“Show Boat” has docked at Lyric Opera of Chicago. This vintage piece of American musical theater now upon the vast and wickedly demanding stage at Lyric Opera represents a major adjustment in marketing strategy for one of the world’s leading opera companies.
For most of its nearly 60-year history, Lyric has produced grand opera — large-scale works ranging from “La Bohemia” to “La Traviata” and everything in between. And for most of its history, Lyric simply put its season ticket packages on sale and watched the season practically sell out in fairly short order.
Need we emphasize, however, that times have changed.
Not only has Lyric moved beyond the realm of grand opera, as indicated by this production of the 1920’s-era musical “Show Boat,” it has found selling tickets to be a tougher challenge than it was in the kinder, gentler days of yore before the public’s entertainment options began to expand exponentially.
That is, in part, the reason the company last fall launched a Lyric brand campaign with the tag line “Long Live Passion” that was produced by Downtown Partners/Chicago.
What’s more, the economic downtown has prompted everyone, except perhaps the super rich, to be more cautious about how they spend their discretionary entertainment dollars.
High ticket prices are a challenge to fill seats
The challenge to lasso in a larger segment of the public interested in entertainment is especially tough for Lyric because its top orchestra tickets go for a whopping $224 — though, we hasten to add, seats can be had as cheaply as $34 in the upper reaches of the balcony.
That top ticket price at Lyric is roughly double what the best seats cost for a typical Broadway in Chicago musical. Lyric believes it can command a significantly higher dollar because it is offering a 36-person pit orchestra (about double the size of a IBC musical orchestra), as well as many more cast members and often more lavish production values.
To convince the public of its argument, Lyric’s marketing department has devised an unusually aggressive advertising strategy for this “Show Boat” — undoubtedly the single most robust marketing push in the opera company’s history.
The full-throttle ad campaign is especially necessary because “Show Boat” is being performed 13 times at Lyric, compared to the eight or nine performances the most popular, iconic operas get during a season.
Aside from wanting to draw more hardcore opera fans, Lyric marketing honcho Susan Mathieson-Mayer wants to use this “Show Boat” to lure a chunk of the live theatergoing audience that attends musicals, but that steers well clear of what is perceived as the more rarified opera world.
“Show Boat making strong use of television
To get them in the theater, Lyric has boosted its advertising presence in a big way in print and radio. And for the first time, Lyric has fully embraced television advertising — a mass medium it used very sparingly, if at all, prior to “Show Boat’s” arrival.
As far back as August, Lyric director of marketing Phil Koester was busy producing a 30-second TV spot for “Show Boat” in conjunction with Mark Ziglar and his Los Angeles-based firm Cinevative, which specializes in producing commercials for live shows with no existing performance footage from which to create a TV spot.
The finished “Show Boat” commercial now seen constantly on several Chicago TV channels looks as if it was shot with a large cast, thanks to Cinevative’s production magic. But in fact, only four dancers from this “Show Boat” production were brought in early for the shoot.
The dancers were filmed again and again in different costumes to create the sensation of a much larger cast performing excerpts from “Show Boat.” The dancers were then superimposed on an image of a showboat.
Koester said he could not remember a time when Lyric had so openly employed television to sell a show. Previously, the most the company had done on TV was some brief spots on public television station WTTW-Channel 11 using only still shots from various operas.
Lyric plans to produce more American musicals
Aside from using a widely-seen TV commercial, Lyric is deploying a lot more than its usual complement of print advertising. And it has opted for an unabashedly populist stance in many of those ads. For what is surely the first time in Lyric history, the ads reference one of “Show Boat’s” female stars, Ashley Brown, as a “Disney superstar soprano.”
Yes, popular culture — for which Disney is surely the most visible proponent — and high art are now seeking a common ground. Prior to her “Show Boat” appearance, Brown’s most noted stage performance was in the title role of the sugary Disney stage musical “Mary Poppins.”
And in the name of expanding its audience base and keeping the stage filled when the opera season ends in late March, Lyric has indicated it will in future start to produce an American musical each spring outside its regular opera package. First up is a revival of “Oklahoma!”
For now, though, Lyric’s focus is fully on “Show Boat.” And Mathieson-Mayer and her team are hopeful their expanded marketing initiatives pay off.
And you can be sure Lyric’s bottom line at the end of the season will look a lot better if their game plan works.
Contact Lewis Lazare at LewisL3@aol.com
