Best and Worst Broadway Show Marketing 2016

They have to get butts in the seats to stay open. Whether it's by their logo, billboards, subway signs, radio ads, or social media, which shows do you feel did they best job getting the word out?

I thought America Psycho did a great job getting viability, but it didn't translate into box office success. Another older show (2015) that did a fantastic job especially with social media.

Worst award go to In Transit. The logo looks like an MTA campaign, not a show. And I can't recall seeing anything before it even started running.

How did AP advertise in NY? TV ads, print? I know it wasn't a show that appealed to everyone, and closed a short couple of months later. I really liked it though.

I would like to shoutout Hamilton's truly impressive poledancing for Leslie's tony and the tonys in general. It was really remarkable

IN TRANSIT, definitely. But TUCK EVERLASTING is a close second.

I know it's not a 2016 show, but I think Something Rotten consistently had an incredible marketing team and campaigns.

Great Comet and Something Rotten. I had forgotten about SR, but they had clever ads all around! Worst for In Transit. I was recently by the theater with my family and my mother and sister thought that the marquee was just an MTA sign. Yikes.

"Bright Star" also suffered from a lame title -- it gave NO clue as to what the show is about. And if you google Bright Star (without quotation marks) the third thing that pops up is a "home care and home health agency" -- if you google WITH quote marks that pops up fifth. Would you ever want audiences to think you've written a musical about old folks one stop away from a nursing home?

I think googling a title is one of the most important steps you can take when trying to decide what to call something. I enjoyed Bright Star a lot (despite the glaring plot hole) and will always think of it as the show that launched Carmen Cusack into the stratosphere. But the title didn't help.

Shuffle Along also should've pushed their four male stars as opposed to making it seem like Audra was the star.

¿Macavity? said: "Willie4316 said: "I vote Great Comet, DEH and TKAI for best promotions. A mix of tv ads, radio ads, flyers and subway signs.
"

Sorry for the extremely dumb question, but what is TKAI stand for? For the life of me I can't come up with what it means. Again, sorry.



The King and I. Took me a moment to figure it out too.

Broadway Bounce said: "And it will always be a mystery why Bright Star did not fully utilize Steve Martin's name in the marketing."

As I mentioned already, a celebrity writing a Broadway musical is not the same thing as actually being in the show. We all saw what happened with The Last Ship. Despite a critically-acclaimed score by Sting, the show spent the first ten weeks struggling at the box office, so Sting had to join the cast for seven weeks to save it. While business definitely improved when he went into the show, the producers noticed that the numbers were going to go down after his scheduled departure, so they pretty much decided to close The Last Ship with him.

Dear Evan Hansen has the worst. It's just bad Word Art.

In Transit isn't terrible, but it's bland promoting a bland show.

Best-Probably School of Rock and Waitress for new musicals, School of Rock had a TON of buzz during its rehearsals and already had promotion and advertisements MONTHS before it opened.....Waitress, not so much on the pre broadway buzz but once Jesse Mueller and Waitress and Broadway were all in the same sentence the show became pretty popular...

Worst-Tuck Everlasting, honestly I had no idea this show existed or that it was coming to broadway until one day I decided to go on Broadway.com and saw that it was in previews? A few YouTube ads and then the show made an Instagram account but after the tony nominations came out it kind of just disappeared? Bright Star wasn't to great either....Steve Martin was drawing attention but for promotion it was lacking? I went to New York in May last spring and saw maybe one billboard for it and that was it? Sad, two great shows that quickly closed.....

Mention-The Color Purple-(this is 2015 but oh well) I saw The Color Purple and thought it was absolutely amazing and at first the promotion was really good especially with Jennifer Hudson, Cynthia Erivo, and Danielle Brooks (just those three on one billboard causes good ticket sales) and for its first few months and after the Tony's, it did pretty good! But once fall 2016 rolled around, promotion for it just kind of stopped? Even with Erivo, Brooks, and Holiday in the show I just noticed that there wasn't a lot of promotion for it anymore.....which is why i think it led to it closure, it doesn't matter how long the show runs for it should always have good promotion to keep people interested!

Bright Star's marketing was so bad I had never even heard of it until I was sitting down watching the tonys. Just totally not even on the map. WHereas all the other performers I could talk intelligently about them to some degree