Spotlight of the Week: Game of Thrones

Even though Game of Thrones premiered back in July, its season 7 premiere date of Dragonstone deserves recognition for bringing in 10.1 million viewers according to Nielsen. This made this most highly watched episode for the series at the time. HBO was able to gain such traction and audience viewership through seeking involvement from the Game of Thrones community on many different social media platforms.

On Twitter, GoT started a #PrepareForWinter campaign to engage their audience by asking members of the Twitterverse to tweet how they would prepare for the coming winter. Along with this hashtag campaign, GoT also released a special Snapchat filter to go along with the theme that Winter is Here. For this Snapchat filter, people could either turn their faces into a White Walker or turn the camera around and thrown dragon glass at White Walkers to kill them. Both of these marketing strategies helped HBO in building viewership by creating a community among viewers. These allowed for viewers to interact with the show along with spreading the word about the show through their own personal social media accounts. Having people send snapchats or tweets out about the show pushes other people to see what all the hype is about.

Along with these marketing efforts, GoT also employed social media tools like Facebook Live and YouTube for the promotion of media. For the revealing of the premiere date, GoT had a Facebook Live video in which fans could watch a block of ice melt with the premiere date inside the ice. While watching the live stream, viewers could comment the word "fire" to throw flames at the ice. This live stream attracted 3.7 million users. This provides another example of the power of generating a community in social media. GoT also created a YouTube page designed to allow fans to go behind the scenes and watch promos for the new season. Having extra behind the scenes videos made keeps the audience engaged with the show while its in its off season.

Game of Thrones went beyond the traditional form of advertising for television. They did not only focus on the creation of television promos for the new season but built up an entire social media platform aimed at creating excitement and buzz about the new season. Through their marketing efforts, they were able to supersede all past viewing records for the show and build up their audience base.