If you’ve been around Aotea Square and/or are a Game of Thrones fan you are likely to have seen or known about the Bring down the King event SkyTV have been holding in Aotea Square. If you haven’t heard about it there are details here.
He is a difficult character to like, but now Game of Thrones fans have the opportunity to topple King Joffrey.
Ahead of the television series’ fourth season, audiences across the world can help bring down a seven meter statue of the character that has been errected in Auckland’s Aotea Square.
The statue of King Joffrey is expected to fall in five days.
Fans are tasked with harnessing power of social media to topple the king, using the Twitter hashtag #bringdowntheking.
A rope will be positioned around the King’s neck, and every tweet will bring the statue closer to toppling.
By now you might be wondering why I’m even bringing this up. The reason is because of just how successful it was in stoking public interest and activating Aotea Square. As the time drew closer for the statue to topple down. I was on my way to a meeting at 5pm so couldn’t stop to watch but I did take this quick photo showing a few hundred people standing around watching it. I suspect that number grew as people left work too.
It’s great that something so simple can help to make the city more interesting and liveable place. Good work Sky TV.
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There is a public company with venues all around the square and they never manage to engage with the public as much as this advertising stunt. It’s called the edge.
Yes, SKY’s marketing arm is quite impressive. I was just thinking how well they did to get Stuff to basically print a press release / advert disguised as a news item, presumably without paying for it, now they’ve even got this blog to do it too!
Ha, if companies do stunts that help to bring life to the city then in happy to celebrate that
I hope you haven’t timed this to coincide with another event happening at the minute. Would be quite a Green thing to do….
If your referring to the royal visit then I couldn’t care less but no this isn’t anything to do with that (although the irony in timing isn’t lost on me). Id more interested in just got much public engagement it attracted.
Maybe William was referring to this other event, since this group’s activities are are one of the community initiatives model that Sky’s marketing people have “borrowed”.
Ooops… forgot to include the link
http://www.gapfiller.org.nz/the-creative-deconstruction-of-the-pallet-pavilion-april-7-start/
Looks neat, would be happy for a guest post on how it goes.
What a drab place place Aotea Square is. The place needs a bulldozer not a Saddam Hussein style statue toppling. But anyway, happy texting.
There’s an interesting article in this month’s Metro about the various competing ideas for the waterfront. As an aside they mention that Aotea Square was redeveloped to be the hub for the Rugby World Cup activities… …then “party central” was switched to Queen’s Wharf at the last minute. The suggestion was that if they had known at the time they wouldn’t have to accomodate the World Cup crowds, they might have developed the space differently. When there are no events happening, it really is a vast open space.
I understood that the site was designed to be retained as the major center for civic demonstrations (e.g. protests) which is why is was left relatively uncluttered. The upgrade is definitely a major improvement to what existed prior, the main issue seems to be activation of the edge. Dire developments like the Aotea itself, and Bledisloe House and the Civic Administration Building didn’t help the potential of the space much either.