Inspired by iconic characters in Game of Thrones the idea was to hijack the wintery British weather and have a “White Walker”, in this case celebrated snow artist Simon Beck take on “The Mountain” aka The Alps to create the largest snow tribute to Game of Thrones on Earth. The art would serve as a “Stark” reminder to fans that Game of Thrones was back on Sky Atlantic from April 25th. Sky commissioned Beck who creates landscape art using footsteps alone to emblazon the Stark family sigil of a direwolf, alongside iconic show phrase “Winter is Coming” across an Alpine mountainside. Videos and photos of this 13hr, one man feat, would be captured on a drone and released to coincide with a British cold snap ahead.

We met Simon Beck with our drone team in the Alps in late January, over two days he drew the Direwolf sigil in footprints, using just a compass as his guide. We captured every step on camera. With footage shot and a video edit banked we drafted a news alert and started seeding out media packages containing video, images and interview content under embargo with key social buzz sites, Digital Spy, Mashable and The Lad Bible. Press Association were invited to interview Simon and created a multimedia feature package that could be released on wires under embargo. Working with the met office we set our release date for Monday 7th April and at 6am we pushed the news out through both internal and external communications channels.

The stunt drove 38.9 million opportunities to see in traditional media with 127 articles shared over 27,000 times. Sky Atlantic & Now TV YouTube channels clocked 483,487 views, 21 x their combined subscriber base, landing TX information without a penny of promotion. The TX was reinforced to 30.9 million people through earned press coverage. On Twitter, 3,100 posts drove 32 million impressions. News travelled from Thrones fans sites to mainstream media, it was more talked about on Mashable than a naked selfie of Kim Kardashian, it netted 4000 comments and 3 million views on Lad Bible, Radio 5 Live ranked it 3rd most talked about thing on social that week and it even got plugged on Saturday Night Takeaway. Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere was record breaking, 5.1 million tuned in to episode one, 1.3 million at 2am for the simulcast and 7.1 million downloaded previous seasons on boxsets.