HBO has created a monster with the promotional campaign for True Blood, a new TV series from the creator of Six Feet Under, set to premiere September 7th.

AdAge (which has a nice little video about the campaign here, but no way to embed it elsewhere) explains:

While they’re only one part of the larger campaign launching HBO’s “True Blood,” viral promotions by New York’s Campfire agency for the vampire series are a real stand out. Among other things, a message written in ancient language symbols was mailed to prominent bloggers and science fiction geeks known to be interested in vampires. When a few with language degrees cracked the code, they found an address for a vampire website.

That would have been kinda neat on it’s own, and whatnot, but things have progressed far beyond that one vampire website now. If you start following the True Blood trail, it becomes a bottomless pool of content.

You’re more likely than not gonna see a billboard for Tru:Blood, “Synthetic Blood Nourishment Beverage” somewhere. It’s gonna look something like this:

or this:

and by the time you’ll have come to this one:

you might have started thinking that perhaps this is just the latest niche energy drink to hit the market, targeting a demographic with some sort of really spectacularly alternative lifestyle . Which is precisely the point. HBO’s particular vision of the dead-end of mass culture involves the undead too, apparently. Just another niche in our united niche culture, with their own kind of lifestyle needs. According to HBO’s official website for the True Blood show:

Thanks to a Japanese scientist’s invention of synthetic blood, vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight. And while humans have been safely removed from the menu, many remain apprehensive about these creatures “coming out of the coffin.” Religious leaders and government officials around the world have chosen their sides, but in the small Louisiana town of Bon Temps, the jury is still out.

Local waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), however, knows how it feels to be an outcast. “Cursed” with the ability to listen in on people’s thoughts, she’s also open-minded about the integration of vampires — particularly when it comes to Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a handsome 173-year-old living up th–

Uh-huh. Whatever.

Cuz at this point, how could any storyline the show’s creators might concoct compete with the multi-dimensional online world that’s been developed around the premise of the first paragraph? (Unless they know something Lost doesn’t, maybe.)

So, there’s the True:Blood beverage site. There’s BloodCopy, a news blog which “chronicles the amazing days we live in as vampires attempt to integrate with humans.” There’s the American Vampire League, an advocacy group “Leading the fight for equal rights for vampires,” cuz guess what? “Vampires were people too.” As you’d expect, there’s obviously a religious opposition group, Fellowship of the Sun. And, of course, no party to which politics and religion are invited would be complete without sex. Which you can now find, with a vampire, at Love Bitten, “The world’s best Human/Vampire dating site,” Are there runner-up Human/Vampire dating sites? Considering that half the merch on the Tru:Blood site is already sold out, there ought to be.

Meanwhile, the series hasn’t even premiered yet!

What people are buying and participating in has pretty much nothing to do with a TV show, and to look at it as just a “viral marketing” campaign is a complete misunderstanding of what’s going on here. This is a full-on Alternate Reality Game:

An interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.

Notable prior forays into the ARG world  have included promotions for A.I., HALO 2, and Nine Inch Nails’ latest album, Year Zero. But why stop at a campaign, when you can create a culture? In a sense, this kind of “narrative” that takes place in the “real world,” and involves various media to tell a story–which the actions of “participants” certainly do affect–is probably an effective way to think about the contemporary fate of any brand. Every brand. This just happens to be an opportunity to turn the brand itself, and its narrative, into a new form of 21st  Century-compliant entertainment.

HBO could be the first network to take the leap. Even the TV series itself could really just function as part of a larger narrative. Perhaps they’re already planning something that prescient. Who knows? If not HBO, then no doubt that line will be crossed by someone eventually. And when it is, there’s no going back.

Sean Bateman

Student at Bennington College

Albany, New York Area

Education

• Bennington College

Connections

2 connections

Industry

Music

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Sean Bateman’s Summary

I’m a Senior at Bennington College, though we mostly refer to it as Camden and pretend that it’s in New Hampshire. I live at Booth house, with a Frog roommate and a House Pigs house band. Sheer sensations.

My brother demanded I sign-up to “explore business opportunities”, but I’m not into that. I have ulterior motives, and her name is Lauren Hynde. I’m in the Computing Center, where Lauren once hung out, but she’s left, gone, history, vapor. The only problem is I still dream about her, and she’s all blue. It always ends up this way. No Big Surprise.

