Perhaps I need the help of a hobbit – or the wave of Gandalf’s wand – to help me retrieve my luggage that went missing on my return flight from Las Vegas and Los Angeles yesterday (and I wasn’t even flying BA!). But I do, at least, have one of those free little utility bags that Virgin Atlantic hand out on the plane, and collectors of theatrical merchandise need to arrange a flight pronto: mine came complete with a keyring, socks and eye-shade all embossed with the logo to the stage version of The Lord of the Rings. There’s also a publicity leaflet for the show – one that includes just one press quote for the show and which happens to be mine!
Virgin’s flight entertainment guide also has a full, back page ad for the show. Arriving at Heathrow (and the now to-be-expected delays everywhere, including the fact that even though the airport had nine-and-a-half hours notice of our arrival, we were sent to a remote stand where it then took another 20 minutes to get a staircase stand to), one of the welcomes that otherwise greets visitors are hoardings for Mamma Mia! and racks of leaflets for West End shows.
Theatrical marketing often seems designed to catch people on the move, but catching them while they on the move but trapped in their seats for a number of hours may be a very good way of at least imprinting the idea that something is showing on their brains. Apart from newspaper ads, one of the biggest spends for theatrical advertisers has traditionally been the “bus backs” panels on the rear of double decker buses and tube escalator panels. But both outlets are increasingly under threat thanks to the proliferation of bendy buses that don’t have the same advertising panels, and the new high-tech video panels that are now taking over on the escalators. The latter are being taken over by corporations with deeper wallets than theatre shows, since the video panel campaigns I’ve seen so far have comprised the entire wall of the escalator, not just single panels of it.
So where will theatrical marketing go next? It’s a tough product to sell: the inventory is always limited by the seating capacities of the theatres, so a producer’s spend on it is capped by the possible returns that can be make (while still covering the other fixed running costs). The other industries they are competing for space with – mobile phones, iPods, etc – will simply manufacture more if the marketing works. The theatre can’t manufacture more seats to fill.
But if it loses its traditional advertising outlets to bigger spenders, theatre marketers will have to start thinking more creatively about how to reach potential audiences. I doubt that The Lord of the Rings initiative on Virgin came cheap; but it is certainly memorable.
