Winter has come, that is, the 7th season of The Game of Thrones in the media

Winter has come, that is, the 7th season of The Game of Thrones in the media

So far, the series has won more than 60 awards, including Golden Globe and Emmy, and TIME magazine has hailed it the most popular television show in the world. Game of Thrones won the hearts of viewers also in Poland. “PRESS-SERVICE Media Monitoring” agency has followed the media hype around the 7th season of HBO production.

“Game of Thrones” is an adaptation of the best-selling fantasy saga “The song of ice and fire” by George R.R. Martin which was adapted for cinema for the first time 6 years ago, in April 2011. The series became very popular in no time attracting a large audience and almost immediately became a cult classic. It’s hard to say whether this is due to intricate and often shocking story line, fascinating characters, evocative combination of politics, magic and romance, or dialogues the fragments of which have permanently entered the canon of world pop culture.

Fig. 1 Source: Kwejk.pl

Fig. 2 Source: Filmixer.pl

Fig. 3 Source: besty.pl

Fig. 4 Source: besty.pl

With each season, HBO’s series is becoming more and more popular. The channel claims that each episode of season 6 was viewed by an average of 25.1 million people (including ground and digital receivers, as well as HBO On Demand users and HBO GO/HBO NOW), it’s more or less as many as there are all residents of Mozambique.

In “Game of Thrones”, as in the media, you either win or die

Analysts from “PRESS-SERVICE Media Monitoring” decided to take a look at recent publications that relate to the latest season of the series to see how big a hype the premiere of the seventh season has sparked in the media. They looked into the period from Monday, March 26 (the first trailer – a sneak peek of the new season appeared on 30th March) until July 17, that is, the day of the release of the first episode.

Within three and a half months, all the covered media (newspapers, radio/TV, Internet and social media) published a total of 75 167 materials.

Websites mentioned “Game of Thrones” 5 592 times. The series enjoyed far less interest over the period in the press which devoted only 256 publications on the subject. Radio and television broadcast about 36 mentions less.

Infographic 1. Amount of information in the media in the period from 30th March to 17th July

The birds are singing …

The new season of HBO series was most often mentioned in social media, where from March 26 to July 17, there appeared almost 70 000 entries and interactions. Polish Internet users were the most active in Facebook (32 925 mentions). Twitter users lost with users of YouTube which in terms of the number of publications (29 416) almost caught up with Zuckerberg’s portal.

Among hashtags, the #GameofThrones was the most popular as it appeared 10 725 times! Interestingly, the hashtag dedicated to season 7: #WinterIsHere was used only in 4 119 mentions.

“Game of Thrones” is certainly a phenomenon which attracts not only the hungry viewers, but customer-thirsty brands. Some brands quite cleverly use the series for their own purposes and advertising agencies willingly draw from GoT’s well. KFC is a good example of this practice, in its latest campaign, it has pursued a very distinctive image of one of the characters.

HBO could not be worse. The premiere of each subsequent season is always preceded by a unique campaign. In 2013, its main characters were … dragons.

Photo 1. Source: Adweek

Photo 2. Source: Adweek

In 2015, under the campaign to promote season 5, HBO together with Uber had the idea of #RideofThrones. Each application user could order a car with a glass trailer with “the Iron Throne” waiting for a passenger to take a selfie.

Phot. 3. Source: Adweek

Last year, HBO referred to presidential elections in the US by creating the “THE GOT PARTY” (www.thegotparty.com) campaign where several characters of the episodic saga acted as candidates – contenders for the title throne.

In 2017, the White Walkers are the theme – the anthropoid undead that the residents of the North … and London are so afraid of. To promote the new season, White Walkers strolled the streets of the capital of the UK.

Each release of the new season of the “Game of Thrones” is accompanied by strong emotions and thus a sizable media hype. The Internet is full of theories about the plot and speculations about the fate of the characters. The traditional media also do not shy away from the subject. Game of Thrones is probably HBO’s biggest success. Unfortunately, not for long, the channel reported that season 7 is next-to-last part of the series.

Contact person:

Katarzyna Popławska
Head of marketing and PR
mobile: +48 697 410 680
phone +48 61 66 26 005 wew. 128
kpoplawska@psmm.pl

PRESS-SERVICE Monitoring Mediów
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