Theatre people like to see what they do as creating art, but what about the artwork? The worlds of the art and commerce of theatre - the making of theatre and the selling of it - neatly collide in the offices of the agencies that create the advertising and marketing campaigns that promote shows.
I must declare an interest here: I’ve had an insiders’ view of this world, since my first professional job after graduating from University was to work for Dewynters, then an independently-owned ad agency who had re-defined theatrical advertising in the 1980s by concentrating on the creation of instantly recognisable logos that branded shows like Cats, Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera with images that are still used worldwide over twenty years later.
When I went to Poland earlier this year to see Upiór w Operze, I wrote here that the title is “instantly recognisable even if you didn’t know the translation thanks to the logo which has the words splintering like glass in the now well-known way beside the trademark (in every sense) mask.”
My job at Dewynters was to work on the theatre programmes it published for West End shows, as well as souvenir brochures for West End, touring and Broadway productions (and as a freelance journalist, I still contribute regular features to them even now, as well as for other publishers). The sale of souvenir brochures, tee-shirts, mugs and other items are another strand of the global marketing strategy that Dewynters helped to develop around the shows they promoted: merchandising opportunities became not just a valuable revenue stream in itself but a way of getting the public to participate in spreading the word themselves, as they wore the tee-shirts or baseball caps.
It’s no coincidence that the producers that Dewynters worked with most closely, then and now, were Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, either separately or together, since these were the British producers who first truly exploited the global possibilities of their products (a journey that is still ongoing, with Mackintosh striking a deal only last year to produce versions of his shows in China, as reported in The Stage at the time here).
Yet even as the shows reached far and wide, and Really Useful became a publicly-traded company, too, Dewynters remained privately-owned, and continued to offer a behind-the-scenes quality service to represent some of the biggest (and smallest) shows in the West End, as well as looking after campaigns for many subsidised houses, too, from the National and Royal Opera House to the Donmar Warehouse. Over the years, Dewynters saw off many of its competitors, from Mentorn to M&H, who went out of business. But it has also had its domination of the market challenged by more recent arrivals, from Adam Kenwright’s AKA to Guy Chapman’s Target Live.
Two years ago, however, Dewynters was bought by First Artist, a football agent and entertainment group, for a reported £15.5m, and although there were rumours of bids for it to be sold on in turn earlier this year, as noted in The Stage at the time here, that suggestion has now been superseded by the news on Monday that far from disposing of their interests in it, First Artist have dramatically expanded their interests in the theatrical advertising business by making a “reverse take-over” of leading Broadway theatrical ad agency SpotCo, in a deal that is said to be worth up to £9.8m.
According to a report in Money Week, First Artist “rejected two unsolicited offers for Dewynters last month and terminated discussions” and issued a statement, “It is the opinion of the board that shareholders’ interests will best be served by the retention of Dewynters and the complementary acquisition of SpotCo, which will give the group a dominant position in live entertainment advertising in the world’s two most important markets: London’s West End and New York’s Broadway”.
The globalisation of the theatre market that Dewynters helped to pioneer and promote has therefore come full circle, and as SpotCo’s president and CEO Drew Hodges has said in a press statement, “Live entertainment marketing and brand development is becoming increasingly international, demanding highly innovative solutions to entice many different audiences. Working with Dewynters, we can produce even more groundbreaking work and grow the dynamic creative spirit both of our teams are known for”.
So another chapter is about to be written in the way theatre is promoted, as well as the way its agencies are now trading. But I also love the reason that First Artist’s Jon Smith gave to Simon English in the Evening Standard yesterday for his company’s interest in the field: “In the last recession the only places there were queues were for the dole office and the theatre.”
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