HBO
True Blood
Digital Kitchen
The brief that HBO sent out for the launch of its second series of vampire show True Blood was simple but deadly: ‘create buzz’. It is surprising, then, to discover that Chicago-based agency Digital Kitchen’s solution was to use one of the oldest, and arguably least ‘buzzy’ mediums of advertising: the poster. While still central to many ad campaigns, the poster or billboard seems rather staid in these digital, interactive times, with innovation in the medium thin on the ground. Yet this is just what Digital Kitchen achieved.
The campaign drew on the central tenet of True Blood, which is that vampires live among us and are part of reality. For the launch of the first series, New York ad agency Campfire had created a complex prequel campaign to introduce the show’s themes and increase anticipation around the start of the series. This included sending out to fans vials that supposedly contained the synthetic blood from the show, which allows vampires to live openly among humans. When Digital Kitchen began working on the account, it decided to take this blurring of reality and fiction even further.
‘We said, if vampires are among us, how would they be marketed to?’ explains executive producer Todd Brandes. The agency came up with the idea of doing a co-branded poster campaign, where famous clothing, car and lifestyle brands would advertise their products to a fictional vampire audience in a tie-in with HBO.
‘We approached brands and said that our idea is that the True Blood vampires are part of society, they’re part of culture, and they’re just as deserving to be marketed to as any human would be,’ continues Brandes. ‘We said, it’s going to be playful and fun, and it’s going to be an ad for your brand; we’re going to be completely respectful of your mark and your tone.’ Digital Kitchen needed permission to use the brands in the campaign, but otherwise proposed to create the ads entirely themselves. ‘Ultimately, that was the challenge,’ says Brandes. ‘The challenge was convincing them that you were going to be able to capture the tone of their advertising, the tone of their brand and their mark, and be completely respectful of it and true to it.’
‘We said, if vampires are among us, how would they be marketed to?’
01 One of the finished posters for the HBO True Blood campaign, shown in situ. The ad markets an Ecko perfume ‘exclusively to vampires’.
02-07 Digital Kitchen worked with six brands to create advertising for vampires in the HBO True Blood campaign. Shown here are a number of the different ideas for posters that were proposed to the brands. The whole campaign was completed in just eight weeks, during which time the team created the equivalent of seven different ad campaigns: an overarching one for HBO, and then individual poster campaigns for the six other clients involved in the project.
‘It’s one thing for an agency of record who’ve worked with Gillette or Monster for 10 or 15 years… we’re coming in on day two and all of a sudden we have to design an ad that feels spot-on for these brands. We turned around ads in a matter of 24 or 48 hours.’
‘Everybody’s looking for a way to stand out in the glut of communication, and this just happened to be an idea that everybody thought “that’s new, that’s different, that’s fresh, that’s cool”.’
Brandes was surprised by how many companies were keen to be involved. ‘Obviously I believed in the idea,’ he comments, ‘but having worked on the client side you just know approvals and layers and what it takes to get stuff done, and we just had so little time.’ But the brands jumped to be a part of the project. ‘Everybody’s looking for a way to stand out in the glut of communication, and this just happened to be an idea that everybody thought “that’s new, that’s different, that’s fresh, that’s cool”. There were several that turned us down, though I have to say nobody turned us down for any other reason than that the R-rated content of the show was not something they could go along with. We went to some brands that were more wholesome, and they said, “it’s a great idea, guys, but I can’t sell that through”. We ever had brands we turned down! We reached out to a lot of people simultaneously – obviously we had to – so we had a real juggling act to see who would come on. We had a first-come, first-served basis.’
Among the clients that took part in the final campaign are Mini, Harley- Davidson, Gillette, Monster, Ecko Unlimited and Geico. The in-house team at Digital Kitchen designed the co-branded ads for True Blood in just eight weeks. ‘The thing I’m most proud of is that we ultimately had seven clients in the span of eight weeks,’ says Brandes. ‘We had HBO and we had six others. We were dealing with their agencies, we were dealing with their marketing departments and we’re not a big company, we’re just a few people. It’s one thing for an agency of record who’ve worked with Gillette or Monster for 10 or 15 years… we’re coming in on day two and all of a sudden we have to design an ad that feels spot-on for these brands. We turned around ads in a matter of 24 or 48 hours.… The initial ads we gave to people, we were probably spot-on 50 or 60 per cent of the time straight out of the box. In terms of the creative, it was entirely left up to us; we had a lot of say. Everybody was great – that was the other genius part, it would never have happened without their commitment, their commitment to our time line and turnaround. It just speaks volumes of what people can actually do if it’s a good idea.’
Alongside the 2009 print campaign, which ran on billboards and in the press, Digital Kitchen created a series of internet films that also bent reality, and included vampires appearing on news reports. But it was the simplicity of the poster campaign that caused the most impact, and demonstrated that, when used with flair and imagination, the billboard can still be a creative force in advertising. ‘The whole idea of the campaign is to try and get this WTF moment,’ says Brandes. ‘You’re walking down the street and you go, “wait, did I just see that?” It’s completely disruptive and that was totally the goal.’
