Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Favorite TV ads - House and True Blood

I wanted to point out two campaigns that I think have done a particularly good job of branding their shows with good ads; House and True Blood. Plus throw in a couple of fan-made posters which I enjoy.

First up, House. Most of the ads stick with a simple theme: Hugh Laurie front and center with a medical twist - House getting heart surgery, House with bandaids, House with a defibrillator, House with pills, etc.. They're all simple and easy to grasp while, say, riding by on a bus, or flipping through a magazine. Even one of the posters for House's jail time plays off the DOC acronym. Some of them feature a brief tagline (incurably himself, lovesick, one sick bastard, prepare for complications, etc.) Again, slight medical twist, but short and sweet. The only one in a wildly different style is the propaganda poster with the syringes replacing aircraft. It is still pretty simple in concept.








And True Blood. As EW wrote; "If there is a marketing team that has more fun than the folks who have to push True Blood, we have not met them." It started off with a relatively simple poster:

Eye catching, bloody. Cute tagline.

Several seasons have featured blood in the ads, usually also playing off the addictive nature of the soap:


These two play off of Sam's character:


Then there was the clever two part series looking at the vampire politics in the show (and the resistance to vampire integration). There were two or three of these:





And a couple of posters playing off themes in the show:


And finally, one of my favorite ads, coming out of New Zealand. ACTUAL stakes. Good job, NZ:

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