While the quality of HBO’s new vampire drama is questionable, the pay net set up Alan Ball’s True Blood with a pretty nifty marketing campaign, including viral and alternate reality game components, a MySpace page, multiple websites, a comic book, blood-splattered wanted posters and, of course, a fake product called TruBlood. A large billboard advertising the “synthetic blood nourishment beverage” with the clever tagline “Real blood is for suckers” could be seen at one of the entrances to the Lincoln Tunnel in Manhattan for weeks leading up to the premiere of True Blood before being replaced with an ad for the actual show. A website dedicated to the fake product asks visitors to input the century of their birth, after which you can browse the various flavors (types A, B, O, etc.), take a quiz and even purchase real merchandise (ladies boy briefs are currently sold out). Talk about viral!

Tags: advertising, products, television, viral