Client:
Legend Homes is a leading Oregon home builder that has received numerous awards from the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland (2004-2006) and the Oregon Home Builders Association and National Association of Home Builders. With their sister companies, Legend provides a comprehensive homebuying experience—from land acquisition and building to real estate, mortgage, and design services.

Challenge:
As a top builder of green-certified residences, Legend Homes was selected by ABC Television to construct a green house for a needy family on its wildly popular series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition—within a week. Legend Homes embraced the mission, asking the Overland Agency to create a microsite to encourage construction volunteers and donations for the family. The site needed to permit quick, frequent updates—administered by Legend Homes staff—to chart the project’s daily progress. Overland’s biggest challenge was building a complete website within days to coincide with ABC’s announcement of the Oregon project.

Solution:
Because this home build would appear on a national, Emmy-winning program, the interactive experience had to exceed every potential visitor’s expectations. Considering the show’s family audience, we focused on bright, engaging graphics and persuasive storytelling: the family’s inspiring struggle and optimism, the vital need for volunteers and donations, and why Legend Homes was chosen to help this family. Overland used the newly released 3.0 version of our website framework and integrated Content Management System (CMS) built with .NET 2.0 and C#, allowing the speedy deployment of a robust website. The intuitive CMS enables full-featured web editing and version control; it easily let assigned Legend Homes team members—regardless of technical ability—be part of the experience by posting photos and press releases live. HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Flash were also used to achieve our goals.

Result:
The rewards were twofold: high microsite click-through rates and a fine showing of community support. In the site’s first 72 hours live, it was flooded with traffic from Oregonians and fans of the show alike—who stepped up to the challenge of helping the selected family. More than 1,500 people registered to volunteer in those first three days, and in the end, 2,170 people volunteered through the microsite. In the first week, the site received more than 140,000 page views. Thanks to the outpouring of community support, the hectic seven-day home build went smoothly.