True Blood Marketing Survey
September 24, 2011 in Random, True Blood
Recently I received an email from a lovely lady named Ina, who is looking for some help with her master’s dissertation.
Ina’s area of study is integrated marketing communication and public relations, and she has elected to write her dissertation on the promotion of True Blood via social media and viral marketing.
Many of us have spent far too many hours stalking the interwebs for show spoilers and/or Skarsporn – so I figured we’d probably be the perfect candidates to help Ina with a little survey.
The survey aims to understand our motivations and online habits in response to the show, as well the extent of our awareness of the different promotional elements in True Blood’s marketing.
It will only take you five minutes or so to complete so if you’d like to help out a fellow Truebie, you can jump in here.
Well, I helped the young lady out.. Too bad it wasn’t an official HBO TB survey,they would have gotten an eye full.
ditto
That’s just what I was thinking. If only HBO were interested in our opinions.
HBO actually did one last year in order to gauge fan reaction to Season 3. I filled it out but clearly that was a waste of time. *rolls eyes*
Really, damn I missed that, however I wasn’t as disalusioned last season as this season with their fucked-up-ness!!
Man I’m pretty sure TB/HBO are running scared this time(LOL) Any questions or surveys I’ve heard of don’t even BEGIN to adress the deeper issues of the TB writing /directing team and their Halucinagenic drug use. YKWIM
All the promotional stuff in the world for True Blood is not going to work on me this time. If I do watch the show it will be on On Demand after a bunch of the episodes air.
I think in the past they have done a pretty good job with promotion of the show and reeling viewers in. They did the minisodes and had the short clips like the one with Amnesia Eric wondering down the road that got us all excited.
Then it gets to the end of this season and it all went to hell. I saw the Eric t’shirt from HBO that a blog was done about it on this site. They had two pictures of amnesia Eric on it. I think it asked the question of which Eric you prefer. When they were both amnesia Eric. That is an example of poor marketing.
And never mind the fact that Alex repeated in interviews ad nauseum that AE and RE were different aspects of the same person.
That t-shirt was SUCH fail. It really felt like no one even gave a crap what we wanted, it was like “here’s your AE tshirt, now shut up. Oh, and how about this King Bill shirt huh? Isn’t it da bomb?”.
An Aegir God of the Sea shirt would’ve sold oodles – because that scene in the lake captured the essence of AE and Eric. Eric has a huge fanbase and it’s like they are utterly incapable of capitalising on it at all. That clusterfuck of a shirt they tried to sell us was the perfect example of the way they handled this whole season, and the way they just didn’t GET IT.
Fail, Fail…FAIL.
And I’m shutting up now because I refuse to waste any more of my time ranting about this show.
They underestimate the fans, they think we’ll keep watching if you put some clips from Eric for next season – and voila!
And I feel that HBO, more than AB, is no longer so interested in TB, he failed to bring “awards” for the house. I’m not saying that and that’s all they wanted, but they bet a lot in AB, and he don’t corresponded, worse than the writing of the show and were so many errors this season (although it started relatively well), I do not know if they care more about the credibility of the show.
and I have the feeling that they will invest more in male audience that like action, in next year: the bromance, and return of Russell and Steve Newlin, removing Pam and Sookie from the dynamic Eric/Bill, not to disrupt the action, I think until can generate an expectation in the audience, but as always will end, as I read in a recap: with a big wet fart noise. That we should be expecting since the second season when Maryann did Sookie lick the giant egg.
I wouldn’t have even minded a Bill/Eric bromance so much if they didn’t write it so that Bill tried to kill Eric like 3 times and he tried to kill Pam once. Eric remembers that Bill tried to stake him too.
HAHAHAHA! Tina!! Those were the shirts made for the Twilight fans…
Ok, I’ll be a good girl
LOL!!
They did. I hope they do it again this year
SVB, I loved the Aegir God of the sea scene that is one of the things that they got right this season. I do agree that they could have probably sold alot of T’shirt of that.