Every time I looked at at her I was struck by great-looking she is. And standing close to her, even if it was only for something like a millisecond, I overloaded on how great-looking that girl is. She looked at me in what seemed like slow motion. I could rarely meet her blue-eyed gaze back. She’s a little too gorgeous. Her perfect, full lips locked in on that sexy uncaring smile. She’s constructed perfectly. She used to smile when she noticed me staring and I smiled back. I’m still thinking, I want to know this girl. Being around her was sort of.. I don’t know what sort of is.

I’ll take all this down if she wants. I’ll deal with it. Show must go on. Rock’n'Roll.

Sean Bateman’s Specialties:

I plug in my Fender and play girls songs I’ve written myself and then segue into “You’re Too Good to Be True” and I play it quietly and sing the lyrics slowly and softly and they’re often so moved that they start to cry and

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Sean Bateman’s Education

• Bennington College

  Music, Rock’n'Roll, 2004 — 2008

  Majoring in Rock’n'Roll (before I was a Lit major, before I became a Ceramics major, before I become a Social Science major). I may switch to Computers. Whatever.

  There some things that I will never do: I will never buy cheese popcorn in The Pub. I will never tell a video game to &@#$ off. I will never erase graffiti about myself that I happen to catch in bathrooms around campus. I will never play “Burning Down the House” on a jukebox. I will never be one of the last people hanging out at a Camden party. Those people remind me of kids being picked last for teams in high school. It’s weak. Really improves one’s sense of self-worth.

  Activities and Societies:

  Hanging out (The Carousel, Commons, The Pub, The Brasserie, Burger King, Dining Hall, Ann Arbour is where it’s at).

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Additional Information

Sean Bateman’s Interests:

Coffee without cream (to feed my impending ulcer), girls (classy yet sexy), smoking, riding my motorcycle into town, watching people argue about Nazis, Planet of the Apes (I recently signed into Netflix), watching TV in the commons, playing my Fender for girls, music (Velvet Underground, Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Iron Butterfly, Zep, The Animals)

Sean Bateman’s Groups:

Sometimes I check out the AA meetings in Bingham

Netflix is absolutely an anachronism to 1987, when the book was published and one of the most important activities of the day was returning videotapes, plus the Sean Bateman of Ellis’s book was definitely not in college between 2004-2008, as this Sean Bateman appears to be. But who cares? The overall character tone, and many major and minor details are completely true to the original–not to mention hilarious in the context of LinkedIn–and even to the story behind the book. The college the characters in The Rules Of Attraction attend, Camden, is, in fact, based on Bennington (which is Ellis’s Alma Mater), and Sean is totally into Lauren Hynde. I’m even positive there’s a chapter in the book that Ellis straight up just ends on the word “and” like “Sean Bateman’s Specialties” section does above, so this Sean Bateman, who supposedly graduated Camden this year, nevertheless still even comes across like Ellis’s Sean Bateman who graduated 20 years ago, and if you dig a character, isn’t that all that really matters?

As soon as I got over how amusing it was that Sean Bateman had a LinkedIn profile I remembered that the character in Ellis’s American Psycho is Patrick Bateman, Sean’s older brother, and since Sean mentions his brother demanded he join LinkedIn, it came as no surprise, that–check this out!–Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho is on LinkedIn. His profile actually is a lot more serious, and not as funny as Sean’s, so I won’t bother re-posting it, but if you happen to be a huge American Psycho nut, go over there and knock yourself out. He’s interested in “getting back in touch” evidently.

Social media as a platform for “characters” is as ancient as Friendster (man, whoever was responsible for the unbearably hilarious “San Francisco” profile back in like 2002, you were a complete riot!) and with the arrival of Lonelygirl15 and cewebrities like Jeffree Star, web 2.0, is veritably rife with “characters,” fictional and stranger-than-fictional. And, of course, there is the widespread social media “fan-fiction” of sorts, where people create unofficial profiles for characters they love, like the aforementioned LinkedIn profiles. But I’m thinking about something different from all this. I’m thinking of characters from character-driven stories on traditional media (books, movies, TV) living on in social media. I mean, really living there. Inhabiting the social media space with the same seamless familiarity that characters from novels cross over to the big screen. Communicating with us in their own voices, and with their own personalities that we have come to know and love, but in a new medium.

