Winchester Mystery House's 161st Room - A Lesson in Messaging
If you ever want to throw a young professional into a baptism by fire, it’s having a press release go a little sideways (in a good way) after launch. I was on the job at Winchester Mystery House for just a few months, fresh out of college. While I was Still trying to find my way around the house (and the dizzying labyrinths of marketing folders that eventually got organized), my marketing and communications leader, Tim O’Day (well-known and respected Disney marketing veteran), and I had crafted a playful and obvious tongue-in-cheek toned press release announcing the debut of a new attraction: Sarah’s Attic.
Sarah’s Attic was a small shooting gallery placed in the courtyard as a means to offer guests something to do while they waited for their tour to begin. A quaint space designed to look like we had “found” a hidden, blocked-off 161st room, we “carefully removed" it and brought it down to the courtyard where “sharp-eyed guests could take aim at fun.” The entirety of the backstory was designed to be an accent to the tour script itself, leaning both into the mystery and history of the house.
The arcade game was filled with period-appropriate items, including a few pieces of extra furniture from the house. However, this creative backstory about a simple arcade game being added to the property experiences sparked a very fast-moving wave of misinterpretation.
Instead of addressing the shooting gallery game, the story quickly became, “NEW ROOM FOUND AT WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE.” In the moment, it tested my ability to think on the fly, to communicate clearly with leadership on a swift action plan to take what was misinterpreted (by some media outlets, not all) and immediately craft clarifying replies to media outlets that inquired, or who had not gotten the joke.
In a matter of a few hours, I had drafted example versions of responses we could use that kept the story alive without breaking character (or the play on words) and pitched the plan: to keep the story going by explaining that the spirits released from the attic (as mentioned in the press release) had decided to take their own “shot” at the marketing team for the story. This approach personified the house, allowing us to lean further into the mythos—and, more importantly, use it to our storytelling advantage, resulting in positive domestic media hits, and even a few international placements.
This ultimately helped us: it continued to push the wink-wink, get-the-hint fun of the story all along, while doubling down that this was not, in fact, an actual room, but an all-new attraction. Once the “a-ha, I get it” moment happened, the general responses from guests were positive, and it became a staple part of the guest experience for years to come.
From this first lesson at Winchester, it became immediately apparent how we needed to adjust the brand tone of the house to what it has become today—playful and slightly offbeat, with a twinge of macabre sophistication. If not for this humorous media outreach that resulted in positive coverage, I would be hard-pressed to know how long it would have taken me to learn how to ‘speak’ for the house, resulting in many future successes in marketing this beautiful but bizarre home.
