Victoria Cairl and Tim Kashani explain how social media replaced the New York Times as theatre's gatekeeper. They walk through Newsies, which used Facebook to sell group tickets to the film's fan base, creating viral buzz that outsold traditional reviews.
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So the thing about when you read that script, no matter how good the script is, you have no idea what the production is going to look like, right? And even if the production is great and you absolutely love it, if everybody else doesn't love it, it doesn't, doesn't happen. And I, I heard a story last night about Chaplin. So Chaplin, the critics didn't really care for it, the theater people didn't care for it, but the suburbian— the suburbians— the suburban audience loved it, and it became word of mouth. Like, it, it ran for a little bit because they kept telling people And then Hurricane Sandy happened. And then the suburbanites didn't want to come into the city. So sometimes you are affected by literally an act of God. And you have no choice with your show than to pack it up and go. So it's such an interesting business from that aspect that there's nothing that you can predict, even if you have a fantastic script.
You talked about the review that comes out in the New York Times that you pick up, the ink is wet, and you read it, and you're crossing your fingers. To today where you're dealing with Facebook, Twitter, who knows what's gonna come next year that's gonna be the new social phenomenon. How has that changed your world?
You just have to figure out how to make it work for you. If you have a show with bad word of mouth, Facebook can kill you. And it's interesting. Twitter too. People are tweeting during the show. And so in that aspect, you try to go after an older crowd that may not be on the Twitter. And you really have to figure out from a strategic standpoint how to make it work. For Newsies, we were very fortunate because a ton of people were big fans of the film. So when it came time for the musical to come out, they were already— they'd been on Facebook for months. We ended up posting an offer because you could buy groups before single tickets. It was the only way you could get discounted tickets to the show. There were no offers out because we were supposed to be a limited run. And that show was running by the will of the people. No kidding. And so what happened was we posted on our Facebook page, hey, grab 14 of your friends and you can go see Newsies before anybody else. And it was the first time I've ever seen a group offer take off based on people gathering people, young people gathering people. Newsies was particularly popular between those 25 to 35.
Well, yeah, because they grew up with the film and now—
yeah, who buys a group when you're 25 to 35? And they made it happen. It was amazing. And so if you can use social media in the right way, it's better than any New York Times review. The other good part about it is that the reviews don't mean as much anymore. They certainly mean a lot to the producers and to the creatives and to the, you know, people who are generally avid theatergoers. Because you can only put your money in so many places, and you don't necessarily want to spend it on a show that's not being recommended to you. However, in terms of if you have a good review, you can put it out into every piece of social media. But with Newsies, we weren't sure what was going to happen. So we put all of our eggs into the social media basket. And we thought, all right, the New York Times review will come out, and it was good. It wasn't great. It was like, it is fun. It is good. People are very enthusiastic. From a social media standpoint, it was wildfire. It was such an amazing thing to be a part of because still to this day, we have a digital marquee in front of the New Amsterdam. And they have people posting their Facebook photos and tweets. And it goes up on there during the day. Because I think that it's just taken word of mouth to a whole new level.