Michael Patrick King, director of the Sex and the City TV show and movie, would often talk about how great it was that they could really make the show authentically of New York because they could shoot scenes in actual existing restaurants and venues around the city (yes, I did watch the director’s commentary on a bunch of episodes, so?) The result was, indeed, a world that felt unmistakably New York, and establishments that no doubt were only too happy to reap the benefits of publicity in exchange. As an example of what’s possible with creating a living profile for a fictional character, an official Carrie Bradshaw profile, one written in her voice, that would generate content which would comply with the show’s bible and story arcs, could, for instance, feature a blog post mentioning a new restaurant she’d been to as a supplement to the show’s narrative. Suddenly the profile becomes not just promotion for the show, but, in fact, it’s own kind of channel. Creates the opportunity to start thinking about stories and character development in a completely new, almost infinite dimension that, of all the prior formats, perhaps only comic books came anywhere close too before, but this medium comes with something absolutely unbeatable: the opportunity to interact with these characters as well! If we are down to be friends with bands we love on Myspace, I’d bet we’d be into keeping up with characters we love too. Say, Bruce Wayne on Twitter? Or… Zoolander on Facebook? James Bond on BrightKite? Juno on Xanga?

Not that I’ve looked too far into this, I mean, maybe there are already plenty of major fictional characters out there living their daily lives on social networking sites, (I won’t be surprised if they’re Hannah Montana or iCarly or something) but I’m now totally fascinated by this whole idea. If anyone does know of examples of this actually being implemented: Fictional characters from stories in traditional media being (officially) brought to life with their true voice and personality, living and digitally breathing alongside us on social media, let me know.

Oh, and I’m back from my travels.

Hi.

UPDATE: Just discovered (thanks, David) that Mcsweeny’s is apparently totally on top of this idea, with their adaptation of HAMLET: FACEBOOK NEWS FEED EDITION:

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends.

Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.

Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.

Ophelia removed “moody princes” from her interests.

Hamlet posted an event: A Play That’s Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family

The king commented on Hamlet’s play: “What is wrong with you?”

Hilarious.

Lightning in a Bottle is in a week, and i have no time to write anything else, but check out this issue of the Artist Network. it’s all about stories so that’ll absolutely keep you entertained in the meantime. i will get back to having time to be more insightful after may 28th.

thank you to y2, brian shaw, albertico, and arin ingraham. it’s always an honor and pleasure to get to create inspiration with you.

Radiohead, iTunes and GarageBand are giving you the opportunity to remix the band’s new single “Nude”.

To make remixing easy, the separate ’stems’ from the song are available to purchase from iTunes. The ’stems’ available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.

The public will listen and vote for their favourite remix (voting ends May 1st). You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as ‘mix votes’ back on radioheadremix.com. Radiohead will listen to the best remixes.

Once upon a time the product and the ad for the product were completely separate entities. Then content itself began to do double duty as the promotional unit. Now it’s the direct personal experience with the content that can become its own promotion. It’s not just Radiohead pushing their song anymore. Everyone who creates a remix of the song, creates their own personal experience with it, is now involved in generating more exposure for it.

Culture no longer fits all that well into the role of a packaged good (if it ever did). Now there is more and more opportunity–and reason–to approach cultural content as a raw material, one used in the construction of expression.

PS. Go treat your ears to the ESKMO REMIX.

the one thing i do have time to mention, is that it is an honor to create the artist network with such an amazing team: brian shaw, albertico acosta, arin ingraham, and jesse shannon–aka Y2.

thank you thank you thank you!

featuring the music of:

NALEPA, BLUETECH, BRASSWORK AGENCY, BORETA, KILOWATTS, RENA JONES, DAVID STARFIRE, AVALON DOVES, & KRADDY

and visual effects by:

THOMAS WILLIAMS, ANSON VOGT, ANDREW JONES, ALBERTICO ACOSTA, TODD THILLE, PETER PARKER / PARKERISM, KRIS NORTHERN aka PHIDELITY, MARC ANDERSON, & ARCANE

artistnetwork.thedolab.com/winter08

Illuminated is a new animated series being created by some of the people behind GNN (Guerrilla News Network), Phong.com (Eminem’s “Mosh”), Pod Collective, Broken Saints, and ConceptArt.org.

