The night is upon us. The annual premiere of Ryan Murphy's horror anthology series American Horror Story is only hours away. What will season six hold? Like most years, there have been trailers released for months now that *hint* at what's to come without spilling a single second of actual footage. The only difference is that this year features the added twist that not only is Murphy not telling us what is to come, but he's misleading the marketing with macabre images that hint at everything from possessed dolls to swamp creatures to monsters on train tracks to spiders crawling out of eyelids. It's at very least striking in the way that American Horror Story does best. That is why I'd like to make an argument for why TV show marketing matters a great deal.
It is true that most TV has one debilitating factor: Once you've seen one season, you can guess what's to come next year. Unless there's an expected tonal shift, the program will have the same characters acting the same way with similar stories. Most cryptic ads following that first season are mostly for long time fans who want to find information in subtle ways. Breaking Bad famously did this in their last season by having actor Bryan Cranston read "Ozymandias" over footage of the desert. To someone who hadn't followed Walter White's journey, it was likely just a pretty good poetry reading. To everyone else, it was an exciting hint at the intensity set to come after years of loyal following.
Like movie trailers, advertising in general is about covering the basis for your lowest common denominators. You have to convince the widest group of people to watch your show. You can't be vague without purpose. As Fall TV season starts, this is most clear in ads for the new shows like Timeless and Designated Survivor. While they don't explain much of the show's later intents, they still give away enough to make the show sound familiar and in fact worth watching. This isn't a bad thing, especially since TV series are more geared around a long term investment than a two hour film. While some can get by on star power, most have to get by on compelling premises. That is possibly why Blindspot was one of the most anticipated shows of last Fall. With a simple premise - a woman wakes up in a body bag in New York Times Square covered in tattoos - it hooked people in based solely on a trailer. It was conventional, yes, but the premise alone had something there.
Comparatively, cable series tend to have more of a chance to try wild campaigns. Game of Thrones often releases teasers full of footage without context. Mad Men ended their final season with commentators discussing its influence. These are all valid ways to keep audiences, but it's time that I shift to who I think is the master of marketing: the aforementioned Murphy, whose American Horror Story has the added benefit of being an anthology series with each season following a different story. If you missed the previous 13 episodes, there is no concern about falling behind. It is a new story, and everyone outside of the writer's room is as clueless as you are eight months out as to what the characters and cast will so much look like.
This does come with one caveat. American Horror Story isn't the greatest show ever. In fact, its run almost syncs up with horror's relevance to the week an episode is released. Usually released in October, the early stretch are wonderfully crafted puzzles that grab the viewer. Around the middle of December (usually before a brief hiatus), it begins to lose its appeal. By the time it ends in the middle of January, one could easily ask the question "Is that still on?" American Horror Story is essentially a perfect Halloween series that has the unfortunate handicap of having 13 episodes, most of which fall outside of the year's scariest month.
Yet the series is pretty much ingenious when it comes to marketing. Quality of the actual series aside, one cannot help but look at the advertisements and see Murphy's exploration of macabre art. While season five, dubbed Hotel, had the added novelty of having Lady GaGa join the cast, it featured stark contrasts of seconds-long moments set inside hotels. There were luscious occult-like behavior in hallways and demonic shadows in the bedrooms. Even if the show didn't intrigue you, it's tough to not look at it and say "What was that?" Considering that the show also tends to release its always delightful opening credits in the week leading up to the premiere, the interest builds around the mystery and excitement of what horrific things could possibly be behind the majestic billboards.
I for one have enjoyed the new approach to American Horror Story's season six marketing. I generally enjoy the show on as an artistic experiment and feel that the first episodes of any season are at least an event. This is before everything becomes familiar and suddenly the marketing images fade from public's consciousness. In the case of season six, Murphy has held back all of the information and has chosen to send out cryptic images instead. Speaking as they play in theaters in pre-show packages, it's easy to see it as something of a brand. The trailers have the number '6' in the shape of a question mark after graphic images play that likely would disturb unsuspecting viewers. While not violent, this year's marketing has felt at very least a little more disturbing - suggesting a certain darkness that has been picked up after Hotel.
The best part is that there's no uniformity to them. Vert few of the pieces connect to a deeper and more relevant clue. Short of spoiling the series through internet research, there's no way to determine what season six will frankly be about. There's been plenty of speculation, and that is the best part about this. TV and film works best as a collaborative medium; and that's including fan participation. There has to be a rewarding factor to it. That's why season four, dubbed Freak Show, was reported to have one of the series' best audience numbers. The marketing was just so promisingly absurd. Season six at very least is a masterpiece in not giving anything away while still creating some very stimulating outcomes.
I don't know that American Horror Story is the only show that can use marketing of this caliber to its advantage time and again. There's likely been shows that use it to far more effective degrees. However, I do think that there's something to making the extra effort to get the viewer guessing. True, American Horror Story has the luxury of being an established brand where most shows would lose viewers if they were this anonymous. Yet I want to imagine that TV can be fun again, and that culture is willing to give it a shot. Even Murphy's Fox equivalent Scream Queens has more explicitly straightforward advertising. I doubt TV will ever be truly exciting in this way, but I definitely think that we should be more willing to embrace ideas that are out there and try to make anticipation more than piecing together the play-by-plays.
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