True Blood – “For the Holidays”
HBO recently put out this commercial for the True Blood DVD, BlueRay and digital download release for the holidays. The ad is actually pretty funny, and it employs a sales pitch, which strangely enough perks a bit of interest. The young womans description of True Blood makes the show out to be one of the most rediculous sounding story lines and cast of characters ever created. The commercial also plays with the whole “obsessed-teenage-girl-explaining-her-favorite-thing-to-you-at-a-million-miles-an-hour”.
Although the audience knows the grandma has no idea what her granddaughter is talking about, the weirdest part of the entire commercial is how pleased the rest of the family is with the gift. Maybe we can just chalk it up to everyones obsession with vampires recently, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get that fathers creepy smile out of our heads for awhile. Beyond the strangeness of this ad, which we’re sure was intentional, it’s fun and at least got our interest in trying to figure out what this True Blood show is actually all about.
World of Warcraft – “Birthday Gift”
The folks at Blizzard Entertainment have begun another ad campaign for this Holiday season. Although they left the holiday part out, they have brought back new celebrities like Chuck Norris and Aubrey Plaza. The Chuck Norris commercial we posted last week was a long time coming, but Aubrey Plaza (from the tv show Parks and Rec) was an interesting choice.
So far, the celebrity focused ads have had the likes of Mr. T, William Shatner, Ozzy Osbourne and other prominent male stars. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the main player base of these games is male, but there are more than their share of women who play as well. Aubrey Plaza makes this very clear, so clear that she dumped her boyfriend for the game. The commercial is humorous enough, the censored swearing was a nice touch, but it seems to be perpetuating the notion that WoW (World of Warcraft) will ruin your relationships – not a new idea in the eyes of the mass media, either. Blizzard is very aware that their game is addicting, so much so that within the game it even tells you to go out and play with real friends. It seems a bit in poor taste after all the flak the game has received for “ruining peoples lives”, but then again it’s JUST a game.
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