Are you tired of the arrogant and sadistic king in Game of Thrones? Do you even know who that this? Anyway, for those of you that know who he is, you probably want him dead, and for those of you who don’t know, your going want him dead after reading this!!!
**Spoiler Alert**
With the start of Game of Thrones (GoT) season 4, SKY saw an opportunity to promote its paid channel SoHo to current SKY subscribers and to sign up new subscribers to SKY.
SKY briefed DDB to create a tactical campaign on a relatively small budget that would convince New Zealanders to sign up to SKY and/or SoHo.
The challenge was to reach people who had previously dismissed the show as ‘not for them’. DDB knew this group was likely to ignore G.o.T related advertising on traditional channels.DDB realized that recommendations from friends would help drum up some interest in those who’d not been engaged.The agency had to find a way of infecting New Zealanders who had dismissed Game of Thrones as ‘not for them’ with the same excitement and eagerness to see what’s next as has been seen in online communities, where conversation around GoT is colossal.
This where it get’s exiting, remember the arrogant and sadistic king in Game of Thrones, we talked about earlier, well his name is king Joffrey and he is one of the most hated characters in the GOT series, and it’t easy to understand why, his first ordeal was to behead “Ned Stark” a fan favourite at the time, in front of his own daughter!!, so, yeah, it can only go down hill from there. He went on to killing many others, for completely inhuman reasons and to top it off, As a king you would expect him to be driving force behind his army in a big battle, however king Joffrey was the total opposite in the iconic “Battle of Blackwater” cowering behind his soldiers, while tryian, his dwarf uncle lead the army to victory, and yeah Joffrey took all the glory for the outcome of the battle. So, yeah a coward and a sadistic murdered, doesn’t get much worse than that, making him the most talked about character on the show, in online communities, with majority of the community wanting him dead.
Therefore DBB, thought of an ingenious idea, and used the hatred of Joffrey from the online community and how they wanted him dead and designed a social media to campaign to help the community kill him!!
To do so, they created a seven metre statue of King Joffrey atop a plinth, complete with a winch and a rope around the statue’s neck in scenes reminiscent of those we’ve seen played out in history. The statue was placed in a prime location: Aotea square. This large public space in Auckland is often used for open-air concerts, markets and, rather fittingly, political rallies.DDB then transmitted a live stream from the square, which became Australasia’s largest live streaming event in history.
They then put this message out- It takes millions to bring down a king, but does he deserve it? Fans were then encouraged to make their voices heard and bring down the king through the power of social media. Conversation on social media soon skyrocketed once onlookers recognized the significance of the figure and many started taking pictures and sharing them with their social communities across the world. Every tweet that included the hashtag #bringdowntheking would turn the winch and pull the rope a fraction tighter,eventually of course toppling the evil king.
A Twitter user, making their voice herd!!
To further the campaign, DBB used Brandwatch extensively, to find opportunities to grow the campaign and to get more people involved, as well as tracking and analyzing the usage of the hashtag.
By using Brandwatch Analytics to optimize their activity, DDB was able to record almost 875,000 individual interactions relatingto the campaign.
This demonstrates the use of creativity on social media platforms with the support of big data and how it can revolutionize the way companies markets and engage their product/service to customers Vs. more traditional methods like TV advertising, which are highly costly and can have limited effects, as we are moving to an age where consumers, want to be part of the conversation and engage with the brands they purchase, less monologue more dialogue!!
Links:
https://studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-2790161-dt-content-rid-5195315_1/courses/IT382_2016/Game%20of%20Thrones%20Case%20Study%281%29.pdf
https://www.brandwatch.com/case-studies/?gclid=CMftsMeA8c8CFUWfGwod5UIIPA