Brand: True Blood (HBO)
Execution: Viral
Target: The Vampire Obsessed
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
To promote the new series “True Blood,” HBO drafted the agency Campfire to create an elaborate insider campaign.  Campfire sent 1,000 elaborate direct mailer pieces in May to vampire bloggers and “science fiction geeks” ( a good description of the program is on AdAge).  The mailer featured a message in an invented ancient language.  A few of the addressees had the necessary language or cryptography skills to translate the language (no Rosetta Stone needed, apparently) and it led them to a website, www.bloodcopy.com.  The website featured a gatekeeper (an actress) who would grant access only to those deemed “true vampires” after video chats.  She was instructed to be difficult to crack into, not easy.

What Works:
Brands often think that their task is to make it easy for everyone to find them.  For years Coca-Cola focused on the slogan “within an arm’s reach of desire” – the idea being to make Coke so easy to find that it was ubiquitous.  With the brand equity and resources of Coca-Cola, this might not be a bad idea, but it fails for many other brands.  HBO and Campfire take the opposite tack, one which resonates much more deeply with human nature: make it really, really tough to get inside and they will come.  They have harnessed the power of exclusivity.

What is brilliant about this campaign is that it is so focused, so precise and not at all interested in making sure that 99% of the target audience gets the message directly from the brand.  It offers a real challenge and doesn’t shrink from sustaining that challenge once the interested have found the brand (on the website).  There is real attention to detail in this campaign that gives it authenticity.

The results have been impressive – lots of youtube activity, press coverage and huge anticipation for the series.

What Doesn’t:
Was it J. Walter Thompson who said “Great advertising can kill a brand”?  The series really needs to live up to the promotion or HBO might find the well is dry the next time around.

Branding Bottom Line:
Campfire spins a tale that makes HBO go bump in the night.

Brand: Paris Hilton
Execution: Web Video
Target: The celebrity-obsessed
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Paris Hilton today posted a video response to a Presidential campaign ad for Senator John McCain.  The McCain ad ad, aired last week and compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and pop star Britney Spears.  The ad called Obama “the biggest celebrity in the world,” while displaying images of Obama in German, Hilton and Spears in an attempt to paint Obama as a celebrity rather than a true leader.  In the video response sponsored by Funny or Die, we see the same images of Obama in Germany, but the voiceover speaks insted of John McCain as the “oldest celebrity in the world – like super-old” and asks the same question – “Is he ready to lead?”  Then we see Paris Hilton in a skimpy swimsuit mocking both herself and McCain while declaring her own candidacy for President and then putting forward a surprising cogent energy proposal.

What Works:
Paris Hilton has an extraordinary sense of timing and a finely tuned radar for PR opportunities.  By taking advantage of a brief media flap over her unlikely connection to Barack Obama, Hilton has guaranteed herself another full news cycle and millions of earned media impressions on national news shows.  I found myself unwittingly part of this kerfuffle on Fox Business News this afternoon when an anchor brought up the ad following a discussion we were having about Whole Foods earnings.  After seeing the entire video, I had to agree that Paris Hilton got it exactly right, down to sounding well-schooled on policy when she moved off of the issue of “where to get the best tan.”The lesson for conventional brands here is to be agile.  Without Paris Hilton’s ability to respond to the McCain ad in just seven days, the opportunity for free PR would have been lost.  Most brands would find it impossible to craft and approve a clever spot in such a short time, let alone filming it.  But the benefits of taking advantage of opportunities like this are significant.  Witness the benefit Mentos yielded from the Mentos/Coke videos and how Coca-Cola failed to capitalize quickly enough.

What Doesn’t:
This advertising blog thinks the Paris Hilton response is entirely good for her brand, but it’s worth looking for a moment at the McCain ad for a moment.  Besides the unintended invitation for a smackdown by Paris Hilton, McCain violates important precepts of advertising in his campaign spot.  Attack ads are meant to put memorable images into the minds of voters.  Michael Dukakis was damaged by attack ads with graphic images of him looking very un-presidential in a tank among others.McCain’s ad has the opposite effect for Barack Obama.  It shows him addressing 250,000 people within sight of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin where the Berlin Wall stood.  While the language is meant to tear Obama down, the images make him look more presidential.  Which is not the point of competitive advertising at all.

Branding Bottom Line:
Forget President of the United States.  Paris Hilton ought to be running for CMO of General Motors.