Hotstar tackles illegal downloading of Game of Thrones S7 via clever marketing campaign
The campaign takes Torrents head on with four TVCs, an outdoor campaign in key cities, and high impact digital activation
Hotstar, one of India’s leading video-on-demand platforms and the exclusive online destination for award-winning HBO content in India, launched the highly anticipated premiere of Game of Thrones Season 7 on Monday, 17 July. The first episode of the new season was available for audiences to view within minutes of its US telecast, under the Hotstar Premium service.
Game of Thrones is the world’s most avidly watched and anticipated show, with immense excitement and conjecture preceding every season premiere. Unfortunately, it is also the most illegally downloaded show in the world, despite the content being legally distributed globally, by its creators.
Taking a humorous lens to this, Hotstar has launched a bold marketing campaign, intended to upend the behaviour of illegal downloading. Titled ‘Torrents Morghulis’, a play on ‘Valar Morghulis’, as fans of the show will instantly recognise, the theme translates to ‘All Torrents Must Die’. The campaign light-heartedly highlights the trouble people put themselves through for finding and downloading illegal content, and how redundant these pains are in the current day and age where shows are readily available, at the user’s fingertips.
Leading with the promise of ‘Minutes after America, hours before Russia’, the campaign takes Torrents head on with four TV commercials, an outdoor campaign in key cities, and high impact digital activation. The films features two characters, one, who still labours through the process of procuring his content illegally, and another, who has got a Hotstar Premium subscription and is able to enjoy the Game of Thrones experience the way it is meant to be – available to watch with the world, ad-free, unbeeped and unblurred.
Based on George R.R. Martin's bestselling 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series, Game of Thrones has run for six extremely acclaimed seasons and holds the record for the highest Emmy wins for any primetime TV show. Viewers can watch Game of Thrones Season 7 immediately after the US telecast, Monday 17th July onwards, on Hotstar: http://www.hotstar.com/tv/game-of-thrones/8184
