Quibi Focusing on Promoting Shows Instead of Service in New Marketing Strategy
It’s no secret that Quibi has had a hard time getting off the ground. The short-form streaming service which was designed for on-the-go streaming, wound up launching during a national quarantine and reception waned. Without features such as support for AirPlay or Google Cast, which came later on consumers were turned off by the idea of being bound to their mobile devices instead of being able to display on a bigger screen.
Nonetheless, it looks like the company is looking to turn things around. According to Deadline, Quibi is currently trying to refocus their marketing strategy from overall brand awareness, to individual shows or episodes.
“Through April and May 2020, Quibi was uploading less than a video per day to YouTube, with a total of 51 videos, an average of 0.84 per day. But in June, July and August to-date, Quibi posted 92 videos (an average of 1.39 per day), Tubular Labs found. Those videos racked up 186 million views on YouTube, or 35 percent of the year’s total so far,” Deadline reported.
Videos have mostly been trailers of new shows or specific episode previews, with three—the second trailer for “Most Dangerous Game,” a promotional trailer for “Dummy,” and a trailer for “The Fugitive”—garnering more than 10 million views on YouTube.
The streamer has also been pushing some ads on TV, with a focus on getting spots during sports-related programming. Beginning in July, Quibi launched TV ads that focused on show promos and trailers for titles like “Die Hart,” “The Fugitive” and “Most Dangerous Game.”
This isn’t the only change that Quibi is reportedly changing. In New Zealand and Australia, introduced a free ad-supported tier and a lower priced ($5) ad-free tier.
While Quibi is attempting to turn things around for themselves, with competitors such HBO Max, Peacock and Disney+ on the market, the company has a long way to go. In June, a report by The Wall Street Journal revealed the short-form streaming service was in danger of missing its one-year subscriber goal. The company is projected to be on track to sign-up 2 million paying subscribers by April 2021, a far cry from the 7.4 million subscribers they expected to garner after year one.
In July, a separate report from analytics company Sensor Tower stated the streamer is not retaining as many users as they originally sought to retain. During their launch period, Quibi offered customers free 90-day trials. However, according to the report, only eight percent or 72,000 of those users are opting to stay with the service as the free trials begin to expire. At this rate, the streamer is looking at a paying base of 360,000 customers from the current group of user signups, Variety noted.