I didn’t even mind Anmesia Eric (I thought some of his scenes were adorable) until he started saying what a great person Bill was and it seemed like AE and Sookie kept having the same conversations. Some of the dialogue was to sappy though etc…
I am still at the po’d phase. I wish I didn’t care but that those last couple episodes and the “slumber party scene” in particular made my blood boil. I just need to stop talking about it. Everything has been said.
This season I got excited about the clips but if I see clips for next season I don’t think I will be excited.
Do you honestly thing they’ll do it again?
Gigi, Twilight shirts are way better than that. They do a really good job on some Twilight shirts.
You should see their wallpaper from this season. F*cking HBO.
My pleasure and good luck with the dissertation.
I helped her out though I agree with peeniebean2612. I’m still totally uninterested and thoroughly disconnected with TB and have no reaction anymore what so ever. Yup they killed the series in my eye’s and my never to watch it again, I just can’t seem to care at all. WTG AB!! LOL idiot *shakes head*
i agree with you,I am so over TB now I wish I could go back to the beginning of the show when I had such expectations.
I need to get back to the books now and have been reading my way through them all to try to get rid of the vague apathy following me around all day
I was reading people’s favorite book Eric qoutes in the forum and it made me sad. There are so many wonderful book moments and lines that could have been beautiful in the show. Like the staking scene when Sookie lets Eric glammer her. They could have still done it but left out the intimate scene. I think someone asked why that was left out and they mentioned that they didn’t want Sookie to seem slutty. I didn’t need the show to be exactly like the books but what they did to Sookie’s character in the finale was upsetting and Eric in that scene too. They tamper with their own mythology and characterization on the show. She claimed that Bill was only lied to her to protect her. When in season 2 she told Bill that lying to someone is not protecting them. She told the same thing to Jason on season 3 about lying to Tara. It’s like some characters had lobotomies this season. t’s just bewilders me.
Happy to take part. Best of luck on your dissertation!
Done!!
Thanks for tumbling Mony x
no problem!!i usually blog all of your posts on tumblr!
♥♥♥
Happy to help! Good luck to Ina!
Well I did it but I made sure to let them know what I thought of the direction it was going.
Done! Happy to help!
Did it as well, and was happy to help.
Complete.
Good luck Ina!
Done!
Done!
Good Luck, Ina! 
Filled it, filed it and wishing good luck
Almost done but when asked “Can you name one or more of the most memorable promotional elements? (please specify which)”, I came to a complete stop and could not recall a memorable one.
Therefore I cannot answer that question…lol
what about the minisodes or the solo promos of season 2?
Crap, I forgot about the “corrupt” promo… and the minisodes too. I should have mentioned them.
Skarsgasmic I went for the VILF Eric poster and short ad for season 2 – and added that it went downhill from there
I mentioned the Dig Deeper online scavenger hunt. I still think that was so much fun, and really smart. Don’t know how they managed that and then produced those awful t-shirts.
I went for the Dig Deeper hunt as well. I did like Eric’s character video. I guess I was just so disappointed in season 4′s marketing that I forgot about the VILF Eric poster as well as the minisodes. How could I forget about the VILF! *smh* lol
Done.
I’m glad it has so many open-ended questions because lately there aren’t many people who likes to make exploratory researches . Good luck with your master’s dissertation Ina!!
I just completed the survey. I wish her well with her dissertation!
Ina has been in touch with me today and she’s had a fantastic response to the survey so far. Keep them coming!!
Filled it out for her, and I mentioned the Digging Deeper stuff; however, I completely forgot about the minisodes too! Grr… tells you how ineffectual they are in the long run. We’re trained to not remember past this last season. It’s like they don’t want us to remember the characters they’ve been building and then smashed against the rocks this season.
i finished the survey… hope the answer’s help..
It brings back all the shi*y memories that made we want to quit watching TB. So devastated to have wasted soooo many hours *sigh.* But I’m glad I did this survey since its for a good cause. Good Luck.
I forgot about the Paleyfest poster that they did for the event that looked really neat. Many people were speculating about the clues in the poster for the season when really it kind of didn’t amount to much in the end. .