The Dungeons
Reinventing the original immersive attraction for unshockable teens
Capturing the ‘eugh’ factor
The Dungeons are immersive theatre attractions which unearth the murky histories of cities across Europe, the US and China. They challenged us to update the iconic brand, creating cut-through by capturing The Dungeons’ experience for core audiences of teenagers and families.
We brought the brand’s dark sense of humour to life, taking a comic book approach to both copy and visuals. The creative puts the customer at the heart of the action, amplifying the emotions you’ll feel and dramatising each scene.
The resulting toolkit is flexible enough to dial the drama up and down for different experiences and locations, while always retaining a clear sense of the brand.
Stripped to the bones
The Dungeons’ iconic logo is recognised worldwide, and remains at the heart of the system. But, while the colour scheme communicated a sense of horror, it didn’t fully reflect the brand’s essence of ‘scary fun’. We stripped the brand back to the bare bones and rebuilt it with giggles in mind. An acidic snot green joins the blood red, while comical illustrations complement the painful puns.
Bursting with character
Larger than life historical characters make The Dungeons what they are. We re-imagined the brand as a giant comic book full of their bawdy stories. As well as making these anti-heroes the stars, this approach allowed us to breathe new life into existing photography alongside completely new compositions.
In the picture
To help give people a taste of The Dungeons’ unique brand of scary fun, the system heroes real people with real reactions. By combining audience photography with illustrated elements, we can capture the atmosphere without too much gory detail – a flexible approach which gives us control over the tone of each execution.
Worldly wise
Alongside creating the masterbrand and UK collateral, we’re also working with Dungeons attractions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, San Francisco and Shanghai. By working closely with The Dungeons team on testing the creative in different markets, we got a feel for cultural cues and local sensitivities. This allowed us to dial up the ‘eugh factor’ in certain regions or be more restrained in others, or communicate subtle differences in a particular attraction.
Rolling it out
As well as creating the overarching brand system, we work closely with regional Dungeons teams to create ongoing collateral. This can range from simple language variations, to uniforms and merchandise, or promotions for specific experiences.
Digital by design
Merlin use a templated platform for their websites, and we supplied key pages and a toolkit to reinvigorate The Dungeons site. The new brand is ideal for social sharing, with a library of components making it easy to spread the message far and wide.
One global brand hub
The client’s favourite innovation is the online brand toolkit hub we designed and built. For the first time, Dungeons teams around the world have a comprehensive but accessible guide to their brand, alongside downloadable assets and templates – all written in The Dungeons’ distinctive tone of voice.
