A Wicked Way to Advertise

For those of you who are not particularly familiar with my opinion of the musical Wicked, in a nutshell, it’s not on my favorable list. That in itself is a conversation for another time. That being said, I am very excited when any musical does something that pushes the envelope in regards to advertising. Wicked is a show that is special in that it has been such a success that the producers are more willing to experiment and gamble with how to best package their product.

Recently I took a train out of Penn Station and noticed something I’ve never seen before. Posters, images, review quotes, etc. for the musical Wicked are plastered everywhere in the main terminal of Penn Station. You might be thinking: “Everyone does paper advertising and posters in various places.” Yes, but they have chosen a very specific place to flood information to their potential ticket buyers.

Let’s say you are coming in from the front entrance below Madison Square Garden. You go down the escalator where you are greeted with a staircase that is now dressed as the Wicked cover art. As you keep walking, you see columns that are completely surrounded by images of Glinda and Elphaba, as well as review quotes. You then enter the main Amtrak lobby where there are two gigantic displays on either side that feature cover art. As you’re walking, every clock in the place has the small Wicked title treatment next to it. Basically, if you have two eyes and a pulse, you are going to see a lot about Wicked in Penn Station.

Needless to say, I think this is a brilliant move. The producers have decided that during the toughest time of the year to bring in audiences (January-March), they would go right to the crossroads of where their newest potential ticket buyers, tourists, will be looking for how to spend their time in New York City. With the whole place being decked out in green and black, how does a tourist not want to see a show that is pretty much being billed as the only show in town? The viewer isn’t seeing a selection of shows to choose from to get a whole sense of what stories are being told on Broadway. They are being presented with the show they believe is the must see it and by the time they walk back into Penn Station, they can say that they saw the musical that everyone is talking about.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Of course, it’s easier to make bold choices when your show grosses over a million dollars a week. At the same time, they are finding new ways to bring audiences into the Gershwin Theater. In addition to Penn Station, they have an aggressive radio campaign to target older audiences who might want to bring their families to the show, as well as a new trend of having instant translation of the musical into many languages. This device brings an international audience into their show because of this wonderful instrument of access.

It’s pretty remarkable that a book musical (regardless of my personal opinions) has been such a box office hit in this marketplace. Add on the fact that the musical is housed in one of the largest venues on Broadway, the Gershwin Theater, and it’s even more impressive. Can Wicked be the next Phantom of the Opera and become the longest running show on Broadway? I don’t think so, but I bet it will be one of the longest running shows by the end of its original Broadway run. Kudos to those producers who dared to put on an enormous production on Broadway and made sure they found a wide-ranged audience.