Lumon Terminal Pro in Apple's online store is a master-class on media marketing

Apple offering a Lumon Terminal Pro from the Apple TV+ hit "Severance" is the kind of 360-degree cross-promotion that all the other streamers — except one — could only wish for.

Back in the '80s, the marketing buzzword of the day was "multimedia." But at the time, it was just a buzzword because what it really meant was that a film or a TV show would have a novelization.

Just as they had before, just has they have since.

Flash forward to 1988, though, and multimedia became not a marketing term, it was real for the first time with the Apple CD-SC. Apple pioneered the term with Hypercard, and that pokey CD-ROM drive.

In 2025 Apple is an absolute master of it, to an extent that it's hard to conceive of any other firm but one being able to match it.

L-R: Zach Cherry, Adam Scott, Britt Lower in the "Severance" popup in New York's Grand Central

Apple has always been very hot on exactly how and when to market its iPhones and other devices, but consistently now we're seeing it apply that to television drama. It's applying it by leveraging all of its multimedia platforms, all of its communication with audiences.

And Apple is applying a marketing technique that can't be counted in terms of return on investment, but does make all the difference. Apple is able to use wit.

So, the latest gimmick of promoting "Severance" by appearing to sell one of the show's computers in the online Apple Store, that's wit. It's not just a joke, it's richer than that because it's not only throwing a funny thing at us, it's also knowing we will catch it.

This is Apple telling "Severance" viewers that it watches the show too. It's telling the audience that we are all in this together, we are all in this shared enjoyment of something special.

There are, naturally, people who do not watch the show — it is on the smallest of the streamers, for one thing. But where some corporations would hesitate over potentially losing customers because they don't get the joke, Apple does it anyway.

Apple knows that the "Severance" joke will work very well for people who watch the show. But the company also knows that people who don't watch it will at worst just shrug.

They might well be intrigued into finding out more, and this is all done as a way to promote more people into watching. But we're being treated as adults, and that wouldn't be special if it weren't for how so many other corporations do not.

Apple has the global reach, but one company has tendrils that are a bit longer

Back when Apple TV+ was starting, Ophrah Winfrey was very upfront about why she was joining the service. "Apple is in a billion pockets, y'all," she said at the time.

Just a few years later, the figure was two billion. Nearly every one of these users are people who are actively using Apple products. And most of those use them daily.

Other companies have scale, other firms have large audiences, but only one other company can put so much behind promoting a show. Netflix, for instance, can shove trailers at us when we start up the service, but we have to start it up first.

Otherwise, Netflix has to pay to advertise its shows. So that's not who we're talking about.

As well as the potential reach that Apple has, there has to be willingness to do it. So for instance, Amazon ought to be able to promote shows on its Prime page yet it doesn't very often. Amazon isn't either.

Apple is not the absolute champion at this. Disney+ can cross-promote more because it has a vast media conglomerate. Disney owns ABC, ABC promotes Disney+, the theme parks promote Disney+ and Disney intellectual property, Disney intellectual property is hosted on ABC and Disney+, and around and around we go.

And then, on top of all that, there's the physical merchandise that Disney can sell for Star Wars, Marvel movies, the Muppets, and about a thousand princess-centric movies.

Selling lightsabers, princess dresses, and so forth by the millions is not quite the moneymaker that selling millions of iPhones per year is, but it's pretty close. Any yard sale or trivial Ebay scan can tell you that Disney is well-entrenched in the mindset of the world.

And like Apple, Disney starts early. The mindset that Disney is there, Apple is there, starts at a very young age. Different reasons, mind, but the mindset is there. Amazon, for instance, can't quite say the same thing.

Amazon is focused on the short-term turnaround sale. Netflix is focused on what's hot today, and maybe you'll watch something older later. Disney has a reciprocal commerce engine.

Apple is willing to give up some of its store's screen real estate because it looks to the long game — and because it has wit.

Cover of "The You You Are"

That's the thing. Apple has an online store so it could promote a show from its television streaming service, but what it needs as much as the various outlets to promote shows on, is the wit to use it like this.

You can't buy the "Severance" computer

It's a shame that you can't actually buy a "Severance" computer terminal. You know that people would, you know that they'd then stress-test one to breaking point in YouTube videos.

But if you need something like "Severance" in your life before the show's next season, you do have an option. And it isn't Apple being completist, it's a third-party company being competing.

Signature Plastics makes keyboards for terminals such as the Data General "Dasher" range, which is said to have been a key — pun intended — inspiration for the design of the computers in the show. And now fans can buy keycaps in this SA Macrodata Refinement style.

These are not the same keys that are used on the show's keyboards, but they look like they are. And for about $200, you can get a set of keycaps to replace the ones on your existing mechanical keyboard.

Assuming you have about a $200 mechanical keyboard to install them on.

Multimedia promotion

So here's a company making products for "Severance" fans. There's Apple pretending to sell the show's computers.

Screenshot of Google's "Severance" takeover

And then there's the characters taking over New York's Grand Terminal. There's the same self-help book those characters read — and an audio book version too.

There's Google getting in on the act. And Stephen Colbert. And Tim Cook quit Apple to join Lumon Industries, for a minute or two.

This is marketing a show from every conceivable angle, and doing it in a way that is creative and clever. "Severance" is everywhere, yet it doesn't feel hyped, doesn't feel pushed down our throats.

It feels like a party we want to be part of.