Behind the build:
HBO's Snap Map AR activation

The brief

HBO came to us with a clear ask: build something that makes the dragon from House of the Dragon feel real, discoverable, and tied to specific places. Not a filter. Not a badge. A moment of genuine surprise when a user opens Snap Map in the right location and finds a dragon waiting for them.

The campaign needed to land at season premiere. The timeline was eight weeks from brief to live. Snap's review process for Map-pinned Lenses is not the same as for a standard filter. We needed to account for that, which shaped how we scoped the work.

Why Snap Map?

Most AR brand campaigns live in the Lens format: open the camera, point it at yourself or the world, see the effect. That's a reactive format. The user has to know to look for it.

Snap Map flips that. The user opens their map to see what's near them. If you've anchored an experience to their location, they discover it. They didn't search for it. The dragon finds them.

For a fantasy IP with a location-native narrative (dragons: physical, territorial, tied to place), this was the obvious fit. A Lens experience would have worked. A Snap Map experience could create a sense of territory, of the show's world bleeding into ours.

The technical challenge

World tracking at scale

The experience needed to place a dragon in the user's physical environment: on the street, in a park, in front of a landmark. World tracking on Snap in 2022 was solid indoors and in controlled environments. Outdoors, across diverse lighting conditions, different surfaces, and variable environments, it required more care.

We spent the first two weeks of the build testing tracking stability across conditions. The final experience used a combination of surface detection and fixed-scale anchoring to keep the dragon planted correctly regardless of environment.

The dragon asset

The 3D asset had to be production-quality but performant on mid-range devices. A cinematic dragon mesh at full polygon count would have caused performance drops on anything below a current-year iPhone. We worked with Snap's technical limits to optimize the rig without losing the scale and detail that made the experience feel real.

The dragon reacted to the user's position in real space. Moving closer triggered a threat response. Moving around it prompted head tracking. This required skeletal animation states that blended based on real-time distance and angle data.

Geographic pinning

Snap Map allows experiences to be anchored to coordinates with a defined discovery radius. We pinned the activation across major UK cities, coordinated to align with existing premiere event locations. Users in those areas saw the dragon appear on their map. Users outside did not. This created genuine discovery moments: people sharing Snaps of the dragon from different cities, comparing positions on the map.

What happened

The organic behavior we hoped for materialized. Users within the geofenced areas discovered the dragon without paid prompting and shared the experience. The Snap of someone finding a dragon on Snap Map in their city is inherently shareable. It's not a polished brand asset. It's a genuine reaction.

The activation reached over 100,000 impressions across the geofenced cities during premiere week. Snap's own campaign team cited it internally as a standout location-based AR execution. The discovery-led mechanic — users finding the dragon without paid prompting — drove organic sharing that extended the campaign's reach beyond the initial geo-targeted audience. The performance data from Snap's reporting was used to brief two subsequent campaigns.

What we learned

Design for the discovery moment, not the demo

The brief tempted us to build a feature-rich experience: dragon attacks, score systems, collectible Snaps. We stripped most of it out. The discovery of the dragon on the map is the moment. Everything after that needs to serve that moment, not overwhelm it. The dragon reacting to your presence was enough.

Location specificity creates ownership

The experience felt local. People shared because they were surprised the dragon was near them, specifically. Generic nationwide AR doesn't create that feeling. Pinning to coordinates that matter (premiere venues, cultural landmarks) made users feel like they'd found something meant for them.

Platform review timelines are real

We submitted for review with two weeks of buffer and used most of it. Snap Map activations have additional review requirements beyond standard Lenses. Build this into every timeline. If you're working to a live event date, review delay is a campaign risk that needs to be owned upfront.

Frequently asked questions