayingLynch.com as the hub, we seeded the campaign with an immersive social media push that included hidden Squarespace sites and an array of clues on Reddit, Soundcloud and Lynch fan sites.

To seed the campaign, on fan forums we posted cryptic Cinemagraphs, each linked to a Squarespace cover page for a different small business – just like the kinds of small businesses that build their websites with Squarespace every day, and like we intended, Lynch fans recognized them as being based off of iconic places from his movies. The website went live after the seven-day teaser period with our first chapter of the site. Each day for the following seven days, Malkovich invited visitors to explore another part of Lynch’s imagination, and every new installment included original Sandro portraits of Malkovich in full costume, which were made available for purchase as art prints.

We came away with 10 million Twitter impressions, over 11,000 Facebook shares, and over 166 million earned media impressions, as well press from Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, and Pitchfork, among many others.

As a Squarespace project, we had to ensure that at the heart of the entire project, the site experience was king. We knew we had to do justice to and ensure credit for all parties involved: David Lynch’s body of work, the David Lynch Foundation, Sandro, John Malkovich and of course: Squarespace. Utilizing the still and film assets gathered from the shoot, we created a web experience and campaign that both captured the widest audience possible, while remaining true to the humor, creativity, surrealism and unique Lynchian style. We also had to capture the largest audience of viewers, media, and donors via a creative and broadly hyped social roll out leading up to and following the launch.

Squarespace tapped us to help realize a unique and ambitious project to benefit The David Lynch Foundation. Actor John Malkovich took on the roles of director David Lynch's most iconic characters and was captured in films and portraits by legendary director/photographer Sandro. We were tasked with building this project a home on the web and to build the campaign around it. We needed to make sure that the digital experience for the project was as beautiful and as worthy of association with David Lynch as possible. We needed to showcase the work, raise money for the David Lynch Foundation, and show how the world how Squarespace can take beautiful ideas and translate them to beautiful websites.