In 2014 a broadcasting service known as SKY based in New Zealand were faced with a challenge: How could they boost their number of subscribers with the upcoming fourth season of ‘Game of Thrones’? The issue surrounding this was that the majority of people who were interested or were fans of the series had already subscribed, meaning SKY had to somehow appeal to those in the population who had already written off Game of Thrones as a series that was simply ‘not for them’. To this end, SKY appointed the advertising group DDB in order to come up with a solution. In the end DDB managed to reach 43 million people in 168 countries.
How did they manage to accomplish this feat? Firstly, DDB decided that appealing to existing fans would be the correct choice. Appealing directly to people who weren’t interested in Game of Thrones would have been challenging seeing as they had already written the series off. On the other hand, by appealing to existing fans they could hopefuly spur them into talking about it consistently, and attract their friends and others to the show through simple word of mouth. DDB then carried out research using Brandwatch Analytics to find out which themes of the show were the most popular within New Zealand. They identified this to be King Joffrey – He was the character who instigated the most discussion, and who had the most emotional impact amongst the show’s viewers. DDB then erected a statue of King Joffrey with a winch and a rope around his neck in Aotea square. With every tweet of #bringdowntheking the winch would turn and tihgten the rope. This incited online responses from fans, and DDB used this opportunity to further engage them through intelligent use of Brandwatch. They identified the participants with the most followers and gifted them with special flairs, and for regions with less participation such as Brazil and France they contacted the local communities and sparked further interest surrounding the statue.
Through the success enjoyed by DDB and SKY, it is clear that integrating both the real world and the internet into advertising stunts can have a huge impact on the public. The nature of the internet and social applications such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat allows for events such as this to quickly spark in to a huge, worldwide, phenomena. This event also shows the importance of utilising data properly through software such as Brandwatch …interrupted by Asher