Friday, July 25, 2008
The Sookie Stackhouse Experience
HBO has been gearing up for their new series premiering in September; Trueblood http://www.hbo.com/events/trueblood/ with a lot of crazy guerrilla marketing tactics. Trueblood is based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. http://www.charlaineharris.com/
The series take place in the south, and Sookie is a poor white waitress working in a roadhouse who happens to be involved with vampires, werewolves and the like. The series stars Anna Paquin as Sookie.
HBO has been putting up posters all over town, then taking them down a few days later. The topics of the posters have run the gamut from promoting Trueblood, the beverage; motto "friends don't let friends drink friends. Vampires drink responsibly." To posters for the Vampire League of America etc., - all of these items are obvs part of the series.
Yesterday, HBO made their interns stand outside their HQ on 42nd Street and 6th avenue and give out promotional items. They carried petitions that were either pro- or anti-vampire amendments, wore tees that either proclaimed them as members of the American Vampire League or their opposition Fellowship of the Sun.
I'm walking by and have to stop. I've read the series, have friends who read the series and of course must get free crap to give out to friends and keep. Some of the interns don't know what it's all about. They were told to stand outside, get signatures for petitions and give away said crap. So, me being me, (read overally helpful) explain the novels to them. They start telling me stories about crazy people who have berated them for being pro vampire!
I decide to take a photo of the petitioners to send to friends (see above photo). They were very funny and cool about it. Right after I take the photo, two people, a young man and a woman run over and start screaming, "What amendment? Oh god, they're real!"
Me, being stupid again, start to go into the spiel about the novels and marketing of the TV series Below is the exchange.
"No," I say,"this is an HBO series based on the books of Charlaine Harris...blah blah blah"
The guy says, "Oh they're real! It's real."
The woman looks at me and says"Well you know, it's all based on fact."
I look at her, "I said NOVEL which means fiction."
"I heard you."
Guy"Well it's all based on blood rituals"
"You know, you're both incredibly stupid."
"You just called us stupid."
"I take it back, you're both morons"
I actually clutched my head and left!!!
Of course later, I realized I should have said that my ancestors were from the Carpathian Mountains (true) and to guess my age.
DAMN!