illuminated.com

and while you’re looking at that you may also want to look at this: how to share illuminated

and this: how to buy illuminated

it’s refreshing to see the strategy match the caliber of the product.

the fans and musicians would still be able to connect now that they have the internet to act as matchmaker. in fact, even huge acts such as Radiohead and NIN are starting to ditch their labels , cutting out the despotic middleman to regain more control over the relationship with their fans. so they would always have each other.

sure, the record *industry people* would lose out, but no one seems to really like them that much anyway, so that’s not really enough to rally around.

and then there’s the third element of this music ecosystem: brands. beyond being simply sensory crack, music is a significant community-creating, identity-defining force. often, it has been the primordial ooze from which new cultural shifts evolve. for brands (and hence the advertising/marketing industry) that need to speak to specific communities, facilitate the expression of specific identities, and that are affected by changing cultural tides, there is ALOT invested in this industry. and conveniently, the investment isn’t dependent on selling music.

from NPR’s on the beat:

Honda announced this week an online-advertising initiative that would generate $500,000 to $1 million for Sony/BMG. The advertising plans will include interactive video exposure for Avril Lavigne, Dido, Christina Aguilera, and Alicia Keyes.

For decades, artists and record labels scoffed at the notion that Madison Avenue would one day own the record business, but those days are over. Advertising agencies are now doing significant business with all the major labels, generating millions of dollars in income. This seismic philosophical shift was inevitable. As music sales began to recede, the market had to change.

so if you’re wondering about what’s going to “save” the music industry (and no, it’s not gonna be rick rubin’s ridiculous “subscription model” idea– i got mad love for rick as a producer, but give me a break), it can ONLY be a model that does not depend on the desperate idea of trying to sell something which can easily be copied for free.

that is the inevitable future of digital music recordings. face it. and rather than trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic, or even worse, as the glitch mob’s justin boreta says, “getting rid of extra weight by sniping the passengers ,” the music industry ought to be focusing on how it can make this new model profitable.

it’s not fucking rocket science. after all, advertising figured it out. and now music has something that advertisers are in desperate search of: people’s attention. in a consumer landscape where all the standard channels for disseminating a message are fracturing, music still compels people’s attention and sustains that relationship like nothing else. music itself has become a channel. obviously one that needs to be treated differently than some kind of affiliate TV network, but a channel nonetheless.

and at the end of the day, artists stand to gain from this model too. according to on the beat:

While some bands would rather quit music than sell their songs to a commercial advertiser, many have made the transition with great ease. Money, of course, is a great motivator, but the secondary benefits of a strong advertising campaign can be equally important to an artist’s career. Consider this: In the past, hit songs got repeated commercial radio airplay in America, but with programming so tight, many artists will never achieve a hit record that way. Commercial radio programming is just too narrowcast.

So, artists have to look elsewhere for their exposure and TV advertising is the most effective way to generate mass awareness.

Putting a song in a car commercial still won’t get an artist a hit single, but millions will be exposed to their music.

As the Norwegian band Royksopp knows, selling the rights to a strong song can be enormously effective. Their track, Remind Me, has been used on many of the Geico “Caveman” commercials. Royksopp is not alone. The list of recent bands who sold their music for ad campaigns is amazing. Critical darlings like Postal Service, Bloc Party, Of Montreal, the Flaming Lips, MIA and Badly Drawn Boy are all on that list. And legacy artists can really cash in. Songs like Queen’s You’re my Best Friend to AT&T and the Rolling Stones‘ I’m Free to Chase have earned a pretty penny for these bands.

When done right, the advertisers add credibility to their brand in selecting the right songs. Target, Apple, Budweiser, Volkswagen and Motorola have all demonstrated excellent A&R sensibilities with their choice in song selections on TV ads.

For those naysayers, it’s important to remember that the artist makes the final decision whether to associate with a product or service.

And given that it’s impossible to watch more than a few minutes of ads, without a contemporary song cutting in, the artists are clearly comfortable with this change in the business marketplace.