The Expensive Lie: Why Does Broadway Keep Spending Millions on Marketing That Doesn't Work?

[MezzA101]

Posted: 12/3/25 at 2:26pm

https://open.substack.com/pub/jharbour/p/the-expensive-lie?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=zjt6

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 12/3/25 at 3:58pm

Some thoughts on this article: 

#1. I think it's understood by almost everyone that word-of-mouth recommendations are more influential than digital ad campaigns in selling tickets. However, you can't get a word-of mouth campaign going without first convincing some people to see the play in the first place. 

Throwing out digital campaigns completely doesn't make as much sense as figuring out how to better target the digital ad spend. For example, instead of maybe a more general New York Times ad spend, put more priority on a retargeting campaign to people who read an article about that play or musical. 

#2. Speaking to influencer marketing, one thing that occurs to me is most Broadway shows are most papered at the end of a run, when it's clear the lights are about to be turned off. If you think your Broadway show has the goods, producers should be more aggressive in comping influencers during previews. There should also be a broader definition of influencers.  For example, Letterboxd sent me an invite to a Q&A screening of the Oscars contender The Secret Agent, even though I don't have a huge following, because they understand a critical mass of positive reviews of The Secret Agent on Letterboxd is cheap but strategic marketing win. 

#3. Maybe there was problem with the marketing campaigns for Lempicka and Real Women Have Curves, but the bigger problem was the musicals themselves. Lempicka was beloved by a few but also had a lot of people who saw the musical and reported it was a complete mess. Real Women Have Curves got more favorable feedback, but like that's a musical where the big empowering number was a boss telling her employees to strip down to their underwear. Those are not examples of shows that had everything going for it, but the marketing. 

#4. Getting the right influencers to promote a show is easier said than done. For example, Madonna is a huge Lempicka fan, but didn't actually see the show until it's closing was already announced. 

#5. Six is an example of a viral marketing done correctly, not wrong. Maybe the specific example of Katherine Howard’s “All You Wanna Do” didn't drive tickets sales, but Six might not have made it to Broadway if producers didn't encourage fans to film the final medley and share it on social media. 

Updated On: 12/4/25 at 03:58 PM

[veronicamae]

Posted: 12/3/25 at 7:32pm

It's like...Advertising 101 that someone needs to see a product 7-20 times before they decide to buy it. That's the entire point.... lol

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/4/25 at 12:38am

Another blind leading the blind article suggesting the writer, a student, needs to keep studying. I think Jonathan and Veronica get things pretty right. I appreciate that Jonathan did but I'm not going to parse what he said. I'm already numb.

[Melissa25]

Posted: 12/4/25 at 10:27am

I kind of like the idea of KPI - Key passion indicators. It baffles me that Show Score and BWW don’t allow us as perhaps part of that 6% to interact with one another in a more interesting way to drive that word of mouth. On Show Score, I really enjoyed getting notifications when other avid theater fans reported on a new show. It made me see it faster and share my thoughts too.  That functionality unfortunately was removed so now I find myself looking at that leaderboard much less frequently. Plus there are way too many people now with one review listed so it has become untrustworthy.

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 12/4/25 at 11:00am

It's odd that the article used Six as an example of mishandled virality when Be More Chill is a much better example. It had an enormous online following that was able to elevate a show that ran for less than a month in a regional theater to a sold-out off-Broadway run, then to Broadway, where it flopped. It didn't flop because fans misinterpreted the show from the animatics and fan art, it flopped because the audience it connected with the most were teenagers, and teenagers don't have the money or the ability to travel to New York on their own to see a show.

The 6% idea and the Key Passion Index are great ideas when you're talking about Instagram followers or A24 films, but Instagram is free and A24 films are shown in every multiplex in America. On Broadway, the problem isn't finding the 6% who want to see the show 10 times, it's finding the 6% who can see the show 10 times.

Updated On: 12/4/25 at 11:00 AM

[Kad]

Posted: 12/4/25 at 11:58am

I do think Broadway broadly has a marketing problem but this essay doesn't really support its thesis very well. The Six example is particularly very odd, considering Six came over here already having built a dedicated following through its cast album and media appearances in the UK. 

But Broadway marketing often seems like it's behind the times and trying hard to catch up, particularly in regards to social media. Some productions have had authentic social media breakouts, like Oh Mary, Death Becomes Her, John Proctor, etc, while others just seem to be looking at those successes and go, "let's do that, too" and make their cast jump on whatever TikTok trend was hot a month before. Authenticity, or at least the appearance of authenticity, is really key in things like this.

Broadway also does not seem to have adjusted to the shift away from advance ticket purchasing to purchasing closer to performance. I think more could be done to either incentivize advance sales or lean into day/week-of purchasing.

But yeah fundamentally, Broadway has to contend with a unique problem in entertainment- it is fixed to a single geographical location, which means if you're not in the immediate area, the cost burden of seeing a show has to include travel, accommodation, meals, potential loss of income if you need to take time off from work, etc. A $200 ticket is essentially going to end up costing several times more. This isn't a fixable problem and it can be mitigated basically only two ways: cheaper tickets, which make recouping even harder, or the show becoming such a hot ticket that people are willing to shell out a lot of money, which is a major gamble. 

 

[HogansHero]

Posted: 12/4/25 at 2:12pm

Thanks, Kad, for making a number of trenchant observations. In addition to the very atypical geographic impact, the equally atypical timing factor (every show floats (or sinks) on its own bottom and money spent on long term marketing often does not necessarily inure to the benefit of the original investors linearly). Likewise, while (as a long-gone major producer once said to me) it is essential to market beyond target audiences (in a 1000-1500 seat theatre, that's basically your market du jour), the rules that apply at almost every line item in a film do not apply at all. [Films are designed to expand rapidly and in many directions so marketing investment is much easier to justify.]

The list goes on and on. If a show is heavily weighted to a young audience, social media is of course going to look large, but if a show needs 25% of its audience from the >45 crowd, not marketing in that direction is where your profit went. Finally, the article suggests someone who has an interest in becoming a player in the "new marketing," which may explain the singular focus. This means several things, one being bias, another being the author is stuck in time {in 20 years, will marketers still be talking about TikTok or will we laugh about it as we do, e.g., MySpace}. I remember when the sensational marketing story was those taxi-top ads for Avenue Q. I also remember all of the articles extolling the significance of Coca Cola advertising, and the singular images Dewynters developed for poster, subway, FOH, etc.

Hyperfocus is always a red flag.