Marketing The Musical – or – Opening Night for People In The Picture

The time: 6:30 pm, April 28, 2011

The place: Studio 54

The event: Opening night of “The People In The Picture”

Donna Murphy is spectacular.  It is as if the whole musical were written just for her, for her talents, for her singing, for her timing.  You really must see her to understand how wonderful she is.  The marketing of the show plays to her star power.

Marquee

On Friday morning the reviews are in and so are the Drama Desk Award Nominations.  “The People In The Picture” picks up 3 of the nominations.  Tony nominations are tomorrow, May 3rd.  It is widely expected that Donna Murphy will be nominated for a Tony.

These will all be helpful in marketing of the show.  It seems that awards, particularly the Tony, are playing a larger role in the success of a show than in the past.  They give permission for people to go ahead and buy a ticket for a new and unknown show.

That is the biggest challenge for an original musical, based on an original story.  A fan base needs to be created.

In the past it was the newspaper reviews that mattered.  Not that they don’t today — but they don’t matter the way they did.  With the rise of social media, the influence is shifting away from critics and to the personal opinions of friends and family who saw the show and posted about it on Facebook.  Who are you going to believe more some guy from the New York Times who panned “Wicked” (which you loved!) or your sister whose post on Facebook says she loved this show, it made her cry and thinks everyone in the family must see it?

Now, on to the reviews.  Or rather, to the review that matters most to those to whom reviews matter — Ben Brantley in the New York Times.  Brantley’s review is full of raves for Donna Murphy.  From the opening of his review to the final lines, he sings her praises because “it does make you marvel anew at her protean gifts.”  However, he is decidedly divided and ambivalent about the show overall.

And that brings us to the story behind the story in the Times!

The book and lyrics of “The People In The Picture” were written by the enormously talented Iris Rainer Dart.  Iris Dart started out as a trail-blazing top-notch female writer of tv comedy shows back in the 1970s — Tina Fey before there even was an SNL.   Most people will know Iris Dart more for her bestselling novel and the smash movie, “Beaches.”

This is the salient fact when deciphering Ben Brantley’s review in The New York Times.   Brantley has a long history of expressing his personal dislike for the movie Beaches.   One has to question the editorial judgement of the New York Times for sending Brantley to review “The People In the Picture.”

About “People in the Picture” Brantley writes:

Such eventful, tear-stained, multigenerational plots are less common to musicals than they are to fat novels displayed in airport bookstores as temptations to women with purses full of Kleenex and long flights ahead. And it is no coincidence that Ms. Dart is best known for just such a novel, “Beaches,” which became a four-hankie hen flick starring  Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. 

In his review of “Wicked” on October 31, 2003, Brantley writes:

That’s one side, anyway, of the lopsided equation that is ”Wicked.” The other side involves the ambivalent, ever-shifting relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, in which the adversarial women learn from each other and which recalls sobfests about female friendships like the movie ”Beaches.” (You keep expecting Glinda to start singing, ”Did you ever know you were my hero, Elphaba?”)

His final judgement of Wicked?  “‘Wicked” does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical.”  From a commercial perspective, time has proven Ben Brantley’s judgement to be wrong on that one.

More about the marketing of the musical in future posts.

Marketing The Broadway Musical – or – The People In The Picture on Broadway

How do you market a musical?  How do you tell the story of a life changing narrative?

Here is a case-study-in-progress, the new musical The People In The Picture.  I say in-progress because the musical is opening on Thursday, April 28.

The People In The Picture

Marketing a completely new musical on Broadway is an ambitious undertaking.  Most musicals are revivals or based on an already established movie or novel.  Hairspray?  It was a John Waters movie before the musical (and in full circle became a movie again).  Wicked?  It was a big best selling book based on well-known characters immortalized in a movie (c.f. Oz, Wizard of).  American Idiot?  Green Days’ version of Beatlemania or Mamma Mia.  The Addams Family?  The cartoons, the tv show, the movies, but of course always the incomparable cartoons.

The reason so many shows are revivals or brand-extensions is that they remove some of the risk involved.  A general rule of thumb on Broadway is that only 30% of shows actually make back their original investment.  Some shows you know will never, ever, make back their investment (we will NOT mention the musical  based on a famous comic book character with songs by Bono).

Here are the 3 marketing challenges:

1. Build an audience for an unknown show.  Also known as Audience Development.

2. Reduce the risk that the average audience member feels when buying a ticket.  For most people Broadway is a big treat, more expensive than a movie.

3. Reduce the risk of the producers who need to maximize their limited marketing budgets.

An easy entry point is the name, The People In The Picture.  The name immediately conjures up an instinctual, universal behavior.  Everyone can identify with it.  Show me a person who hasn’t shown a picture of a family member, a child, a friend, as part of a story and I’ll show you a person who is lonely and sad.  Maybe we don’t show physical prints as much anymore, but certainly on our iPhones and Blackberrys we have pictures of our last vacation or our kids playing soccer.

The name goes deeper.  Pictures allow us to travel in time, emotionally if not physically.  Like the pictures in the Harry Potter movies, in our mind’s eye we can see the people come alive.  In this musical the people step out of the picture and the past comes alive, with the exuberance and tuml of life lived to the fullest. [Tuml being the Yiddish for noise, or tumult].

The musical’s creator, writer and lyricist, Iris Rainer Dart tells the story of this picture, the true history of the picture, that inspired this moving musical.  Then it was posted on Roundabout’s website as well as YouTube:

Roundabout is a subscription theater, so there is already a built-in audience.  It is important to have this base to work from, a cost-effective way of getting people into the theater to experience the show themselves.

Another factor is that this musical has real star power going for it.  This is where PR does best.  It’s the buzz factor.  Can this generate gossip?

So you’ll see many interviews with the team, from the amazing actress Donna Murphy or byline pieces by her.  To Iris Rainer Dart, who has been a TV comedy writer, novelist and screenwriter with major hits such as Beaches.  To the composers Mike Stoller — yes, that Mike Stoller of Hound Dog fame — and Artie Butler: two more talented composers working on Broadway you’ll not likely find today.

You’ll hear word of mouth, such as the Penn Club event on April 4th when Todd Haimes, artistic director of the Roundabout couldn’t contain his enthusiasm for the musical, while sitting on a panel on Life In The Theater to a crowd of Penn alumni and friends.  He shared the importance of Roundabout keeping theater healthy and robust by producing musicals with the power and beauty of The People In The Picture.

And you’ll hear Roundabout’s announcement on Morning Edition when you are still half asleep and already late for work.

More about this case-study-in-progress as it unfolds.  Perhaps we can get Iris Dart to share some of her observations about the marketing of a musical.