Giant Spoon Wins Cannes Lions Gold for HBO's House of Dragons

L-R, Giant Spoon team: Allie Segel, Victoria Sobel, Michael Hagos, vice president, HBO/Max brand creative, Monica Herman, Dani Skollar, Ian Grody

Full-service creative agency Giant Spoon snagged a Gold Media Lion: Large-Scale Media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for their city-stopping work for HBO’s award-winning series House of the Dragon. The awards show, saw 10 members of the Giant Spoon team accept the coveted trophy on behalf of the agency.

The integrated campaign 'Raise Your Banners' saw the globe - from iconic cultural landmarks to local institutions - become outdoor media canvases, as the war in Westeros between Team Green and Team Black spilled into real life.

In June 2024, leading up to the House of the Dragon season two premiere, Giant Spoon created global division across pop culture, inciting fans to choose a side and 'Raise Your Banners' for the show’s warring factions. The campaign led with social posts featuring hyper-realistic, CGI banners on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, declaring them for #TeamBlack and #TeamGreen. As the comment sections set ablaze thanks to the confounding realism and debates over sides, the agency unfurled more CGI - and some real - banners at iconic landmarks across 20+ countries, including the Eiffel Tower, Sugarloaf Mountain, Brisbane Story Bridge, Al Ula National Monument, and the New York Stock Exchange.

A week proceeded where New York City - thanks to local business partnerships, custom merch and banners - became a green and black checkerboard akin to real-life cultural rivalries. On premiere day, the campaign capped with an epic escalation: a rendition of a 270’ Vhagar, one of the show’s beloved dragons, laid claim to one of the world’s most famous institutions, the Empire State Building. 'Raise Your Banners' demonstrated that innovation in OOH, experiential, and cultural impact is not solely driven by a stunt, but a highly orchestrated, deliberately sequenced mixed integrated campaign that turned everything into media.