Sky/Game of Thrones: How to do an Social Media Enhanced Exhibit in Three Easy Steps

Last week, I went to the Game of Thrones exhibition in London at the O2.  

Put on by Sky for fans of the show, it contained props and costumes from the series, as well as interactive exhibits, such as a VR experience to climb the Wall.  Ostensibly, it was a reward for subscribers to Sky and to create a positive ‘buzz’ around the new series.  As someone who went, it was great: we got to geek out over banners from the show, heft a giant great sword , play with some interactive exhibits and have an interesting evening. 

I overheard people in the crowd asking why Sky had done it.  Now the O2 isn’t cheap to hire, advertising the exhibition would not have been low cost, there were a large number of staff involved, and Sky didn’t even charge for the tickets. 

So why did they do it?   

Well, much as I’m sure Sky would like to be seen as philanthropic and value driven, it was less to do with creating a reward for loyal customers, and everything to do with some very clever social and viral marketing. 

The key things they did were:

1. Create high level of prestige for visits
2. Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors
3. Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

So how did they do this?

1.  High Prestige for Visits

First off, they offered limited numbers of tickets.  Restriction in supply often leads to a higher perceived value on your basic supply and demand.  This came with a specific and publicised date for booking in the same way as high demand/high cost events such as concerts, creating a mental association of high cost.  And the process of having to struggle to get a ticket automatically makes it more valuable – the endorphins of competition definitely play a role!   

Timed visits also meant that the exhibition was never empty, and there were always queues outside as you waited for a time slot, again re-emphasising the value of the visit and seeming wanted.  You never had quiet patches.

Venue-wise, the exhibition was staged in the O2, a high reputation venue which hosts expensive shows, again priming that perception.  It didn’t need to be there as the exhibition was actually fairly small comparatively and in a side suite of rooms rather than in one of the halls, but the expectation was impressive.

2.  Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors

When you arrived at the venue, you needed to queue.  Our slot was at 8pm, but we didn’t go in for a while.  Whilst queuing, a staff member came up and got you to register on a website on their iPad.  This gave you a unique code to use in the exhibition, and a login to a unique page just for you that had audio guides and information on some of the exhibits.   

Now it's worth noting that not only did you have to register your details, but you had to choose a faction from the story during the process, automatically creating an involvement in the exhibition.  The feeling of being special was enhanced further by having an 'in character' message from the head of your faction on your personalised page, thanking you for your loyalty.  

Each time you accessed your page during the exhibition, your name was shown with a welcome message, as well as your faction allegiance. 

3.       Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

The set-up of the exhibition very much encouraged sharing.  To start with, visitors were all carrying their smartphones already to look at the information on the exhibits as per the registration mentioned above.  So they were looking at something they find interesting, with a smartphone in their hand, with the camera pointed in the right direction.  Pretty cunning!

There were deliberate set up photo opportunities as well – for example there was a statue of one of the antagonists with a sign/call to action “have a selfie with a White Walker”: less people would have done it without instruction, but I bet it was one of the most shared sets of photos on social media once the idea was planted.  

Additionally, Sky must have done a lot of market research to work out what the key ‘triggers’ were for their customers that would make them want to post about their experience, and then designed interactive experiences that could be shared in different formats. 

There were three main ones that stuck out:

• Video: Get flamed by dragon fire – this was a 4 second video against green screen where you could be ‘flamed’ by a dragon with directions and taken by the staff there on professional cameras. 
• Images: Get made into a ‘white walker’ – they took a couple of professional photos of you in front of a green screen, and then transformed them into one of the series antagonists using basic photoshop.
• Own photo share: Photo on the key prop (‘The Iron Throne’) – there was a replica of the Iron Throne by the exit with good lighting available for own photos, and you had to queue past it to get out.  This was guaranteed to work as a lot of the print advertising was various actors from the series sitting on the throne with a caption on who would own it: pretty much anyone who went would have wanted a photo on it.

Options 1 and 2 were not simple: they needed trained staff to run the cameras and sets, and they had a number of audio-visual professionals behind the scenes doing the editing work in near real time, as the output appeared within 5 minutes.  However, these were some of the most popular exhibits with a minimum of a 10 minute wait on all of them.

This meant you saw the videos/images whilst you were still in the exhibition surrounded by the excitement and positive vibes created by the high prestige feelings.  Not only that, but they were uploaded onto your personal page from the registration with ‘share’ options.  This means the organisers could (and will) monitor social media, so can track exactly how many shares were put forward and on what format.   Remember there was a chunk of queuing at a number of places (which must have been calculated as they had time slots), so a lot of people had their phones in hand from earlier, and therefore shared the videos and photos whilst waiting out of partial boredom. 

Did it work?

My photo on the Iron Throne.

Had to be done, and yes,

it was shared on Facebook

So we have an exhibition which created feelings of being special within the audience, gave feelings of belonging to an select group, and offered high value social media content (which they could track), whilst making people wait around with their phones in hand. 

I'd say an unequivocal yes.  Despite the costs involved in the exhibition, their return on investment in terms of social advertising must have been enormous.  

Someone should definitely buy their marketing department a box of doughnuts!