'Game of Thrones' social media team: 'We basically manipulated you'

AUSTIN, Texas — You can't fault HBO for getting a little cocky about Game of Thrones. With more than 6 million viewers per episode, the show is a legitimate, bona fide hit — the largest for the premium network since the genre-changing Sopranos. Perhaps more importantly, it boasts an unparalleled level of social media buzz, an online Beatlemania that not even Tony Soprano could whack.

But what does it do in the off-season, that long dark break between seasons when winter has finally come? Well, it turns out that's when HBO gets extra cocky about Game of Thrones — not only because the show recently garnered more online chatter than the Apple Watch, but also thanks to a Snapchat-like promotion wherein GoT deliberately set out to both tease and irk its fandom. 

We learned as much at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin this week, when a panel promising nothing more than HBO's social media team for the show packed the Four Seasons' largest ballroom, and had a line snaking around the block like a Red Viper. 

The panel didn't disappoint — and that's largely thanks to Melissa Eccles, creative director of Elastic, the company HBO hired to make an online splash in the off-season. Eccles largely outshone HBO's own social media director Jim Marsh.

The unusually candid, always entertaining Eccles spent the bulk of the panel boasting about the five-second "visions" of Game of Thrones' upcoming Season 5, which were distributed via various digital methods earlier this year.

"We basically manipulated you guys," she said. "It was super fun. I have a mean streak in me; I couldn’t help it."

The visions Eccles spoke about were unveiled in December, when tweets and inscrutable 10-second video teasers directed fans to sign up at a site called ThreeEyedRaven.com. In the show, the characters Bran Stark and Jojen Reed are among the inhabitants of Westeros who are able to see dream-like blends of past and future, a state of mind often introduced by a three-eyed raven.

But the 1.3 million fans who signed up at the raven website had no idea what they were getting. The first Season 5 trailer, maybe? Instead, Eccles' team decided to send out a varying list of baffling short videos that contained what she admitted were "some old shots mixed with new shots."

The videos were sent via text message and vanished, Snapchat-like, 90 seconds after people viewed them — designed to be much the way the GoT characters would experience such foresight, because you "can't pause a dream". In addition, they were mobile-only because Elastic judged that the "most intimate" medium available.

'People were pissed'

"We weaponized time," Eccles said. "We took away the one thing you want, which is the ability to watch it again. Rarely do we get the opportunity to piss our audience off like this. We knew people were going to be pretty angry, but it’s the best angry you can have. They were frustrated; they were manipulated; they wanted you to do it again."

A total of 3 million fans attempted to watch the first vision within 24 hours — but untold numbers of them, unaware of the 90-second burn rule, clicked on the link too late.

"Honestly, we wanted everyone to feel just a little bit violated," Eccles said, adding that the resulting social media backlash was exactly what she was looking for. "Man, people were pissed."

By the time the second vision arrived, error rates had decreased dramatically as "people learned the rules of engagement." But it took them a while longer, in Game of Thrones forums, to figure out they were all being sent different visions, and to start comparing and contrasting them.

The only way you can run such a campaign, Eccles said, is to be a fan yourself, and to figure out what kind of thing would "push you over the emotional tipping point." Her team kept track of the emotional sentiment in social responses, many of which tended toward "aggression, anger and sarcasm."

Which, of course, was exactly the point.

For the final vision, Elastic offered fans more of what they were actually expecting: two scenes from the forthcoming season, one starring Jon Snow (Kit Harrington) and Mance Rayder (Ciran Hands), and the other centering on Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). The visions later found their way to YouTube:

So is this the future of marketing: Maintain the digital conversation in the off-season by riling your fans up? Teasing them with baffling promotions until they reach the "emotional tipping point?" Certainly, the network behind Game of Thrones judges the whole three-eyed raven promotion a success.

"People express a lot of hate, but it just means they love the show more," said HBO's Jim Marsh.