Taking a break from Project Introspection today to focus on a marketing question.  I was eating lunch with a colleague yesterday and talking about what I wanted out of getting involved with a theatre company here.  I basically explained that I want to learn, to share my ideas and to help out to the best of my ability.  I started talking about an idea I had for a marketing plan.

You all remember that movie The Blair Witch Project, right?  One of the reasons why the movie was so successful is the producers built a cult following before the movie was even produced.  The put out information that made it seem as if the story were true, that students really did disappear and this really was footage that was recovered.

Of course, it was all fake and scripted, but it piqued the interest of the country and became a box office success.

So my question was, why don’t more theatres do that kind of stuff?  

I’ve been in Chicago for three months and I honestly haven’t seen any advertisements for any theatre stuff except for the major companies like Broadway in Chicago and The Goodman.  I don’t know what’s going on in the smaller storefront theatres.  The only advertisements I’ve seen are flyers in windows and maybe in some of the less-read magazines going around the city.

And of the advertisements I have seen, they all seem to say “Pleaaaaaaaase come see our show!  We put a lot of hard work into it and we don’t want to have wasted our time, so pleaaaaaase come give us your money and watch our show!”  Basically, they put out the who/what/where/when/how much, but they never explain the why. 

WHY should I see your show?  What makes it interesting enough that I should take the time, effort and money to go see your show?

Do something to make me interested.

I wrote a play two years ago and I’ve been working on it intermittently for awhile.  It’s a play based on the old Pied Piper of Hamelin story — you know the one, the rats and the piper that takes away the kids and all that. 

Let’s use that as an example.

How can we get the public interested in that?  Let’s take a page from Blair Witch and put up a website that pushes an agenda — rats are a problem.  And they are in any major city, especially Chicago.  Rats!  More rats!

Write letters to the editors of various publications complaining about rats and wistfully wishing that someone like the Pied Piper could come and get rid of them, put up flyers around town:  ”Got rats? Call the Piper!”.  Remind the public of the story of the Pied Piper, remind them how relevant rats are to their daily lives.

Get them thinking about rats and keeping the story of the Pied Piper in the back of their minds.  All of these things can be done fairly cheaply.

Then a week or two before the show, blow the rest of your marketing money on advertisements in local papers, on local TV, on the radio.  With the economy in a slump right now, with the presidential election over, ad prices are dirt cheap (or so my father, an advertisement salesman, tells me).   

The people will see your advertisement, say “Oh, wow, I was just thinking about that story… this could be interesting!”  They’ve had exposure after exposure to the theme and story of the Pied Piper over the past several weeks (”Got rats? Call the Piper!” “Dear Editor, rats are a huge problem in Chicago.  Gosh, I wish there were someone like the Pied Piper around!  What is the city going to do about it?”).  

We know that long-term memory is triggered by multiple exposures to the same stimulus.  If you put out one ad in the paper, people are going to forget about it very quickly.  But week after week of “Oh, hey, don’t forget about rats” and subtle reminders of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, they’ll have a little bit of the story stored up in their minds, so when you go “BAM! PIED PIPER PLAY!” it sticks.

This wouldn’t work for every play, but it’s a different approach than I usually see.  What I usually see is:

“Come see our play!  Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7pm, 10 bucks! It’s funny! Check it out!”

…yeah, right.

The Prof wrote a blog a long time ago about how we should be putting on plays that are relevant to our communities.  You don’t have to pick topics that are relevant now.  You could MAKE them relevant.  Were rats on the forefront of people’s minds before I started this ad campaign?  No, probably not.  But after papering the city with flyers about rat problems, letters to the editors, calls to radio shows… it’s more relevant than it was before, and that just might be enough to draw a full house.

Thoughts?  I’m sure I’m missing a lot, but this was just something I was thinking of yesterday and I’d love to hear some responses.