Thursday, February 21, 2013
Invest in unknowns to make them stars (reinvent marketing idea)
2AMt » Blog Archive: Thesis: Celebrity is one of the strongest social forces in America. Increasingly, though, people are responding to apparently oxymoronic “Narrow fame;” that is, being highly salient for some quality among a modest sized niche of people. Theatre companies can take advantage of this phenomenon by promoting their currently unknown performers as though they were already well known.
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3 comments:
When I see a film that advertises a star that I haven't heard of, it doesn't give me any further incentive to come to the theater. Personally. However when I do come to Broadway and see a performance I especially like, I never really feel the need to find more shows that actor is in. Unlike the film world, you can't simply buy all the movies a director has directed or an actor has been in. It takes more effort. It is more difficult to become a loyal fan, because the work isn't as accessible or changing.
I actually think this idea might have some merit, even beyond what the writer suggests. We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, where people can be famous or absolutely nothing, and yet they go on talk shows and shoot magazine covers and have their own reality shows (I'm looking at you, Kardashians). It's almost come to the point where someone saying they are famous almost makes them so. There are lots of instances of a group of people "pranking" those around them by pretending that someone is famous, and treating them as if they were: asking for autographs, taking photos with them, etc. 9 times of out 10, the surrounding people join in, not realizing that the person they are taking pictures with is a high school senior from three blocks away. Because of this, just putting an actor's name up in lights with the name of the show may actually fool people into believing that he is an industry name that they should know and be excited to see. It seems kind of dumb (and is), but it just might work.
The concept of narrow fame and investment in your new stars is HUGE for our graduates - just think about how Corey Cott has gone from senior at CMU into one of the big new stars of Broadway (and will likely have many job offers after his time at Newsies ends) because Disney invested in an unknown and brought him up to being a superstar. It is interesting to consider this cross-media as well, as we move toward a much more integrated media culture and start to see those theatrical celebrities with narrow New York fame (say, the stars of Book of Mormon) gaining larger national fame as a function of those investments, even outside the arena of narrow fame (say, Josh Gad's return to TV on 1600 Penn). The element in the spread was his involvement with a big show paired with the marketing push of his story out beyond even the narrow grounds of New York theatre - Josh became an Actor (with the capital A) with name recognition by the time he joined the 1600 Penn cast (not to mention the fact that he's a great actor, of course). So pushing those local stars could end up having a similar spread, with the proper advertising.
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