Tru Blood Nourishment Drink?

Updates about marriage (rather, mostly photos from the wedding and New Hampshire) will come. But there was something that had intrigued -- that is, troubled me over the past week that I felt that I must find out more information about it.

This past week when commuting via bus in the city, I'd noticed a few posters about a supposed product called Tru Blood claiming to be a synthetic blood nourishment drink. That's a little shocking, right? Why in the world would anyone in their sane mind make something like that? While I understand that there are individuals out there who believe they are real vampires (I used to believe I was a dragon, so the self-deception is understandable) but even then I was very confused why something like that would be put on the market.

So tonight I decided to utilize the wonders of Google to find out what all this business was all about. Turns out that the product advertisements are actually a very clever marketing scheme for a new series coming to HBO. I have to give them credit, because they are pulling it off very well and even have a faux product website: http://trubeverage.com/ ... the tip off is that not only is the website copyright to Home Box Office, but they also do not have any drink products in their shop section, and the merchandise is sold through HBO's store. With more investigation, the "Yokonomo Bottling Company" from which the product is supposed to come doesn't even exist. This puts me more at ease.

Plus, in searching for this supposed drink, most of what I could find were articles about HBO coming out with a show called True Blood, a series based off of novels by Charlaine Harris and produced by the same folks who did Six Feet Under. I had to double check to see if there was actually a drink product, however-- which means they just got that much more hits on their website. The novels are based in post-Katrina Louisiana in a small town where vampires and humans have managed to co-exist because of a synthetic blood product (Tru Blood) from Japan. Cleverly, the blood product is marketed the same way beer is... which is taken straight out of the novels with the advertisement for the movie. Creative!
HBO even went so far as to set up BloodCopy, a blog that "chronicles the amazing days we live in as vampires attempt to integrate with humans." Is this from the novels? Maybe; I don't know. BloodCopy is linked off of the Trubeverage.com website and apparently is a part of an audience-participation game. My critique is that the photo-shopping of the photos (billboard photos, newspaper articles) is more than obvious, so hopefully no one takes this site to be a real-deal thing. Note: I tend to pick on photo-shopping skills not because I'm good at it myself but because I like to pick out photo-fakes.

The concern that I have with all of this is that there are folks out there taking it seriously - or appear to be taking it seriously. Most of the comments on the BloodCopy blog make me cringe. Not only is the grammar, spelling, and nearly illegible (and extremely defensive, wrought with cursing), the comments are probably also from 14 year olds. Here's a little logic for you: if vampires are supposed to be the fantastic, ancient, knowledgeable creatures myth claims them to be, I'd think they would take a little more time in defending themselves and write a legible sentence. But any rate, the danger with this kind of thing is that people end up taking it way too far... like H.P. Lovecraft's novel series and Cthuhlu. Scary how cults form around books like this, or movies for that matter. No wonder there are Christians that freak out about this kind of thing. Personally, I don't have a problem with fictional books of this nature because it is the responsibility of the community (parents, friends, whoever) to make sure people know it's fiction and it stays in the realm of fiction.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens. In the end I still give credit to HBO's very clever and creative marketing. They sure sucked me in to investigate what all this stuff was about and earned hits on their websites. Kudos to you. Just be careful who you rope in

** Note that I just found... Turns out that this whole deal also includes a buzz about viral marketing... didn't even know what that was. Thanks HBO for expanding my knowledge of advert schemes that I can continue to avoid... or really, thank you Wikipedia for answering my question. Problem that I have here is that I just fell into the structure of viral marketing by telling you all about True Blood. I shake my fist at the advertising giants that be. Love to Wikipedia. **