SXSW 2011: True Blood Panel

The dog that plays Sam when he shapeshifts

True Blood is one of my favorite shows on television, so when I heard there was going to be a panel about the marketing department for the show, I knew I had to attend. Fan to Fanatic: True Blood's Marketing Hook featured the executive editor of TODO Austin, Erica Stall Wiggins as the panel moderator. Panelists included True-Blood.net founder Liz Henderson, Campfire NYC's Mike Monello, HBO Marketing Director Sabrina Calouri, Digital Kitchen Managing Director Todd Brandes and SVP of Program Advertising at HBO Zach Enterlin.

Most panelists said the same thing throughout the hour. True Blood started out and is still continuing to listen to the fans. Before the show even started, creator Alan Ball wanted to make sure fans had a good basic knowledge of what the show was about. So, the marketing team decided to 'hack reality' by making fake advertisements for real products. And now that the show is popular, some of these products (including the TruBlood beverage) are real. From the very start, fansites for the show were given press access to the actors and kept in touch by HBO.

Panelists talk to the audience

Calouri says that things got a little strange when the discovered that fans were expanding the True Blood world on their own. Twitter pages for characters, and even inanimate objects began to pop up, and HBO was initially worried. However, they decided that this would only help the show. Calouri also says that fan reactions to characters like Godric and Jessica inspired the company to give them more of an expanded presence on the web.

With all this extremely awesome marketing happening just within three seasons, who knows what fans can expect for season 4. True Blood returns to HBO this summer.