The Campaign

To promote the season premiere of Game of Thrones on SKY TV cable channel SoHo, we wanted to demonstrate we were just as fanatical about good programming as the fans who watch it. We knew anticipation globally would be huge, but we needed to ensure SoHo was part of conversation - we needed a local campaign that leveraged support from the global audience. The plan? Give fans the one thing they all wanted - the chance to bring down the evil King Joffrey.

Success of the Campaign

#bringdowntheking trended on twitter from the moment the campaign started until the day after it went down, at many points the top trending topic. Tweets came from over 130 countries, including Antarctica, El Salvador and Iraq. Our branded website was the most viewed live stream in New Zealand and Australian history. Total campaign reach was 66 million, with 875,000 direct interactions, as well as thousands of photos and videos posted to Instagram, Tumblr and Youtube. In the four days leading up to the international premiere, one in every twenty conversations about Game of Thrones worldwide was in reference to our campaign. Importantly for our client though, New Zealanders were the most engaged throughout the campaign, tweeting at a higher rate than anyone else. And this showed in the premiere’s ratings – gaining an audience 20% higher than last season’s premiere.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Five days before the premiere, we erected a seven metre statue of King Joffrey in Auckland’s largest public square. We then invited fans worldwide to topple the statue, via a winch with a rope that that was activated every time the hashtag #bringdowntheking was used on Twitter. To gain immediate awareness, we engaged the hosts of the country’s top-rating radio station to launch the campaign, before securing local and international media coverage to spread the word further. Die-hard GoT fans were engaged via proactive seeding on fansites. Street stenciling from the show’s rival Houses of Westeros, as well as stenciling over our own branded billboards and busbacks with #bringdowntheking further raised awareness. Fans could monitor the progress of the King’s demise via a constant live stream at our dedicated website bringdowntheking.com or visit the statue in person, which thousands did to watch the statue fall, all with no official warning.