Bad Taste Thursday - Vampire Diaries

So, much to my (male) flatmate's dispair, Go Girls finished last week, which means this week, we have Vampire Diaries. From what I can tell, it's kinda Twilight for TV.

Now, if I were in charge of programming at TVNZ, I would have thought this programme would have sit very nicely on a Friday, but what do I know?

That's not the point of this however. I was doing my daily trawl of the main publishers to see who is doing what, and I gotta admit, I got to Yahoo and was a bit taken aback.

So I totally understand trying to promote a new programme, however I feel as though there was not a huge amount of thought put into situational placement and creative.

Why? Well, you see, the first thing I saw when the page opened was the image of the woman with the headline "Police Fear The Worst" and then all of a sudden these freaking crows come across the page.

Same thing when I hit MSN. None of the stories are quite as obvious behind the expandable banner, but its still crows flying across my screen.

All banners leading to this:

Something just doesn't sit well with me that on 2 publishers homepages, publishers which report news stories, someone would think that crows (which in this show I believe represents death or at least the vampires) wouldn't be the most appropriate choice of visual representation when you consider the possible stories and headlines.

Just feels inappropriate. Now, if this was over the Entertainment sections on either of the sites rather than the homepage, that I could understand; In fact I think it would be very appropriately targeted at the demographic whom they are trying to reach. Totally on board with that idea (and surely it would be cheaper too - don't TVNZ have to save like $20mill or something? Isn't that why they're taking away 10% of agency commission?).

Then I got a heads up from my TVNZ rep this afternoon pointing me to their TV schedule page to check out this banner:

Also promoting The Vampire Diaries. Why is this banner roses while the other is crows? The roses could have worked just as well on YX or MSN. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Now - as an interesting aside (I am writing this while checking out the first ep) - Impulsive you clever kids, perfect synergy for sponsorship and great ad (to be fair - not my cup of tea, but I think I'm quite a way outside their target audience) all while driving to a nice little facebook community. Bonus points to you.

Just lost bonus points. It's been 20 mins and I've seen the ad 3 times. Already bored of it. What's up with that? Trying to boost your frequency?