Content Is Advertising: Twitter On Broadway

from the tweet-the-play dept

We've talked a lot about how content is advertising, and we still get pushback from people who seem to think that we mean underhanded marketing or "product placement" is what we're talking about. But that's not it at all. We're talking about how good content is almost always advertising for something, and it need not be explicit at all. A great example of this is this NY Times article looking at how the Broadway play Next to Normal successfully used Twitter to promote itself. Rather than just setting up a feed to hype up the play, or to announce discounts, they actually had the playwright adapt the play for Twitter. And, from there, they ran the adapted version on Twitter, which built up a huge following, while specifically choosing not to go with a hard sell.

But it appears to have worked. The number of Twitter followers has ballooned, and there's been a nice correlation in ticket sales (admittedly, there may have been other factors as well, but there appears to be a lot of evidence that many attendees were drawn to it via the Twitter campaign). None of this was surreptitious. None of it involved "tricking" people. None of it involved "product placement." All it involved was making good use of good content to draw more attention -- and from there, people figured out what they wanted to buy. That's the point of content as advertising, and it's great to see it put to use so creatively.

Filed Under: advertising, broadway, content, next to normal
Companies: twitter