Hacking Reality

Dracula would be a very happy vampire at the moment. The world has recently gone mad for vampires, with films, books and TV shows almost saturating the public appetite for tales of the toothsome bloodthirsty folk.
Today’s vampire stories have moved on from castle-dwelling aristocratic types feasting on the blood of virgins. The premise of True Blood is the notion of vampires living openly among humans in a small Louisiana town.
When it needed to drum up some publicity for season two of the show, HBO needed to make sure that its show stood out from the crowd of competitors. The “hacking reality” campaign took to concept of vampire co-habitation to the next level, and created a series of advertisements aimed at vampires.
Mock-ads featuring well known brands, including Gillette, Harley Davidson and Mini were featured in national and local press. Advertorial content, such as special vampire-targeted editorial appeared in the AM New York newspaper, and Vanity Fair magazine ran a feature called “Party to Die For”, that showed vampires mingling with real-life celebrities.

Online, video clips aimed at vampires were seeded, and went viral as famous American shows like “Good Morning America” were re-created with vampire content.
The reality-blurring campaign resulted in a ratings success for the channel. Season two’s opening episode drew more than 3.7m viewers, representing a 51% increase on the season one finale. The campaign also significantly increased awareness and recall metrics amongst the target age group of 18-34.