#ForTheThrone

Leading up to its final season, the whole world wanted to be a part of the biggest show on television. But in Game of Thrones, there are no easy paths to the throne. So we asked the world one question, “How far would you go #ForTheThrone?”

The result turned a tune-in campaign into an open-source brief, one that changed the currency of licensing deals from dollars to devotion. While typically brands continue to lower the bar for consumer engagement, we raised it to a level that expected as much from our fans as they expect of the show.

Would you kill your hero #ForTheThrone?

“When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.” During the show’s yearlong hiatus, a new hero rose to power—the Bud Knight. So, along with HBO, we forged an alliance with Bud Light and their partner agency Wieden+Kennedy to publicly execute him on one of the world’s biggest stages.

Would you spill your blood #ForTheThrone?

When extreme winter weather caused an emergency blood shortage for the American Red Cross, a show known for its bloodshed rallied the world’s most diehard fans to prove their devotion to the show–by bleeding for it. Anyone who donated blood for the throne had the chance to win the ultimate prize—to watch the season eight premiere ahead of the worldwide release.

Would you travel to the ends of the Earth #ForTheThrone?

In the show, the characters sacrificed everything to sit on the Iron Throne. But in the real world, fans have had it far too easy. So we changed that by dropping six hidden thrones around the world challenging fans to find them using only 360-degree videos and a few cryptic clues: time of day, geography, weather, nature sounds and carefully planted Easter eggs.

30,000 fans from 98 countries travelled a total of 4,800,000 km to make their claim to stake their claim.

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Would you change your name #ForTheThrone?

For their April 9th game against the Toronto Raptors, the Minnesota Timberwolves accepted our challenge and proved their devotion by becoming the Minnesota Direwolves.

Would you adopt a fictional language #ForTheThrone?

Nationwide burger chain Shake Shack created the Dragonglass Shake and Dracarys Burger for Game of Thrones fans. However, to elevate it above a standard licensing deal, the only way customers could receive them was if they ordered in Valyrian. To help them with this, we teamed up with Game of Thrones linguist and creator of the language, David J. Peterson.

Would you sacrifice your branding #ForTheThrone?

Product licensing deals are synonymous with overt branding, so when we challenged Mountain Dew to strip themselves of theirs to become “a can with no name”, they proved their true devotion #ForTheThrone.