Fan-Fueled Content

Last night I watched the season finale of Game of Thrones.  There’s no question that HBO has found the secret recipe for great storytelling.  And, yes, there is definitely some blood, sex and violence in that recipe, but it’s more than that.  Sometimes, it’s immersing a show in a web of historical anecdotes, as they did with Boardwalk Empire, sometimes, as in the case of Game of Thrones, it’s about withholding just enough information to keep you coming back for more.

But, what really got me excited yesterday, was stumbling upon the Inn At The Crossroads blog, via Jason Kottke. It’s a blog dedicated to recreating the dishes written about in George R.R. Martin’s, Song of Ice and Fire series from which Game of Thrones was based on.

This kind of fan created content sums up the creative beauty and potential that the web has to offer.  In this case, taking excerpts from the book, recreating the recipes from these passages to painstaking levels of detail and then sharing the experience with other quasi-medieval foodies.  It’s amazing.

When brands (and their agencies) figure out how to inspire and grow this sort of fan activity, organically, then we’ll have arrived.