Does True Detective Need a Big Ad Campaign?

By Reuben Levine | May 14, 2015

There’s just one week left until we’re a full month away from the premiere of True Detective season two. That’s not a lot of time for a serious advertising push. That would be a problem if HBO and True Detective weren’t confident that they need to do as little as possible to make sure fans tune in on June 21st.

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True Detective is not like other HBO shows. That’s true for its style, story-telling mechanics, and how HBO treats it. True Detective also happens to have an incredibly attractive cast of A-list stars, each with their own dedicated fanbase. So far HBO has just released a series of teasers, and really, that’s all they have to do.

You can bet that True Detective will have at least a singe full trailer before the second season hits at the end of June, but anything more than that is up in the air. It’s becoming more and more apparent that HBO is counting on fans to help spread the word. With the help of some major talent in the cast, of course.

After the success of True Detective’s first season, all HBO really had to do was announce the cast for the second season. That in itself would ensure that viewers would flock to their televisions, if only to see what a dramatic Vince Vaughn looks like.

We’re a month away from the second season of True Detective and we have no major billboards, no NYC subway advertising. All the posters are online. If this were Game of Thrones, HBO would have the big-guns blazing, but it’s not. And they don’t have to do that for True Detective.

True Detective just had to prove that an anthology series with a big-name cast could be a success, and now that they’ve done that all they need to do is put the cast from and center. That’s exactly what all of these teasers have been doing; showing us closeups of Colin Farrell or Rachel McAdams.

It’s a little disappointing that it doesn’t look like True Detective is going to get the great ad campaign that it deserves, but it would be unnecessary. Make sure people know that Rachel McAdams is going to be on a show on HBO and you’ve scored a significant amount of viewers.

If it works, it works.

Next: Four new True Detective teasers have hit Instagram.

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