Selling Out: Have you tried live-streaming yet? Maybe a live interview or some behind-the-scenes fun from one of your productions? Well, here’s an eye-opening fact about this social media trend: Facebook users comment 10 times more on live videos than on regular videos.
This is just one useful tidbit from the infographic below (created by direct response marketing agency Koeppel Direct and posted on MarketingProfs), which highlights why live-streaming can be a good addition to your arts marketing plans: It taps into people’s fear of missing out.
5 comments:
We've seen a ton of articles regarding whether or not businesses should be live streaming in the past few years, and I was definitely hoping that this article would provide a bit more detailed insight into why specifically they feel that theaters should be live streaming, rather than just statistics about how live streaming has shown a great deal of positive engagement in recent times. It's pretty clear that live streaming has exploded in popularity, with services such as Twitch for game streaming showing an insane amount of popularity and social media apps adding live stream features. I definitely see how live streaming could allow for theaters to create a larger online presence, however, I feel as though I've yet to seen it being done the right way. I'm not sure that live streaming from a smaller regional theatre company will garner as much engagement as the article is suggesting, depending on the content of that live stream.
This was a topic that came up in our Theater Management course a few times last year and I would argue on both sides of the issue. Part of the discussion was that the upcoming generations do not want to leave the comfort of their own personal space. Why would we want to leave our apartment, drive to the theatre, find parking, sit there for 3 hours, drive park, and find parking outside your house. Whether or not you agree with that assumption of our generation, it’s an interesting point. People’s priorities and interests are changing and they are moving inward. They want a customizable experience and theatre is essentially the opposite of that. You don’t always have a lot of options depending on where you live, you don’t pick the location, and there are many other things you don’t get to pick. I’ll be curious to see in the next 5-10 years if live streaming of theatre becomes popular, but I have a feeling that it won’t. Additionally, the infographic in the article is geared more toward marketing engagement and social media presences.
The line that stood out to me immediately was that live-streaming “taps into people’s fear of missing out” which is so true. Everyone knows that a live stream is not recorded (or usually is not) or released later. So if you don’t stop and watch it now, you probably wont ever have the chance again. The article also makes a lot of good points on the idea of knowing you are watching real people in real time, so it makes it a more intimate experience. The fact also that there are usually no ads (or shorter ads) when watching a live stream rather than normal TV instantly makes it a more pleasurable experience. I agree with Brennan that I wish the article focused more on how theatre could/should use live streaming to increase an audience base, but the article gives some good statistics for the types of things people look for (like behind the scenes content) and shows that more than half of people watch live steams of funny and entertaining streams and 38% watch music concert and events, both of which theatre fits into.
This is an interesting topic and when I saw the article I was immediately thinking that it meant live streaming shows. If that were the case I would be disagreeing right now because theatre cannot be captured in video the way it is presented live. They also create different experiences. However, this article talks about one of the more shrouded in mystery part of theatre being live streamed. To a degree I very much agree with this idea. I have always found it cool seeing how things are made or done and even now being in theatre and having that knowledge, it is still cool to see the creation of some projects. However, I also feel it can ruin the experience and especially so if you are person, like me, who would watch a bunch of these and learn everything they could. It would ruin it because now you would pay attention to see how things are being done and the details than the story or what’s going on. With that said, I still believe it should be done but in a limited manor. Like don’t stream the building of a set but maybe the makeup for one of the main actors. Maybe stream a small set piece and the creation of a prop but don’t stream everything. Just enough for it to be interesting and not too much that it could side track people when they actually see theatre.
I think one of the biggest reasons people tend to live stream is because the deal it reaches a larger audience and is able to greatly increase their visibility among the community. I also worked on some companies that do include this in order to act as a promotional item for upcoming events thus providing a select viewing sneak peek by catching it with the crowd viewing it for the first time. However, I do think that in this world that is diving deeper and deeper into the copyright issues that we see today. That there will be a surge of issues as this continues to gain momentum in our industry. I have worked with a live streaming concert before that I have never worked with full-fledged productions that are being streamed live. It news it much more towards live television than a standard theatrical experience which might add to the complexities.
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