How To Release a Television Series to a Niche Community

I love HBO. They make all of those edgy television dramas like The Wire and Deadwood that are shooting holes in the film industry when it comes to storytelling. I also love vampires. They’re always so well spoken and educated (dumb people get lotted with being zombies). Anyway, when you mixed the two together, you’re bound to get Gothic excitement from all corners of the globe.

True Blood is a new HBO series written by Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under) due to be released in the latter part of 2008. The creators and marketers have started a very well thought out viral campaign, engaging directly with what might be perceived as the pillars of the goth community including horror film bloggers and online Gothic enthusiasts.

The letters have been written in dead languages like Babylonian and Ugaritic and sent out to these key culture-deciders. In no time at all the recipients duly pitched in to translate them throughout the community. The group effort, carried out on blogs and message boards, led to a macabre Web site guarded by a beautiful vampire, where visitors could view short prequel episodes to HBO’s new series and learn about a product called Tru Blood that obviates the need for vampires to feast on humans.

This campaign has a four month lead time. You hear that: four months. If studios who have the money and the networks to run multinational advertising campaigns are investing in campaigns directly engaging with communities and allowing very long lead times, then it draws attention to the fact that marketing through niche communities has a place and it’s best to do it slowly to draw as much blood possible from your victims.