It must be close to the end of the scholastic year, because I've gotten a few more emails than usual from high school and college students (including one from China) asking me for quotes or looking for answers to questions for the end-of-term papers about Broadway and Off-Broadway.
My favorite one came from a young man who lives in the great state of Texas, and it went something like this:
"My name is Elijah and I am a theatre student at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. We are currently doing a project on theatre jobs and I chose to do mine on the job of a producer because I've been watching too much Smash."
As I wrote about in this blog from 2009, one of the great effects of dramatic entertainment is its ability to inspire.
And hopefully, Smash will continue to inspire young men and women like Elijah to learn more about producing . . . and maybe they'll find out they like it . . . and want to do it.
Because the more people we have producing, the better our business and the better our art.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- Broadway Investing seminar on 4/14. Register today!
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
The Broadway industry tends to be pretty insular . . . and the outside business world rarely pokes their head in our world to see what's going on.
But when they do, it's pretty fascinating.
Case in point:
An article appeared in Slate last week discussing the results of a study by social scientists Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro, who jumped into our fray to get a better understanding of "How Creativity Works."
They studied almost 500 Broadway musicals produced between 1945 and 1989 to try and determine what the optimum relationship should be in order to produce the most success.
Heady, right?
You can read the capsule results in the article here . . . but here's the upshot: they determined that if a team knows each other too well, they are more inclined to produce the same ol' stuff they've always produced, and their material will lack innovation. If they don't know each other at all, well, it'll be hard for them to literally get on the same page.
Makes sense, right?
I'm not sure if this article is going to alter how I look for creative teams, but it is a fascinating read (and if this subject interests you, you should buy this heck of a book that teaches lessons on how to be more creative).
And it did remind me of a trend that I've seen, that I've used and that I believe will continue to develop over the next decade.
We are living in the era of the community. Every day we witness new ideas of groups of people coming together (in most cases, online) and finding power through the development of a community, whether that community is five people or five million. Crowd-funding, meetups . . . the Arab Spring . . . are all examples of this new phenomenon.
The next step is to let a community create.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- RSVP to the Shooting Crows reading in our studios! Click here.
- Broadway Investing seminar on 4/14. Register today!
- Win tickets to see Once on Broadway! Click here.
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
When I first started my plans for Godspell, I could have only dreamed that there might one day be legislation that would make it easier for startups from all different industries to have easier ways to access capital to get their shows/businesses off the ground.
If you've been following the blog, then you know I've been following this issue very closely. In December, I reported that the House of Representatives approved a bill that would actually make crowdfunding possible, without making the entrepreneur jump through too many regulatory hoops and without paying unnecessary legal fees (that just waste valuable startup resources that could be spent on, you know, things like marketing that could actually keep the business running longer and therefore keep more people employed.)
Let me again be clear and say how important I think certain amounts of regulation are in order to protect potential investors . . . but, well, to put it simplistically, it has always seemed a little crazy to me that as casinos pop-up all over creation, any individual, no matter how much money they make, or where they live, can gamble away their life savings without a question . . . but if your Uncle wanted to raise money for a restaurant, you might be restricted from investing in that restaurant. If that's not an example of more power to the 1%, I don't know what is.
You can read that December update here, but the upshot was that the bill passed through the House faster than Producers make it to the podium when they win Best Musical.
Flash forward to this week, and . . . well, the bill has been renamed the JOBS Act, and has been approved by the Senate (with a couple of amendments) and went back to the House, where it was also reapproved . . . and now, gulp, gulp, is on its way to the White House for signature.
And, well, I'd bet the capitalization of Spider-Man that Obams is going to sign this thing faster than . . . well faster than Producers make it to the podium when they win Best Musical. (I tried to think of another analogy, but frankly, there is just nothing faster than Producers racing to the podium when they win Best Musical.)
It's a little premature to predict the effects this law will have on our industry (capital limits will restrict most of us from being able to use the structure), but the effects on entrepreneurship will be awesome.
You can read the update from the Times here, which includes this awesome quote from the House Majority Leader:
“The bipartisan JOBS Act represents an increasingly rare legislative victory in Washington where both sides seized the opportunity to work together, improved the bill and passed it with strong bipartisan support."
Bipartisan support. How often do you hear that lately?
I'll be sure to let you know when this sucker is a law.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- RSVP to the Shooting Crows reading in our studios! Click here.
- Win tickets to see Once on Broadway! Click here.
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
Here's an idea . . .
In all fairness, I'm not even sure websites can do this yet. Well, I'm sure they can, but I'm not sure they are doing this yet.
I know our industry isn't . . . but I think you'll agree after you read this entry, that we should.
