HBO's BloodCopy on Gawker

HBO's idea is to play along "that fine line of fully disrupting someone's experience and at the same time immersing them in your experience," said Zach Enterlin, vice president of advertising and promotions for HBO.

HBO, in promoting its new series True Blood last summer, created a blog for vampires, BloodCopy.com - Vampire News with Bite. The show True Blood is based on the premise that due to the creation of synthetic blood, vampires are now free to walk amongst us humans. As part of HBO's marketing campaign, it aimed to create the world that the premise of the show is based on; vampires are out, working/loving/walking alongside humans (at night anyway, of course). BloodCopy.com is where these vampires interact online, posting on current topics such as politics, entertainment, news, and fashion as it pertains to their particular community. Posts sound like this one: "Every hipster with a neckerchief and an MFA is reading Pride and Predjudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. If the L train were a famous talk-show host's book club, PAPAZ would be its Eat, Pray, Love."

This season, taking BloodCopy.com and the campaign to the next level, HBO has teamed with brands such as Harley-Davidson and Monster.com to create vampire-targeted advertisements. These ads are displayed on the blog and on the 'official' True Blood website.



A bit of controversy erupted just the other day, when Gawker picked up BloodCopy.com for inclusion in its roster of very popular (and all legitimate/'real') blogs. "Gawker Media announced last night that it acquired BloodCopy.com," Silicon Alley Insider (an industry news blog) reported last Saturday morning. "It's a blog about vampires. Really." The next day they apologized for the misunderstanding, but also added, "We also think that HBO, Gawker, and the marketing agency crossed a line ... We're all for experimental online advertising, viral marketing, etc. ... In our opinion, however, this campaign is designed to trick people."

Zach Enterlin at HBO replied with, "The goal isn't to really mislead at all. It's just igniting curiosity. I think the way the ads are done, there's a certain amount of known quantity with a wink. It inspires a double take. We're trying to make them as authentic as possible, but it's an absolute necessity that they have that element of 'wink'."

I can see how the broad issue of setting up a fake blog as part of a marketing campaign and then somewhat staging it as real could certainly be inappropriate and even dangerous in some situations (medical products and services, for example). But I think that in entertainment it is a natural extension of creativity, and HBO is just really good at being creative. I also think it's somewhat telling that the criticism came from someone who didn't get the joke, or as Enterlin puts it, the wink ;)....

Official True Blood site – http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/
BloodCopy - http://www.bloodcopy.com/
Article by Brian Steinberg on AdAge.com –
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090529/FREE/905299988
Gavin O'Malley's post on Online Media Daily –
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?art_aid=106720&fa=Articles.showArticle