HBO Asia's House of the Dragon roars to life in SEA marketing blitz

The dragons have roared back to life in HBO Asia's latest OOH activations across Southeast Asia to promote the House of the Dragon series, a prequel to Game of Thrones. The activations are carried out in seven markets including Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia and is understood to be HBO Asia's "biggest regional marketing investment to date" with more than 20 partners on board, including SM Mall of Asia in the Philippines, SecretLab, and Grab.

A pop-up experience done together with SM Mall of Asia is currently running nationwide until 7 November. The iconic globe outside SM Mall of Asia has also been lit up with the House of the Dragon logo. The partnership with Grab in Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand offers consumers a one-month and three-month HBO GO subscription via GrabRewards, while SecretLab specially produced House of the Dragon chairs. HBO Asia also wanted fans to toast to the new series by creating collectible House of the Dragon wine together with Wolf Blass.

House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and tells the story of House Targaryen. Through this localised marketing blitz, HBO Asia wanted to develop breakthrough creative and immersive consumer experiences that spark conversation to fuel fandom across all consumer and partner touchpoints.

It also wanted to go beyond the Game of Thrones fanbase to acquire new and current fans of the franchise and drive subscriptions to the HBO GO platform. Hence, a full funnel 360-through the line marketing campaign was created covering TV, OOH, digital, social and experiential stunts to build anticipation and buzz in the market, spanning two months prior to season premiere.

In Malaysia, HBO Asia partnered with Astro to launch the Astro Westeros Shop on 20 August at Queensbay Mall in Penang. This is Astro’s first experience store in Malaysia and there are plans to open another one in Kuala Lumpur by end 2022. House of the Dragon was brought to life with the store takeover in tandem with the launch opening. According to HBO Asia, maximum exposure is achieved through include trailers across several 50-inch TV panels within the store, plus merchandise on offer with Movie Pack sign-ups, which was also promoted on the mall’s digital assets.

HBO Asia also placed dragons and eggs sightings in different Southeast Asia cities via 4D and 3D billboards as well as The Dragon Hatchery. The dragon sightings, for example, are available in Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila via the burning OOH activations. 

At the same time, the company is turning up the heat in Manila with a 3D dragon immersive experience at Robinson's Galleria, Robinson Forum and C5 URC Southbound. To celebrate the show's launch in Manila, HBO Asia went all out by revealing the skull of Balerion the Black Dread, which is also known in the show as the scariest dragon.

The immersive experience continues in Manila and Bangkok too via The Dragon Hatchery, with the Paseo underpass in Manila as well as the Sukhumvit and Phaholyothin MRT stations in Bangkok being covered in House of the Dragon branding.

In addition to stopping consumers in their tracks and turning heads, HBO Asia also stopped thumbs with its organic content and social media campaigns. This included a virtual dragon egg hunt which encouraged fans to search for 17 dragon eggs hidden across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

HBO Asia also created episodic bingo, a character map profile takeover as well as an influencer takeover with 120 individuals including @madkingorpheus from TikTok to drum up hype for the show. According to HBO Asia, the influencer takeovers garnered 25 million impressions on social media. Going a step further, the company also created a social AR lens and filter for House of the Dragon on Facebook and Instagram for fans to fulfill their "Dracarys" ambitions.

Aside from the social filter, a DracARys AR app was also created to allow fans to complete a series of activities, from thieving an egg from Westeros to hatching the egg and forging a bond with the dragon. Fans can now train their dragon AR style as they complete milestones on the app and watch the dragon grow.

Meanwhile in the US, HBO Max tied up with language learning platform Duolingo for an updated High Valyrian course, the fictional language spoken in the show, including over 150 new words and more than 700 new sentences. Duolingo worked directly with David Peterson, the linguist who developed the full High Valyrian language based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.

To promote the updated course, Duolingo rolled out an integrated marketing campaign teasing new phrases on cryptic billboards in major cities across the US, including an iconic space in Times Square. Meanwhile, the Duolingo mascot, Duo the Owl, also made its own ascent of the Iron Throne.

The mascot made an appearance at HBO Max’s immersive fan experience, “House of the Dragon: The Dragon’s Den”, at Comic-Con International: San Diego 2022, to remind attendees to complete their lessons with life-size push notifications and signs with dragon commands in High Valyrian. Duolingo is also gifting fans with “Wing of the King” pins to commemorate the updated course for House of the Dragon.

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