Apple’s streaming service has a ton of compelling original series that relatively few people seem to know about. Why is the company, famous for creating some of the best marketing the world has ever seen (at least when Steve Jobs was alive), so bad at marketing Apple TV+?
Joe Berkowitz for Fast Company:
Ever since its launch in 2019, Apple TV+ has been carving out an identity as the new home for prestige shows from some of Hollywood’s biggest names — the kind of shows that sound natural coming out of Jimmy Kimmel’s mouth in monologue jokes at the Emmys. While the company never provides spending details, Apple is estimated to have spent at least $20 billion recruiting the likes of Reese Witherspoon, M. Night Shayamalan, and Harrison Ford to help cultivate its award-worthy sheen. For all the effort Apple has expended, and for all the cultural excitement around Ted Lasso during its three-season run, the streaming service has won nearly 500 Emmys… while attracting just 0.2% of total TV viewing in the U.S.
“It seems like Apple TV wants to be seen as a platform that’s numbers-agnostic,” says Ashley Ray, comedian, TV writer, and host of the erstwhile podcast TV I Say. “They wanna be known for being about the creativity and the love of making TV shows, even if nobody’s watching them.”
How is it possible for a streaming service to have as much high-pedigree programming as Apple TV+ does and so relatively few viewers, despite an estimated 25 million paid subscribers? How can shows starring Natalie Portman, Idris Elba, and Colin Farrell launch and even get renewed without ever quite grazing the zeitgeist? How does a show set in the same Monsterverse as Godzilla vs. Kong, and starring Kurt Russell and his roguishly charming son, not become a monster-size hit?
For many perplexed observers, the blame falls squarely on Apple’s marketing efforts, or seeming lack thereof.
MacDailyNews Take: How is it possible for a company to have such a high-pedigree personal computer as the Macintosh and so relatively few users?
Perhaps, no matter how you market them, some things as too good for this world?
Still, this is not the case for Apple TV+. Apple TV+ series are usually markedly better than the competition and the world deserves to see them. It’s the marketing, stupid.
The trailers for Apple TV+ series often suck compared to the quality of the actual series. For one of many examples, see the official Bad Monkey trailer below. If you’ve watched the series, you know how bad the trailer is. Apple marketing should have rejected it and sent those responsible back into post to try again. But, no, they released it. So, right from the get go, the marketing for the series is off on the wrong foot.
Sigh. Lose the tired 5-second preamble that Apple plops at the beginning of every trailer. It’s annoying. Just start the trailer. (But, thanks so much for the “trailer starts now” title card.) 
And, in the case of the trailer above, it’s cut too quickly and jams in way too many scenes which gives the trailer, and those trying to watch it, no room to breathe. It’s tedious to watch. It’s an effort to follow. It’s too long. It tries, and fails, to cover too much ground. It’s a turn off. Bad Monkey is a GREAT series, but you’d never know it from its amateurish trailer.
Then, and worse, Apple fails to use social media well and, yes, high-level influencers, to widely promote Apple TV+ series. One mention of a series by, say, Joe Rogan would obliterate all of the usual slapdash marketing Apple does for that series, but Apple seems to prefer hosting stale red carpet “premieres” which, at their high point, generate garishly BAD photos in which cast members and their shadows plastered up against a step-and-repeat in a group mugshot stare off in 17 different directions. It’s trash. This isn’t the 1940s. It’s a waste of money. It entices exactly nobody to watch.
Apple TV+ subscribers long ago tired of trying to sell “Severance” or “Silo” or any number of other extremely good TV series to their friends. We just watch and enjoy them in our severed silos.
Apple really needs to up its Apple TV+ marketing game if it cares to have people actually watch the content on which they’ve spent and continue spending billions.
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