If you think that, you couldn’t be more WRONG!
While the power of ad sales may have declined, the influence of the review has stayed just as strong as it ever was. In fact, for the exception of word of mouth (surprise, surprise), reviews make up the single-largest external contributing factor when it comes to why people buy tickets to a show at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, where I am the Marketing Manager.
9 comments:
I'm going to try and avoid the fact that this article was poorly planned. There's no better way to capture your audience for an article about the power of a newspaper review than telling them that you put all of your advertising into digital ads and that the newspaper is failing financially.
This article really doesn't seem to be saying much. Not to mention, it was all written on the basis of a single newspaper, and a single theatre company. There was no additional analysis or data. How can we know that Peter Marks is not far more well known than other resident theatre reviewers for other newspapers? Not to mention, the minuscule differences in the revenue in the first place. This does seem to be saying that these newspaper reviews will create (or push away) a small percentage of revenue towards a production, however, this doesn't take any additional work from the marketing assistant at a theatre in the first place. If a newspaper is going to review your production, they're already going to do it, most of the time regardless of if you do anything or not.
So Newspaper are failing, this has been the case for a while. With rise of online newspapers, blogs and even Facebook no one has the need to go out a buy a newspaper. All the information can be found on our laptops. tablets and phones. I agree with Brennan why are we just looking at one newspaper, reviewing just one theater. Is this really the best way to inform the audience? I am going to say no, maybe having some other papers and theaters involved might change the way we see it. Regardless of this a theater is going to get reviewed online too and we do not even know what kind of revenue that brings in. This article is seriously lacking in information to properly inform the audience.
Newspapers play a very interesting role in today's society. When I was little the newspaper a a very big source of news. However, now with the internet i barely look at the newspaper. In fact, the last time I looked at a newspaper was when I was paper macheing my mask. In fact I don't even go to newspaper websites when I need news. I tend to go to twitter and Facebook when I need to know what is going on in the world. In terms of theater, I find that the internet has more to offer than newspapers. A newspaper is will have one review from opening night, and maybe if your luck an interview during tech. Where as, the internet has tons of blogs and other sources with critiques and feedback. I'm interested to see the future of this medium.
This article made me more interested in how marketing departments work than in the actual subject of the article (it seems pretty obvious that good reviews are going to bring in more people, and with reviews increasingly shifting towards digital format, it's not much of a commentary on the decline of newspapers at all.) What I really want to know how he got this data- how do you determine the percentage of your revenue that comes from reviews, as opposed to word of mouth or advertising? I know marketing doesn't just throw out advertisements and hope they work out, but it seems like what they do must be so much more complicated than it appears to be on the outside. They perform one of the most essential jobs in the theatre (it doesn't matter how great your show is if no one comes to see it), but I feel like their work is so different from the creative side that we end up ignoring it. Even though I don't want to go into marketing, I would definitely want to learn more about how this side of the business works- I think it would be very valuable as a theatre professional, no matter what department you are in.
First off, I definitely agree with Sarah here that studying marketing and ticket sales patterns is important for all theatre professionals. We can create our art all we want, but if nobody comes to see it, we won't make any money. With that said, I think this article, while perhaps a bit shallow in research, is important to consider. The fact that newspapers have basically become obsolete, yet written reviews still hold weight says a lot about the age we are in. Without any data to back it up, I would even go as far as to say that ticket sales may have even increased over the passed 10 or so years, as physical newspapers have been on the downfall. I say this because, with our new digital age, reviews and stories are even more widely accessible than they were when news was spread mainly through physical newspapers. As social media and our digital age progress, I think it will be essential to marketing departments to use this to their advantage. Theatre companies now have the power to reach millions of people on social media and through news websites, and I think we will continue to see that power turning into higher profits in the industry.
I don't think anyone is surprised by ads going digital, they follow the newspaper, and why should I have a newspaper if I can read the same articles online. But speaking for myself, I will never understand how reviews have so much sway. Often have my friends refused to see a movie or a play that got bad reviews but when I go to see anyway is perfectly enjoyable. Or the opposite where the review is great and piece just does not live up. Generally if everyone is saying its good or bad than the consensus reflect public opinion, but often things get vastly different reviews from different sources and then I think it comes down to personal preference. So if you are reading only one persons review I suggest going a little deeper.
We live in a society where we are always afraid to be the person to step up and take the first plunge so we look to "our neighbor". In this case "our neighbor" happens to be newspaper reviews. We also live in a society where we now time is money and life is short and best not to waste anything so we look to "our neighbor" to give us advice so we can make the best choice on the next step. And its great to see there is still a living need for newspapers. It the fault of our generation to one not like to have so much the physical validation from our media anymore but rather have anything and everything accessible to us instantly and free. My personal opinion of how to solve the newspaper problem is to first stop printing paper and switch to a subscription bases app service that has articles and picture and short video blurbs about what happening on the now, and include ads but for a yearly fee disable them. Personally I feel that's the only way to solve the problem our my privileged generation who wasn't real information without having to pay for it.
But back to my point we look towards others often to make the right decision and that is what is keeping the industry of print from letting go and and sinking to the bottom of the pool.
I actually disagree with this article completely. To me, unless the reviewer of the newspaper is someone whose opinion I know and trust, I am 100% not going to take it with anything more than a grain of salt. Especially being an active member to the performing arts community, I think of the reviews I read in the papers about the shows I'm working on and think to myself (quite frequently) "wow, that's what you chose to get out of this. Pft." I just find it incredibly hard to limit what I do and choose to engage with, because someone is paid to make snap judgements and publish it in the paper. Especially if for example someone is told to review a theatre's production of Love Labors Lost, and the critic hates shakespeare. How can you trust someone to be objective? The answer is you can't. So I have no idea how people can let their choices of what forms of art and entertainment they engage with be manipulated by someones completely subjective opinion.
Of course we are moving into a digital age, that has been the conversation for quite some time, and we continue to get deeper day by day, iphone renewal by iphone renewal. Some days, my inner voice screams Einstein's impressive quote, especially for his technologically lacking time (compared to ours), "I fear the day that technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." I'd have to agree, Einstein. We are slowly becoming idiots. Just as newspapers were a good start to spreading the news, it's just easier to find everything online, and in many cases, it's free because of the easy travel of information on the internet.
Apart from our slow evolution into our phones and laptops, the other part of this article is also particularly interesting. To have a critic give their opinion on a show is a great tool for an audience to have in deciding to see a show...as long as it is looked at as an opinion. It might be better to use the opinion of many critics in order to get a wider variety of opinion, but still this technique to judge a play is not perfect. To judge a play universally perfect is to point out all the objective parts, facts (for example, props), and apply them to the intent of everyone and thing on the stage. This is simply impossible for two reasons. One, there is an infinite amount of ways a play can be done. Two, there will be a different opinion for every single one of those plays. That's how we humans work.
While this system of critiquing may not be the perfect way to do it, it's the best we have. There will never be a perfect critique of a play, but they will always be agreed and disagreed on.
I find this to be interestingly similar to a court case. Just as there are 12 people of the jury (critics), there might be a difference of opinion on whether the defendant is guilty or innocent, and I'm willing to bet a few innocent people were found guilty and a few guilty people were found innocent. Again, this sure isn't perfect, but it's the closest version to perfect we've got.
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