How Brandwatch Analytics Helped DDB New Zealand Promote Game of Thrones Season 4

Who is your house?

It’s fair to say that Game of Thrones is now a household name across the country whether you watch the show or not. But how do you convert the non-watchers to be part of the Game of Thrones family?

This was the question that DDB Newzealand were faced with prior to the launch of Game of Thrones fourth season.

Enter Brandwatch Analytics.

Brandwatch helps brands to listen to their customers to understand consumer trends

By looking at the conversations between current fans DDB were able to find the key talking points around the show and what the most followed/interesting plot developments were.

Enter King Joffrey.

Jack Gleeson’s portrayal of King Joffrey has created perhaps one of the most hated TV Series characters of all time!

DDB found that the mutual hatred that fans had towards King Joffrey would be an excellent anchor in their marketing campaign and so the hashtag #bringdowntheking was born! But before they tackled the online world, DDB had to have some sort of physical aspect to their campaign. To do so they erected a seven metre tall statue of King Joffrey atop a plinth complete with a winch and rope around its neck, in the popular location of Aotea Square. From here DDB transmitted a live stream from the square, unintentionally they created Australasia’s largest live streaming event in history.

The challenge was set with the pre-mentioned hashtag #bringdowntheking. The idea of this is that everytime anyone hashtagged their Game of Thrones related posts envolving King Joffrey with #bringdowntheking would turn the winch, making the rope tighter and tighter until the inevitable finally happened.

The stream IRL

Brandwatch’s work wasn’t over there. As the campaign continued they kept tabs on users of the hashtag who had the most followers, they would engage them further, going as far to give them special staus. This in turn furthered the want to be involved in the campaign by users, letting them market the show as well as the DDB themselves.

The digital planner of DDB Michiel Cox said;

‘Brandwatch was invaluable in working out the exposure the campaign had received in global media, the cumulative reach of the campaign, and the local impact seen through pictures taken and shared on Instagram‘

In total DDB were able to record around 875,000 individual interactions relating to the campaign. This shows how valuable working with Brandwatch Analytics was to DDB and how much more succesfully the were able to market Game of Thrones Season 4.

The Takeaway

• The use of Brandwatch Analytics massively helped to identify a theme in which the show could target their mrketing campaign around. (In this case the mutual hatred of King Joffrey)
• The use of the hashtag #bringdowntheking allowed the marketing campaign to be massively popular on multiple websites.
• Everyone hates King Joffrey!

Thanks for reading,

Haydn