New TV Series ‘Scarlet’ A Hoax

Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 by MegaZone

Lately you have have been seeing promo spots for a new TV series Scarlet, which looked like some kind of spy thriller with a female lead, similar to Alias. I’d been catching the spots mainly as a promo inserted into some TiVoCast content such as The Onion. The spots looked fairly high budget with explosions, etc. I was actually thinking of checking out the show just to see what it was like. It has a website and even an entry in IMDB. Here’s one of the versions of the teaser:

Well, there is no such series. It was all an elaborate hoax that is part of a marketing effort for a new line of HDTVs from LG Electronics called, of course, Scarlet. See, it is a ‘TV Series’ as in ‘a series of TVs’. Clever, but at the same time I feel kind of disappointed that I was misled. It feels dishonest to me, and leaves me with a bad feeling about LG. Certainly not what they were going for, I’m sure.

How do you feel about such deceptive viral marketing tactics? Did you get taken by Scarlet?

About MegaZone

MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
This entry was posted in HDTV and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Gryphon

    I find the whole “viral marketing” concept deeply annoying, but I can’t really give you a concrete assessment as to why. Maybe just because J.J. Abrams is so fond of it, and I find him infuriatingly precious – and so, by association, viral marketing as well.

  • Banshee

    I figured something was amiss when Tivo online scheduling could not find
    it on the day it was to allegedly air. I’ve been had! LOL

  • Todd

    At least the advertising companies are finding a way to break out of the traditional way of getting potential customers to see their products. With that said I don’t like being fooled! :)

  • http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ Gryphon

    Since breaking out of the traditional way generally involves invading ever more aspects of life where advertising has historically neither belonged nor appeared, I have a hard time viewing that as any kind of win.

  • Jason

    I, for the life of me don’t see why they thought this was a good idea. For those in the loop, of course, it may have been funny and rewarding. But for the regular society, they checked the tv guide channel and or the actual tv guide inorder to find out what channel this new series was going to aire on. I felt it looked like a bad Alais knock off, but I was interested in seeing how bad it was.

    Besides it being a fake series and actually a line of TV’s, how was this a good idea to sell these tv’s. I mean, people were at home on 4-26-08 and not at a store to buy the thing. Nothing about it made anyone want to run out and buy this tv, because no tv was evident in the commercial.

    LG Should have gone wit a Ironman theme and make some sorta common sense attempt at marketing. Helll IRONMAN is freaking red/scarlet in color and would have been a better tie in for their tv’s LG products are all throughout the movie, even his center light was made from LG products.

    Poor idea for marketing. The 500 people that showed up to the premeire for the “series” better have gotten one free, because I doubt anyone was ready to buy one after wasting their time to see a curtain pulled back to see a TV set.

    My first post, but I wanted to see how others felt about LG’s poor marketing scheme. 100 million dollars to hype up a fake series. It would have been nice for someone to spend that much on other series that didn’t get picked up for future seasonos.(Jericho, Firefly,and the list goes on Im sure.)

    Thx all

  • Tim

    I thought it was pretty clever. Sorry LG, I’m still buying the Sony.