My Role: Graphic Design, Wordpress Installation, Product Management
Techniques: User Interface Design, Project Management, & Resource Management, DNS management, Social Marketing.
Launch: April 1st, 2009
Site: aprilfools.hotelicopter.com

At the beginning of 2009, VibeAgent (the company that I work for), decided that we needed to rebrand the site to make the site more memorable, and stand out from the crowd. After some brainstorming, beer, and some more brainstorming… we came up with hotelicopter.com. As we began to make plans for the rebranding the site, one of the items on the list was to gain visibility in the market, and not lose ground in the traffic arena. So, we went back to the drawing board (read bar), brainstormed (read drank) some more, and asked ourselves the question, “what if there really was a flying hotel?” Just like that, The Hotelicopter was born.

A little Wordpress Wizardry, some fine 3D modeling, and a little help from one of the teams 15 year old son on the video front, and we had a pretty convincing site heralding the launch of “the world’s first flying 5 star hotel”. The site featured tour dates, and exhaustive list of amenities, images of the hotelicopter, and cabins (courtesy of yotel.com), and a video of The Hotelicopter in flight.

The site peaked at 1.5M visitors, and on April Fools day, we were the #5 most watched video on YouTube. Well, the hoax worked, and hotelicopter.com launched amidst a frenzy of media attention including articles on Wired, CNet, Business Week, and Gizmodo.