Media Mandible

Before Alan Ball’s new HBO show, True Blood, premieres this weekend, let it be said for all who don’t already know that the future of advertising has already been changed.

It’s not just that the massive campaign for True Blood involves blogs, tweets, and dating sites from inside the fictional universe of the show. It’s also that, within that universe of vampires living openly among humans, there is an advertising campaign for an imaginary product (”True Blood,” a blood substitute)… and there is also commentary on that campaign, from within the fictional universe.

In other words, people living in the world outside the show (previously known as ‘reality’) can’t talk about the effectiveness of the campaign for True Blood, the TV show, without also discussing the imaginary (but fully realized) discussion of the imaginary (but fully realized) campaign for True Blood, the blood substitute.

True Blood, the blood substitute, is fake (not real blood) and also fictional (doesn’t exist). This dual non-ness of the thing is turned on its head by the fact that the product’s name contains the word “true,” as if to suggest something genuine. That the TV show, ostensibly demarcating the border between the viewer’s reality and the fantasy that makes up and supports the story, is also named after the imaginary product that is the focus of the imaginary ad campaign, only blurs the lines further. Finally, the basic question of whether vampires deserve civil rights, apparently an ongoing issue on the show, is obviously begging deeper questions outside the show about what it means to be alive, free, moral, and genuine.

In other words, the campaign for True Blood, the TV show, has already created such a labyrinthine discourse that it’s nearly impossible to talk seriously about the real campaign without also becoming part of the campaign for the non-existent product, which implicitly makes you part of the campaign for the real product.

Can you say what I just said, more clearly than I said it, and without somehow embracing some aspect of HBO’s show, or the surrounding campaign? Try it.