SOR 039: How Much Should Marketing Affect Show Selection?

I don't advise picking shows just because they would be easy to market, but you should be aware of what marketing challenges you're creating for yourself as you put together your season.

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Being able to promote a show (or choosing one that’s so popular it doesn’t require much sophisticated marketing) isn’t the only consideration when selecting a show. There are artistic and logistic concerns, but usually we want an audience to come see our productions. Instead of picking a good show and hoping for the best, it’s worth understanding in broad terms what it will take to promote the show so you can make an educated decision about what you can expect when you put that show on the stage.

In this episode:

• how deep do you need to go – during the selection phase you don’t need a detailed marketing plan, but you do need a big picture view of what it will take to promote the show
• how many “built in” sales do you have – how many people are going to show up just based on the name of the show?
• who will you need to reach – who’s the ideal audience for this production that you don’t already have in your back pocket?
• what do you already do well – you probably already have a few marketing tactics that you can pull together pretty easily
• when can you ignore marketing – sometimes you need to ignore promotional viability and do a show because you need to do it

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