When HBO began planning for the final season of Game of Thrones (GoT), OREO saw an amazing opportunity for both brands.

OREO and GoT are cultural juggernauts. Both of these brands are incredibly powerful forces in popular culture, and we knew we could make magic happen by bringing them together. But our most important mandate was to find a way of bringing together these two very different brands in a way that felt authentic to both.

Influencers such as Saturday Night Live (SNL) star and GoT superfan Leslie Jones went wild for the collaboration, and outlets including SNL, Good Morning America, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Business Insider and Fast Company gave overwhelmingly positive coverage, which included detailed product descriptions, video content and clever OREO-fied twists on popular show quotes.

Craft + culture + rabid OREO cookie fans + rabid GoT fans = a once-in-a-lifetime collaborated product and film.

Each component of the OREO x GoT campaign was designed to highlight the most iconic elements of the two brands and combine them in a compelling and true-to-brand way. First, we had the idea for a limited-edition product, with first-of-its kind packaging and custom-designed OREO cookies.

When it came to promoting the pack, we reimagined the show’s opening credits sequence, one of the most iconic elements of the show. The sequence itself has won an Emmy Award, and has been named to many lists of best opening credits in television history. By recreating the credits out of OREOs in painstaking detail, we were able to fuse the brands seamlessly and authentically.

The campaign is all about taking the most beloved, iconic elements from two already beloved and iconic brands, and presenting them together in a fresh and exciting way. The film and pack design are the embodiments of that sentiment.

Our strategy was to infuse the playfulness of OREO into the “epic-ness” of GoT to energize and capture both brands’ passionate fanbases. While both GoT and OREO are iconic brands, the two have very little in common on the surface. One is a dark and complex show filled with death, sex, war and revenge, while the other is a cookie, nostalgically popular in American culture for bringing people together with a twist, lick and dunk. We played with the tension between the two brands to create a product and animated film that is both unmistakably OREO and unmistakably Game of Thrones.

We knew the importance of authenticity in resonating with true fans, and chose to partner with the creators of the original GoT credits sequence to make sure we paid homage to the “real deal.” Every creative decision was made to stay true to the show’s original opening sequence.

We created a limited-edition OREO pack and cookie design, then recreated the show’s iconic credits entirely out of OREO cookies to promote the new packs.

The animation was created in CG in a stop-motion style. We created a 3D model of the OREO Cookie and used it to build a CG world that felt real, as if viewers could truly explore a Winterfell made of cookies and creme. We used almost 3,000 OREO cookies in total.

The film ran across social platforms and a broadcast version ran on CBS during the NCAA College Basketball Final Four, a massive viewing tentpole in American culture. On social, the film spearheaded a campaign where the brand asked fans to ‘Pledge For the Throne,’ by pledging fealty to one of the remaining contending house’s sigils.

The video earned 61.7MM impressions across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with 27% of impressions coming from organic sources. It also garnered 1.7MM engagements, with 90% occurring organically. Fan sentiment in comments across all platforms was extremely positive, and even dozens of organic fan videos emerged on YouTube celebrating and reviewing the packs.

We garnered 2,000+ press placements, with a cumulative 341MM impressions (unique viewers per day).

Most importantly, the product sold. We had 3.8MM packages ready for sale the day after the video launched. In the first week, sales of GoT OREO outsold all other OREO products, including original OREO – the first time a limited edition has outsold the core product. Sales also outperformed the first week of all other past OREO limited-edition releases in the last five years. Total brand sales were up 30%, with over 40% due to GoT OREO sales.