Rian Durham from Situation Interactive | Showbizu x Broadway League

I'm Ryan Patrick Durham.

Ryan Patrick Durham, what got you to this chair today? How did you end up in this crazy world?

Well, I took a Lyft to get here. That's how I got into this chair today. I started off as an intern at a production company. It was first in film, and that's kind of where I got my feet wet in the actual business side of entertainment and all that. I've always had a passion for theater. My degree is in musical theater. I studied theater in college and in high school. I started off acting when I was 8 years old in community theater and really found a passion moving away from the acting side of things and getting into the business side of things. And so really kind of first got my feet wet as an intern and seeing what everyone does and looking at GMs and, you know, company managers and producers and actors and agents and figuring out, well, where do I feel like I fit in most and what excites me? And then found this world of advertising and digital advertising and digital marketing for entertainment and theater properties and said, oh my god, this is amazing. It's all this data, it's all this information, it's all these cool things you can do with targeting and media, plus it's theater. Like, these are my two favorite things in the world. Why don't I make money doing it? And then now I do make money doing it. So that's how I got to this chair today.

Describe your position then. What does one do, an actor who has now transitioned What is your day-to-day?

So my day-to-day, and I'm an account director at Situation, and we're a digital-first agency, so really it's kind of a digital marketing manager overseeing a show's digital online footprint. So that ranges anything from a website to paid digital media to social media, organic content, paid content, YouTube, all of that type of stuff. So my day is kind of all over the place. There could be an hour that I spend just looking at analytics on a website. I might be reading a media report. I might be putting together a strategy document talking about how we're gonna launch the show or how we're gonna push this great piece of content out. I could be looking at return on investment for some of our campaigns and looking at— I know that this ad has returned a 200x return on what we've spent. So there's really no typical day, but a lot of it is spent mixing data and crafting insights and finding out how to really amplify the online presence of a show that I work on.

And you've used the word data a few times. If we go back, say, 10 years ago in Broadway, people could barely spell the word digital. And now when you look at a marketing budget for a show, what have you seen changed in those 10 years as far as the digital evolution?

You know, it's interesting because I started in this world really when digital was first becoming a thing, and the amount that it has changed is astronomical. And the amount that it has changed really in the past few years has been astronomical. So we, digital would be a small percentage of a show's marketing and advertising budget. That's because people didn't spend as much time online 10 years ago. And now it's the only place people spend time on. And digital is just so efficient with how we can reach people and we can track it and we can make sure that we're using our money responsibly. So we're seeing a big shift to shifting a lot of more marketing dollars towards the digital space. Anywhere from, you know, 10 years ago it might have been 10% of a budget. And now you're looking at 30, 40, 50, and sometimes even 60 and 70% of a show's budget is going to digital. So you're seeing a big shift and an emphasis placed on a show's experience and presence in an online world.

You're using multiple sides of your, your brain when you're making these decisions. You see the creative aspect that's up on the stage, but then you also have the analytics and the data part. Can you talk about how How do you balance that?

I think there's a subtle art form to balancing the two sides of your brain when you're thinking about working in a creative medium like theater and on Broadway, but also working so heavily on the data side of things. A lot of it is taking inspiration from the creative and saying, this is what I'm taking away, or this is what I see audiences taking away. And the great thing is, because so many people spend so much time online and that's the first place they're gonna go, our online audiences will tell us what they're feeling about the show, which can inform our creative. So we're using data that's being driven by the creative and someone's reaction to form insights. So it kind of naturally happens. But part of it too is working in a creative field, no plan survives first attack. So we can get as much data as we want, but at some point there has to be a willingness to take a creative risk. And a lot of that is just knowing and understanding and understanding the lifeline and the bloodline of the show and what's gonna appeal to people. So part of it's gut, but gut can be propelled and amplified by relying on a bit of data.

Give me a couple of examples of crazy wacky ideas that you were allowed to try and surprised you in any possible way.

Crazy wacky ideas. Is kind of how viral happens or how viral used to happen when viral was still a thing. Viral is now a curse word. You pay to be viral. But I think what's most exciting is especially living in a digital space, digital is where people consume content. So we have so many opportunities to push the envelope when it comes to content and what's being out there in the space. So I think some exciting things are when we really acknowledge the challenges with creating a certain piece of content or something really exciting, but really kind of pushing way beyond that and just getting it done. I think an exciting moment we've had that was very— started very simply but was really allowed to push the envelope a little bit, especially just thinking of like the logistics and how are we gonna make this happen and timing and capturing content and not spending a lot of money, is on The Band's Visit, which was on Broadway, closed Last spring, at the end of the show, there's a moment where the onstage band comes out and they kind of have a jam session, which is really, really exciting. The audiences love it. So we wanted to find a way to take that out of the theater and make it a high-touch moment that could really carry on after the curtain went down. And so it's super simple, but the idea of bringing those band members out onto the street and playing after the show, which There's logistics. There's— it's a traffic problem. People are going to be crowding around the stage door. How do you capture the content? How do you capture the excitement? And how do you just make sure that things happen quickly? There's union rules about getting people out of costume in a certain amount of time. So it's a bit of a crazy idea. It's a simple crazy idea, but the willingness to just do it and explore it and get it done was what was kind of exciting about it. And then the content that came out of it was so organic and natural and authentic. You had these people playing amazing music with crowds of hundreds of people around them, and it was shot on an iPhone, and it was done lickety-split in a moment. So I think that is a crazy idea that just worked. There's other things where you can play with digital, and I get really excited by digital creative, so even like display creative, and really pushing the boundaries of your certain advertising and what that looks like. So thinking of, we call them, they're called break the box. Ads on social where it looks like a social post, but the way we've designed it, you can kind of play with it. So maybe, you know, if it's Elphaba, for example, her hand will reach up and actually take over the entire page or something like that. So I think playing in those spaces of creative forward thinking is what's most exciting to me.