If you're advertising a show, you may buy banner ads across a news website like NYTimes.com or Playbill or even Huffpo.
Your ads are served across the network, in most cases, or what is called ROS or Run of Site, which means they are served on all pages. Or, maybe you target just the home page, or a listings page, etc.
But what if you could target just your content pages . . . and what if you could retarget the people that visit those pages?
Follow me.
If a customer visits Playbill.com and happens to see an editorial article on, oh, I don't know, Godspell, let's say . . . and clicks on that link to read that article . . . then "duh" wisdom will tell you that the clicker is a qualified lead for Godspell. Someone reading editorial is more likely to be interested, and therefore more likely to make a purchase.
Well, the great thing about niche industry sites like Playbill and BroadwayWorld is that . . . yep . . . they contain many pages about similar content. There are a ton of articles about Godspell, Mormon, Wicked, etc. And someone reading more than two articles is more inclined to purchase than someone reading one article. And someone reading three articles is more inclined to purchase than someone reading two articles, and so on, and so on.
Imagine if news sites gave you the following options:
Google allows some of the easier bullet points on this list to happen with sites on its content network. But I'm lobbying for our sites (especially the ones that don't use the Google Content network) to look at building their own network that allows us to focus on retargeting those folks who have read all about the shows, but haven't purchased yet.
What the internet allows us to do is get very, very specific in terms of the people we target. It allows us to fire missiles instead of dropping big ol' expensive bombs.
Less waste and better results.
Maybe we can't do this yet, but we can apply the theory. Editorial means interest. Find the people reading your articles, and you'll find the people who just might buy your tickets.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- RSVP to the Shooting Crows reading in our studios! Click here.
- Win tickets to see Once on Broadway! Click here.
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
If Spring is in the air, then that means festival season is right around the corner. What festivals, you ask?
Well, we've got NYMF, The Fringe, the Midtown Fringe, The AFO, and by the time I finish this blog, there will probably be about 8 more.
Why? Because festivals are fun . . . and productive.
And also very tricky.
If you've ever considered producing at the festival level, you should head to the Snapple Theater Center this Sunday for a FREE panel discussion sponsored by the lovely folks at The Off Broadway Alliance.
The day will begin with coffee, bagels (and networking, duh) at 11:30 and then at noon, three experts in festival writing and producing will take the Snapple stage . . . Hunter Bell (writer of SILENCE!, [title of show], Now. Here. This.), Elena K. Holy (Head Honcho at The Fringe), Isaac Robert Hurwitz ('Da Man at NYMF) and Michael Wolk (The Big Guy at The All for One Festival).
For more details and to RSVP, click here.
I just wish they had this panel when I was prepping Altar Boyz for the NYMF.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- RSVP to the Shooting Crows reading in our studios! Click here.
- Win tickets to see Once on Broadway! Click here.
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
So, as a person who can't stand the gym unless it involves a basketball, I forced myself to get a personal trainer recently . . . who then forces me to do things I can't stand.
But so far, so good . . . and yesterday I even got a pearl of wisdom from my exercise task-master who has pectorals the size of throw pillows.
In between my grunts, Pectoral Pillow man said this to me . . . "Ken, you're going to see immediate results. That's what happens. If you haven't been training, and then you start, BAM! (Note from Ken - that's how he talks - in BAMs) But after that? That's when the hard work begins. Because keeping the growth going is the challenge."
Of course, I started thinking about other things in my life that I wanted to better, and I found a very similar pattern.
I like to play chess. And after reading one book and having a few lessons, my rating went up dramatically. After that? Took a lot longer to raise it just a few points.
I started investing in the stock market when I was 23. And after one seminar and a mag subscription, my picks were better. After that, it got more challenging.
And then, of course, I got to shows.
Sales for shows are the same. It's very easy to get a burst of sales activity (improvement) at your announcement, or at the beginning of your sales cycle. You're new, you've got the most media on your side, and you're learning fast.
We've all seen shows, even some from this season, which have come out of the gate with monster numbers, and then . . . well, some aren't even here anymore.
Want to know how good a marketer is? Don't judge them at the start. Judge them by the middle.
Because that's where the real grunting is required.
(Got a comment? I love 'em, so comment below! Email subscribers, click here, then scroll down, to say what's on your mind!)
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FUN STUFF:
- RSVP to the Shooting Crows reading in our studios! Click here.
- Win tickets to see Once on Broadway! Click here.
- Take a Broadway Road Trip from DC on 4/28. Click here.
The producer of the Off-Broadway productions of Altar Boyz, The Awesome 80s Prom and My First Time as well as You're Welcome America, 13, Speed the Plow, and Blithe Spirit on Broadway.
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