| Title | BRING DOWN THE KING |
| Brand | SKY TELEVISION |
| Product / Service | GAME OF THRONES SEASON 4 LAUNCH |
| Category | B04. Consumer Services |
| Entrant | DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND |
| Entrant Company | DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND |
| Advertising Agency | DDB GROUP NEW ZEALAND Auckland, NEW ZEALAND |
| Production Company | FINCH Auckland, NEW ZEALAND |
| Name | Company | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Shane Bradnick | DDB Group New Zealand | Executive Creative Director |
| Chris Schofield | DDB Group New Zealand | Creative Director |
| Haydn Kerr | DDB Group New Zealand | Digital Creative Director |
| Rory Mckechnie | DDB Group New Zealand | Creative |
| Adam Thompson | DDB Group New Zealand | Art Director |
| James Blair | DDB Group New Zealand | Senior Account Director |
| Georgia Newton | DDB Group New Zealand | Account Manager |
| Tania Jeram | DDB Group New Zealand | Agency Producer |
| Judy Thompson | DDB Group New Zealand | Executive Agency Producer |
| Paul Pritchard | DDB Group New Zealand | Digital Director |
| Liz Knox | DDB Group New Zealand | Digital Executive Producer |
| Sam Schrey | DDB Group New Zealand | Senior Digital Designer |
| Cameron Crosby | DDB Group New Zealand | Lead Developer |
| Cain Coulton | DDB Group New Zealand | Developer |
| Sean Brown | DDB Group New Zealand/Mango | Senior Account Director |
| Eleisha Balmer | DDB Group New Zealand/Mango | Senior Account Manager |
| Jason Vertongen | DDB Group New Zealand | Lead Designer |
| Jack Murphy | DDB Group New Zealand | Social Planner |
| Michiel Cox | DDB Group New Zealand | Digital Planner |
| Troy Goodall | IDC | Photographer |
| Rob Galluzzo | Finch | Executive Producer |
| Michael Hilliard | Finch | Executive Producer |
| Camilla Dehnert | Finch | Producer |
| Bruce Everard | Finch | Production Designer |
To promote the 4th season of Game of Thrones on premium SKY TV cable channel SoHo, we wanted to demonstrate to existing and potential customers that we were just as fanatical about good programming as the fans who watched it.
Game of Thrones is a show people are seriously passionate about, and they’re seriously passionate about hating Joffrey. They were already talking online about the new season and how much they despised him, and by simply adding our hashtag they could help bring an end to the King who has caused the realm and viewers so much pain. They’d been itching for a chance to get revenge for 3 seasons, and we finally gave it to them - reinforcing our stance of being just as fanatical about good TV as fans are.
We knew there would be a social media frenzy around the premiere. To show this fanatical commitment, we wanted to make sure we were a major part of that conversation. So we gave fans the one thing they all wanted, the chance to bring down King Joffrey. We erected a 7m statue of the King in NZ’s largest public square, then invited fans worldwide to bring him down via a winch that was activated every time the hashtag #bringdowntheking was used on Twitter. They could watch progress via our website, which streamed the event for the whole 5 days.
#bringdowntheking trended on twitter from the moment the campaign started until the day after it went down. Ratings were 20% higher than the previous season’s premiere. Tweets came from 130 countries. Our website was the most viewed live stream in Australasian history. Total reach was 66 million, with 875,000 direct interactions, and thousands of photos and videos posted to Instagram, Tumblr and Youtube. One in every 500 kiwis tweeted about the campaign, and leading up to the international premiere, one in every twenty conversations about Game of Thrones worldwide was in reference to our campaign and in turn, SKY.