HBO’s new show True Blood premiered last night.

It’s based on Charlain Harris’ South Vampire Mysteries series. The Japanese have developed synthetic blood called TruBlood and this development has allowed vampires who have been effectively hiding to “come out of the coffin” and join mainstream society. The show tells the story of a small town waitress in Louisiana who is a psychic and her encounters with the new vampire subculture.

Even though I’m a massive wuss when it comes to watching anything horror related I still love watching anything related to vampires. I’ve been very excited to watch this show and the premier kept me happy. It was a new and interesting vision of a vampire infested world and it shows a lot of potential as a new major ongoing property for HBO.

How would you market a new property like this in the online space?

As you continue to read this blog you’ll notice I always put quotes around the word viral and it’s because I can’t stand the word viral as a marketing description. You don’t make viral campaigns, you make things successful, and if your lucky they go viral. I’m referring to this campaign as a viral campaign because it’s how it’s been described in Wikipedia (probably by HBO or their agency).

Sent via a blogger outreach program.

HBO launched a series of websites that effectively helped develop the back story and set the tone for this new world where vampires co-exist with humans. These sites include a dating site, a blog written from a vampires perspective, an anti-vampire coalition, and a website for the manufacturers of TruBlood.

To get the buzz started in the blogging community they sent two messages. First a nicely crafted letter with unusual gothic packaging and then they actually sent them a sample of TruBlood.

I commend their efforts on creating a fun backdrop that helps create a believable world that fans can enjoy. Unfortunately, I think this process could have been exploited a lot more effectively then it actually was.

The Alternate Reality Game (ARG) they weaved into the sites and the experience wasn’t particularly engaging and left gamers feeling frustrated, confused, and ultimately underwhelmed with the pay off. Vampires ares such a wildly popular pop culture icon that I believe an interactive experience that extended on the sites listed above in a game that didn’t focus quite so heavily on heavy ARG players would have been more successful. I think the developers heart was in the right place, but based on the numbers I can deduce it has underperformed.

(I’m basing these best guesses on the number of times people viewed any of the videos on the bloodcopy.com site.) I’m a huge fan of ARG’s after spending almost a year developing our Guinness Tipping Point ARG so I appreciate the effort that was put into this. It just wasn’t quite “there” unfortunately.

Regardless, check out the show. I think it’s going to be fun Sunday night experience!

Some "authentic" posters for the TruBlood drink.

PS – I thought I could resist saying it, but…..

I think this ARG was a great concept and launched well, but the game mechanics lacked BITE?
(drummer “ba-DUM ching”)