HogansHero said: "@Alice,
It's never one thing, of course, and I hate 20/20 hindsight, plus I am not convinced anything would truly have been effective because of the many false producing steps that have been rehearsed here ad infinitum, but I think at the core of the campaign would be 2 things: communicating the "coolness" of the earlier productions (enthusiastic interviews, etc.) and overcoming the "I don't want to sit through War and Peace" barrier (finding that "moment" that conveys excitement, shows off a hint of the songs, creates an icon, give the show a sense of humor and enjoyment). Instead we got Groban (not helping on the cool front), that fiasco with Ars Nova (that made the whole enterprise less cool) and a failure to confront the Tolstoy thing (some people have been mentioning Les Miz above-that's a template. I like Spotco, but I think this needed something more outside the box than it got. Ask me again tomorrow; I may have a different answer. 
"
I was glancing at one old YouTube ad which showed a little spectacle but, despite highlighting favorable reviews, was dominated by a ponderous announcer reading them. It certainly didn't convey a sense of fun at all. And there's no sound, just this baritone-voiced guy making the show sound boring even as one of the reviews he read compared it to Hamilton.
The challenge for the producer was to turn Great Comet into a must-see event, even for people who had seen it before. Overcoming resistance to War and Peace was an issue. It's a famously daunting novel, if only for its length. Highlighting the show's freshness and fun seemed critical. And they had plenty of things to work with. One later promotional clip - from April - was a shortened version of the "Prologue," and it managed - with rapid-fire clips, to convey a sense of excitement. Strikingly, Josh Groban is seen only in profile, at the end of "Pierre," but there is lots of footage of the rest of the cast. If I hadn't seen it, this clip would have made me want to go. It looks like a really cool spectacle, the sort of show that a younger person would want to see.
Great Comet had its off-putting qualities (a quick scroll through other threads gives a reminder), but it also had some really beautiful songs and eye-catching spectacle. It did well in the Tonys performance because that sense of fun shined through.
I can't help but think the hiring of Josh Groban was a mistake, even though I thought he was wonderful in the show (and apparently well-liked by everyone involved). Hiring Groban, the least cool pop sensation around, sent a signal. This was a star vehicle now, aiming for Groban's older, decidedly unhip fanbase. But that plan seemed doomed to failure for several reasons. First, Groban's part was not large enough to satisfy people coming to see him, until the last 25 minutes. And Great Comet was still going to be its unconventional self, with an African-American unknown playing a Russian countess and a bunch of other unknowns from the shows' previous incarnations featured in major roles. Second, as noted, hiring a star on Broadway means everyone expects another star to replace him - setting up the fiasco to come.
Great Comet needed to sell itself as can't-miss theater, but it's hard to do that when you're telling people to come to see Josh Groban in his Broadway debut too. And Groban failed to do what Bette Midler did in Hello, Dolly. He didn't sell enough tickets. He did well, especially given his smaller role and lower star power, but this should have been a foreseeable problem.
PaulWom makes a reasonable point that the show itself may have been the problem, that while it had strong supporters, it alienated plenty of people who did see it, leading to mixed word-of-mouth. Dave Malloy kind of conceded this point during the Onaodowan fiasco, saying Great Comet is a "weird" show that apparently needs a star.
But I'm not sure Malloy is right. Great Comet never was sold as an event show, as Hamilton was done so brilliantly despite off-putting elements like a rap-heavy score. Kagan and folks promoting Comet tried to split the difference, while running up huge costs that required it to be the event show the producers never had the guts to sell it as - without Groban as an undoubtedly expensive security blanket. (I must emphasize again that I thought Groban was great. I got the Broadway version of cast recording in part because of him.)
It's quite possible, of course, that nothing would have worked on Broadway. Most shows fail, commercially if not artistically. But it seems hard to produce a musical that requires everything, literally everything, to go right for it to have a chance to break even.
