Brandwatch published a case study on the Game of Thrones marketing campaign by DBB New Zealand in 2014. The largely successful advertising agency’s marketing was widely regarded as a massive success and incorporated some innovative techniques with regards to demographic interaction.

Using data provided by Brandwatch, DBB were able to compare the volumes and opinions on certain topics of the show on social media. They found that the common consensus among viewers was that King Joffery (The show’s evil and manipulative ruler) is extremely hated by all and viewers were consistently talking and creating posts about their united hatred for the character.

The marketing agency took this information in their stride and erected a seven metre statue of the character paired with a noose around his neck in Aotea Square, Auckland.  Even the location of this physical advertisement has an acute relevance because the square has been the stage for several political demonstrations over the past decade. One of the main reasons this campaign went ‘Viral’ is the level of interactivity with the demographic; the statue’s noose tightened with every tweet that contained the hashtag: #BringDownTheKing –  requiring one million tweets in order to topple the widely despised character. Using the common hatred of a villain the the show DBB set a high bar for online interactive marketing.

DBB was able to pinpoint the most talked about aspect of the show (hatred for Joffery) and use this knowledge to plan an immensely successful interactive campaign that got people talking, and subsequently promoting it all around the world. Throughout the campaign DBB were able to use data to analyse which countries the hashtag was popular in and which countries were not as keen to ‘bring down the king’ – another reason this campaign was so successful; the agency then went onward to targeting those countries with the advertisement in their native language, encouraging them to tweet and tighten the noose.

One of the key points to take away from this form of marketing is that the level of interactivity is very high, and what the fan base is doing is engaging in an exciting way – hypothetically killing the the main villain of the show by promoting the show! This encourages people to tweet about it even more so than the average social media marketing campaign and in turn resulted in an international success.

References:

• Brandwatch. (2018). Available: https://www.brandwatch.com/. Last accessed: 08/10/2018.
• DDB worldwide. (2018). Available: http://www.ddb.com/. Last accessed: 08/10/2018