Reigning supreme: Game of Thrones bringing it down on social media

One of the series of modern TV, Game of Thrones attracts approximately 1.6 million household viewers in New Zealand, a substantial amount by any means with also a market share or roughly 29.8% with sky capturing the exclusive broad casting rights of the series in New Zealand.

With the series being incredibly infectious Sky were to utilize the up and coming series to drum up business for their paid channel SoHo to current Sky TV subscribers, or targeting completely new Sky customers as a whole.

Well, who better to do this than the renowned DDB advertising group, who bag awards left right and center, for excelling in agency effectiveness. Here is the ‘catch’, how did DDB capture the audience who claim GOT is ‘not for them’?  Well, they already knew that GOT had a huge and powerful following, one where people were driven with passion about the characters, story line and series as a whole. DDB knew this, and what connects people more than a mutual passion for someone or something? A shared hatred for a certain something, it binds people together like glue!

Brand watch Analytics cleverly became DDB’s weapon of choice and they discovered that the hate filled sadistic character of young boy king, King Joeffery was the most hated character in a television series. Word of mouth is a powerful tool these days and with social media at an all time high, DDB wanted to get people talking and compel the ‘not for me’ viewers to start being attracted by mutual hatred.

Beyond the realms of media, DDB took to the streets. Standing 7m tall a statue of the boy king placed in the middle of Aotea Square, Auckland, a square used for political rallies and open air concerts, the scale of the promotion was soon to become Australia’s largest ever live streaming event, likening it to the epic scale of the Sky broadcaster TV series, but did they go too far?

#BRINGDOWNTHEKING

With the hashtag fairly self explanatory, the more trending the hashtag recieved then the tighter the rope fastened around the statue’s neck, eventually toppling the hated character. The trending was global, with DDB reaching out to Brazil and France where previously they had not been successful with significant interest. In the early stages reaching out to more traditional platforms such as rasio and local news sations, the strategy, through the use of brand watch eventually reached an incredible 43 million people in 168 countries, and 875,000 individual interactions to glue a hatred big enough to topple a metaphorical TV series character.

A clever combination of setting challenges, and creating hatred to promote.