Let's be real: Game of Thrones marketing is kind of genius. These are the hype wizards who have, you'll remember, not only brought White Walkers to London but coerced more than 3 million people to watch a block of ice melt for 70 minutes. But as HBO's much-binged fantasy epic comes to a close, so too do all the opportunities to glom on to the fanfare, leading marketers to set their store of wildfire alight, covering the internet in a blaze of trailers, posters, brand partnerships, and "activations" that can make it seem as though winter is coming everywhere.

The marketing budget for this season of Game of Thrones, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, is about $20 million, and frankly, it shows. Most television programs do not get Budweiser Super Bowl commercial money—and the marketing for Thrones is going far beyond TV spots. This time around there are sneakers, albums featuring guest spots by A$AP Rocky, and even a South by Southwest "experience" where fans were asked to literally bleed for a glimpse at Westeros.

This is to be expected. Game of Thrones has always been exceptional, a show with an outsized place in American cultural consciousness, but what that level of fandom apparently means to marketers on and off HBO's payroll has been astounding. For the past few weeks, Game of Thrones hasn't been a TV show—it's been an emblem of automatic newsworthiness and saleability.

In business circles, the success or failure of these activations will likely be judged by dollars earned, or by a more nebulous metric like engagement. But that's not how we'll be judging them here. Instead, the measure is how hard it would be to explain to an alien (or, you know, somebody who hasn't watched Game of Thrones) what the heck this product or event has to do with a show about monarchy and dragons.

Among the best were HBO's various #FortheThrone stunts. That SXSW event—actually an American Red Cross blood drive—was dubbed Bleed for the Throne, and it drained fans far beyond Austin. Create for the Throne is a collection of artist reimaginings of 18 of the show's most iconic props, and the results are beautifully nerdy. Quest for the Throne was a worldwide scavenger hunt for six hidden Iron Thrones. The prize? A crown and bragging rights.

To be clear, just because a lot of these stunts sound over the top doesn't mean people aren't clamoring for them. As soon as the Quest for the Throne started, New York–based Game of Thrones superfan Natasha Speth found her Instagram flooded with news of the hunt. "There had to be one in New York, I just felt it," Speth says. She was right. A throne appeared at the Fort Totten Torpedo Battery. Speth texted her "fellow nerds," dressed herself resplendently as Sansa Stark, and set off to Queens. "I gotta do stuff that makes me happy," Speth says. "So I waited in line for four and a half hours on a Saturday morning. It would have been a huge missed opportunity not to sit on the Iron Throne cosplaying as Sansa."