With little known about the show only months before its release, Apple is relying on one of the most powerful marketing tools: curiosity. Experts say it’s a marketing masterclass.
By the time “Breaking Bad” ended its five-season run in 2013, it had already been crowned as one of the greatest TV shows ever made. This year, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan returns with a new show, “Pluribus,” that is about … something.
Gilligan’s name alone is enough to put “Pluribus” at the top of many TV watchers’ must-see lists, but right now Gilligan’s involvement is almost the only thing anybody knows about the new Apple TV+ show. In an age where studios regularly over-communicate through trailers, it’s rare for a show not to have been spoiled in some way ahead of its release.
But here we are. Three months ahead of “Pluribus” premiering on Nov. 7, we have a mysterious logline — “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness” — and even more mysterious teaser trailers, which only prompt more questions. Why is that woman licking donuts? Why is Rhea Seehorn covered in blood?
All we have are questions, and that’s exactly what Apple and Gilligan want. It’s not just confusion and secrecy — it’s great marketing, says Sean Gallagher, who teaches marketing at Northeastern University.
Curiosity is a powerful motivator, which is why obscuring information sometimes works even better when marketing a movie or TV show, Gallagher explains.
“There’s an old saying: ‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back,’” Gallagher says. “This captures both our inquisitive nature and the rewards we feel when that curiosity is satisfied. Smart marketers harness this psychological trigger to cut through the countless advertisements we encounter daily and capture our attention.”
A 1994 study from psychologist George Loewenstein found that our curiosity is activated when there is a gap between what we know and what we want to know. The marketing around “Pluribus” “seems deliberately crafted to exploit this principle,” Gallagher says.
One of the few pieces of marketing Apple has released around “Pluribus” is even more intriguing than its mysterious trailers: a phone number. Using a strategy that’s become commonplace in mystery-driven digital marketing, it’s a real phone number that people can call. When you call, a voice responds, “Hi, Carol. We’re so glad you called. We can’t wait for you to join us. Dial 0 and we’ll get back to you via text message.”
If you dial 0, you get a text that reads, “Please know your life is your own, Carol. You have agency!”
Like the teaser trailers, this raises more questions, but that’s the point, says Alex DePaoli, an associate teaching professor of marketing at Northeastern.
“You can also think of it in terms of, if you give the audience an answer, then all they have is the answer; if you give them a question, they may begin to imagine that the answer is more intriguing than it truly is,” DePaoli says.
That’s the risk with this kind of marketing: The mystery might be more compelling than the end product. But it also has a greater payoff because “unlike some other emotions that advertising might strive to provoke (such as excitement or nostalgia), [curiosity] is better at motivating consumers to engage with an entertainment product because that’s the most direct way to satisfy the curiosity,” DePaoli adds.
Marketing strategies like this, which are particularly useful for smaller budget horror movies, also take full advantage of online behavior and the ways fan communities form. The mysterious phone number is catnip for Reddit detectives who end up creating whole discussion threads where theories can run wild before the show is even out.
“This in turn creates more robust online fan communities, thus increasing the visibility and the ‘share of voice’ that a brand receives in online conversations,” DePaoli says.
A good trailer might drum up hype before a trailer for another movie or TV show hogs the spotlight. The marketing around “Pluribus” is playing the long game, slowly dropping breadcrumbs that keep you hungry, until, potentially, a full trailer or the show’s premiere.
“This strategic ambiguity plants seeds in our minds,” Gallagher says. “The resulting curiosity ensures we’ll remember this teaser and pay attention when new information becomes available in the coming months. It’s a masterclass in anticipation marketing.”