Friends Don't Let Friends Drink Friends.

Lately I have been a little Fang Obsessed with the season premiere of True Blood Season 3, and I have been looking into what helped this season reach the outstanding numbers that it did.

In an interview with Tongela Johnson, True Blood discussed their marketing plan; “Instead of a traditional marketing plan, True Blood creates an “in world” perspective. This is done through a wide array of social media, digital, and traditional advertising techniques”.

After watching the bonus disc for Season 2, I noticed their wide array of Fellowship of the Sun commercials and that they all had web addresses. I decided to take a look and not only did HBO create a site for The Fellowship of the Sun (http://fellowshipofthesun.org) and the American Vampire League (http://www.americanvampireleague.com/) but they also have their very first website http://trubeverage.com// for the sales of the TruBlood beverage created to help promote the show.

TruBlood is a carbonated drink, flavoured to be Blood Orange and displayed to be a blood type. The beverage has its own small marketing campaign that promotes itself as well as the drinks for some very eccentric Fang Sympathizers.

After the drink was created to promote the first season, the advertisers for HBO’s True Blood had to step it up with online viral advertising as well as some shocking Outdoor ads. I have discovered a vampire blog that I have just started following called Blood Copy (http://www.bloodcopy.com) as well as a Human/Vampire dating site (http://lovebitten.net/).  

True Blood’s advertisers had a challenge this year with Season 3’s premiere and their need to top their previous advertising campaigns, their website states;

“We created and executed a campaign to disrupt reality and people’s perceptions of what an advertisement really is”.

If you haven’t noticed some slightly bizarre ads this year, take another look at Monster.com Billboards, as well as Harley Davidson. 

Digital Kitchen says:

“When we started we were hopeful to get 2-3 brands to sign on, however in a matter of weeks we were able to secure six brands: Geico, Monster, Mini, Harley-Davidson, Gillette, and Mark Ecko”.

Their campaign proved to be exceptionally successful. Not only do they have a large viral and reality disrupting campaigns but you can also follow True Blood on Facebook or get your fix on Twitter by following BonTempsGossip, I know I will be a follower!

Don’t miss True Blood on HBO.