Neil Patrick Harris' awesome speech

West Side Story TV spot

The recent Broadway production of West Side Story has been doing very well during their new Broadway run even during these few weeks of 2010. January and February are infamous slow months for Broadway and the tourist trade slows down during the colder months. For that reason I find very interesting, and daring, that the West Side Story produces have started a TV campaign.

The spot is reported to be the brain child of producer Jeffrey Seller. It’s a very simple spot, but a brilliant idea. With a very similar look than the famous 1961 movie, the camera follows some of the gang members through the streets of New York. They jump over a fence to land on the stage of the Palace Theater. The narrative not only takes advantage of the movie success, but that jump over the fence is a wonderful way to say, if you liked the movie now you can see it live. And of course, if you are not familiar the the movie is still a very appealing concept.

One complain, although the TV spot is playing in the home page of the Broadway production website, it is not portable, a huge mistake, since the theater boards have been talking about it, and it could have been a nice way to drive traffic back to the site and it also will have helped with SEO. So the only copy that I can post here is the one from YouTube. Yeah, I know that it is a dedicated page to the production, but it’s an step removed from the purchasing point (Ticketmaster.com)

I’ve talked about Phantom’s sequel before, Love Never Dies. Really like what they are, a lot of very nice things doing from a communications perspective. Great mix of different digital channels to create great Buzz. The presentation at the West End with an audience selected through a digital sweepstakes; a video montage for the Coney Island Waltz , etc.

When promoting a show, that it is not to open for a few months, I have noticed that the main problem is to have assets that will allow you to bring the show to live. What it is really a challenge since the show doesn’t actually exist, yet. This has been address in different forms, from the High Fidelity videos prior to starting rehearsal (what I thought it was a good idea) to the strange illustration artwork for last year Broadway Blithe Spirit (that was rather awful).


Not to digress, I got a promotional email to pre-order Lover Never Dies CD. A brilliant idea to keep the show top of mind, it may help pushing the album what only means more promotional opportunities. But the email came from the Really Useful Group. What kind of sender is that? I know, I know it’s ALW’s company and the producers of the show. But Couldn’t have come up with something a bit more ‘consumer friendly?’

Creating a logo for Ragtime

Last Sunday, the digital version The New York Times Arts Fall Preview included an interactive feature on the development of the Ragtime artwork. The feature narrated by Gail Anderson, the creative director of design for SpotCo, shows different approaches and tag lines for the show that opens this October 09.

Since SpotCo break through campaigns for Chicago and Rent, they have delivered some of the strongest artwork and visuals of the theater / Broadway world. And their Ragtime work is an excellent sample of their strongest suit.

The Ragtime feature covers four different concepts and some variations. Gail explains the decision criteria and how important for a Broadway campaign is to be flexible and expandable. Flexible because there are a lot of elements that may need to be featured (such as different performers, shots of the actual show, etc) and these elements may change through the run of the show. Also a campaign may live for years to come and require different interactions.

The final choice is beautiful and plays the then and now them on the line‘Their Time / Our Time'. Personally, although I love the visual, I think some of the other tag lines were stronger, I really liked ‘This is the Sound of / Something Beginning / An Era Exploding / Everything Changing’ that I think are more relevant to the themes of the show.

For the time being, Ragtime has a very straight forward website, but I will keep an eye out on them and see what do they come up with.

The long planed sequel to The Phantom of the Opera seems to be gearing up for its West End premiere.

The original Phantom has been doing very well digitally with the engaging vBlog “The Phantom’s Lair”, although sadly it hasn’t been updated in almost a year. What it is a pity, because it such a fantastic channel for a show like Phantom that has been running for so long but it is still well alive and kicking.

But back to the future: A straightforward site was launched recently, for the sequel, Love Never Dies, in conjunction with a twitter feed and a FaceBook widget gearing up to some big announcement for this coming October 8th.

The site has a simple intro that bridges from the original Phantom to the sequel that takes place in NY’s Connie Island. The twitter is, of course, in the voice of the Phantom, and it started with two hilarious tweets in Latin (a first one?).The widget is again a twitter feed with news about the sequel.

Maybe a bit too much twitter, but it’s still early and It would be interesting what other digital strategies the Phantom comes up with. It is a no-brainer for such a global production, as the show is, to take advantage of the digital space.

Careful with what you twit, people will listen.

As a companion to my previous post two more stories about social networking. A happy one and unhappy one.

The Happy One
Next To Normal is a dark and twisted musical about manic depression. Not your everyday topic. With a rock score and a brilliant performance by Alice Ripley it opened Off-Broadway last season and some retooling, opened on Broadway this season (2008-2009) with a discreet success and some Tony nods.

The New York Times, in their Internet section, not their Arts one, presents a great case study of how to use Twitter to promote a show. Instead of simply using the characters voices commenting in current events, the show writer, Brian Yorkey, rewrote the play for the twitter format, managing to enhance the play presenting it in a parallel way.

Congrats to the guys over at Situation Interactive, responsible for the idea!

The Unhappy One
Last week was reported, in something called the TwitterGate (theater types can be very dramatic) of a casting director using twitter during auditions and making comments, mostly nasty comments, about the performers auditioning. Again, personal and private are getting all mixed up here. But obviously in this case, the twitter was being used for business reasons, a promotional tool for the casting agency. But the casting director in question was writing it from a personal perspective. Making some-what-witty comments more appropriated for a sotto-voice between friends.

This article in the New York Times covers the sorry story in detail.

Careful with what you post, Bosses will listen

Posting on FaceBook has become ubiquitous. Everybody has a profile and tries to gather as many “fiends” as possible. And, it’s not only showing off. It’s also broadening our audience.

One of the things I find more interesting about this embracing of the digital social networking, is how lines are blurring between our personal and professional lifes. As an example, when a co-worker married his gay lover, we found about it through the ceremony photos he posted on FaceBook. Or, a friend of mine who works as a social worker at a school and keeps getting invitation from kids at her school to become friends.

So here there is one more victim of all this mess up we like to call social networking. A girl in the UK, pissed off at her boss vented and insulted him, on a FaceBook status update. But, ops, she forgot that they were FaceBook friends, possible digitally befriended him when things were better. In short, he read the post and what is most ironic; fire her on the spot, on FaceBook. I guess you can call that social networking.