For somebody that's excited and wants to, wants to be you, What should they be doing now?

For someone who wants to get into this field, and whether it's what I do or what other people do, the best thing that they can do is just talk to people who are doing it now. I think one thing that's so great about our community and our industry is that people who are very successful and who have been around a long time or have had a lot of experience are typically pretty open to meeting with new people who are excited to be a part of the industry. And that's the one thing that I would recommend is just find a few people that you can sit and talk to. Take them to coffee, take them to a drink, take them out to lunch, and just talk to them and listen because there is so much valuable experience from the people who work in this industry. We're lucky enough we work in an industry where everyone's relatively tight-knit, and so if you start getting in there and you start really showing your appreciation for that learning and that understanding opportunity, the doors kind of open themselves wide open.

And looking at the industry as how it's evolving and growing, and even theater in general, what are some of the signposts to the future that excite you about what's happening now and where it's going to be 10 years from now? Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

I think when I look at the industry, where it is now and where it will be 10 years from now, I'm really excited about some of the creative risks that are being taken when it comes to what's being put up on stage, especially thinking of how I think powerful the Off-Broadway space is right now and how there is really a conduit for some of those Off-Broadway experiences to stay Off-Broadway and then have a life there. And whether or not they ever make it to Broadway, it doesn't matter. But there is that— there's a willingness to take something which has a limited audience of Off-Broadway and really expanding it to a huge audience of Broadway and the cachet of being on Broadway. I'm excited to see that type of creative and what's being put in a Broadway house be really kind of pushed and making people question what it means to be a Broadway show. That I'm excited about. In terms of the advertising space and advertising and digital marketing for the industry, I'm really excited about the appreciation and understanding that's happening for the value of advertising in a digital space. And thinking about how we consume content now as just as regular consumers, you have things like Hulu and Netflix and all these other— people don't watch cable anymore. Or if they watch cable, they watch it through a Roku or they watch it elsewhere. So I'm excited to see kind of where that space expands. I'm excited for young, interesting, provoking voices to be around the table as well, who are bringing new thoughts, new ideas, new platforms to the forefront of the advertising conversation.

Leapfrogging on that, when you look at what we would call, say, traditional advertising, where we do a billboard or we do a TV commercial, and you compare that to digital where you're getting many times instantaneous feedback from your community. How do you leverage that, that community voice, and how do you empower that community voice?

I think that community voice can't be told what to do or how to feel. And that's what's so powerful about some of the shows we work on that have a strong community is that they kind of form that themselves. And it's really formed organically. And they won't be told what to say or what to do. They're gonna say it and they're gonna do it. So I think what's so powerful about some of those communities is that they are given the platform to have their voice heard. And we as advertisers have a responsibility to listen to what they're saying. And help that inform what we say in our advertising and our creative. I think what's really exciting thinking about the combination of the digital world, the traditional world, and the press world is that one doesn't live without the other anymore. You can't have a successful digital campaign without a successful out-of-home campaign, without a successful broadcast TV campaign without a great press piece in the New York Times. I think they all really work in conjunction. And one thing that I know we've seen a lot of in the last few years is how we all work together so closely on a show as part of the team that if something's happening in press, we're right there to support it in digital. If something big is happening on digital, broadcast is there to help support it as well. So I think that's the other thing that's really exciting is that everything's kind of working together in a really exciting different way.

Now that you're overseeing and managing shows and people, for somebody that would want to work at Situation, what, what is that process? How do you hire? How do they get the job?

Yeah, at Situation, it's— we are really focused not only on people who we think have the skills to do it, but we really like hiring good people. And what's so great about Situation, and I've been there for 4 and a half years now, is that We like good people, and we like, we're a very tight-knit group, we're a very collaborative group. So when people come in, we have this core tenet that we want people who we know are gonna be collaborative. And we are much more interested in someone who we know is gonna be a good person and who is gonna respect the team that they work on. And really, we are always a we, we are never an I at Situation. So I think that's the first thing we look for. And then there are obvious things, people who have an understanding of the industry, whether that industry is the digital space or whether that is the theater space. But it always starts with, you know, the person and the personality. I would say that something that's different from when I got into the digital side of the business versus now is that when I started, you didn't go to college to learn digital advertising. And what we're seeing now though is that a lot of kind of new people coming into the workforce have a lot of experience in that now. They understand a Google Analytics suite. They understand what it means to buy, you know, display ads with automated bidding. So that's really exciting is people who kind of know that side of things but then really have a passion for entertainment, for live entertainment, for ticketed events, and who bring that passion to the work that they do.

For those people that are, that are watching you and that are inspired inspired, what would be just some words you'd like to impart on them for having a life and a career in this?

Stay curious. Really kind of always stay hungry and want to learn more, and don't let the struggles that come with working in the industry sometimes, or working in a high-stress position, make you jaded. I think all of us who work in this business started off as fans, and it's really easy sometimes to forget that love we had before we got into the business. And so that's what I would say is stay curious and stay grateful.