THE WORLD OF WESTEROS
There are fans, and there are superfans: people whose lives have been transformed by a cultural phenomenon — a brand’s most valuable advocates. Superfans were our audience for Game of Thrones: The Exhibition, which PBJS helped tour internationally for HBO across eight major cities from London to Tel Aviv. The experience brought 18 airplanes’ worth of costumes, weapons, and other objects as-used in the series into a shareable environment where the stakes, true to superfan standards, were total authenticity or else. Media coverage included The Guardian, Forbes, and Entertainment Weekly as well as a featured story in Event Marketer. PBJS handled the creative development and all executional aspects of the tour.
Project: Game of Thrones: The Exhibition
Client: HBO, Game of Thrones
Agency | Team | Roles:
PBJS Seattle (+ Publicis London + Poke London)
Larissa McCartney, Senior Art Director
Lulu Almazan, Senior Art Director
Eric Shaner, Art Director
Hailey Merrill, Design Intern
Mike Standish, Creative Director
Aaron Pitts, Design Director
Peter Gaucys, ECD
Role: Concepts, Design
Experiential Concepts
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Experiential Concept: Arya’s Training Chamber. Individual pods that allow exhibit visitors partake in a number of spacial, reaction, hearing challenges under full darkness. A scoreboard for individual user times would be included at the exit.
Experiential Concept: Declare Your Loyalty, House Kiosk. At the beginning of the experience, the concept was to have the audience declare their loyalty to one house. Then upon entering and throughout the experience, activations, push messages, secret clues would be given based on your location within the exhibit and your declared loyalty.
Experiential Concept: Game of Thrones themed hotel stays for top Influencers and super fans.
Experiential Concept: Raven Cameras. Throughout the entire footprint of the exhibit, we suggested a number of ravens who would catch video of interactions and feed individual push messages to the fans as they walk by, triggered by RFDI.
Experiential Concept: Interactive Photo+Video Booths. We ideated a number of different variations, pulling scenes from the previous seasons, from the Death Scene with Prince Oberyn and The Mountain, to the falling through the Moon Door, being burnt by a Dragon, turned by a White Walker, or stabbed with a sword.
Influencer Announcements: Promotional event boxes were to be sent out to super fans prior to the exhibition arriving in their city. The boxes would include a series of miniature props, clues and VIP or early access to the exhibit.
Exhibit & Experiential Designs
Along with props and costumes from the set, there were a ton of interactive photo opportunities and elements from our initial ideation phases that made it into the exhibit. Loyalty was declared via tablets (not kiosks) at the beginning, exhibition details were customized based on individual pledges, and many opportunities to share the exhibit socially were scattered throughout. There even was an Oculus Rift experience that gave users the feeling of ascending the Wall via the elevator at Castle Black.
