Jim Glaub, VP of Content and Community at Broadway ad agency Serino/Coyne, wrote agreat response to my piece. After talking with him, several things came into focus:
1) Twitter TWTR +0.00% is only one piece of the whole. Though segmented and fractious, the social media landscape coheres best when taken as a single entity. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat all fulfill different roles, augmenting each other as tools in a brand’s kit – and that kit is always expanding. Playbill Passport launched last week as Broadway’s companion app, the likes of which are popular for videogames but not seen often in live entertainment. Though tempting to look at the individual pieces, one needs to keep the whole caboodle in mind. Which leads to the biggest conundrum facing live entertainment online…
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2) The problem isn’t generating sales – it’s tracking them. There is no easy way to follow a purchase from an app to the box office – unlike buying tickets in a web browser, where your clicks are logged every step of the way. Often, Google GOOGL -2.80% will take credit for a sale that Twitter triggered: someone sees a tweet review of Fun Home, but then heads to Google to search for the actual tickets. Ad agencies can view in real-time both Twitter conversation and sales, but if one spikes and the other stays flat, there’s no easy way to tell where the break happens. Which leads to…
3) Measurement is at the heart of social media – and it’s all f***ed up. How exactly do you measure a conversation? Whether it’s on Facebook FB -1.79% or Instagram, Twitter or Tinder, the parameters are constantly evolving. For example: Beautiful is likely not the second most tweeted-about show, despite its ranking on the list. Data sorting relies on key words, and “beautiful” is tied to many other Broadway shows as a descriptor. It also doesn’t take into account the different ways people talk about the show. Hashtags, incomplete references, photos, all count as conversation, but only some are trackable. It’s further confounded because…
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4) Users are wildly split across social media outlets. According to stats released by Serino/Coyne, the aggregate likes and followers for all Broadway shows are as follows:
Facebook: 8,005,994
Twitter: 1,140,908
Instagram: 498,000
Traffic on Broadway’s websites is less lopsided, however. Of the total traffic driven to show homepages by social media (4.15%), 71% comes from Facebook while 24% is from Twitter. This is also in contrast to overall social media use, according to a survey byGoldstar, where Twitter was outranked by Instagram and Pinterest. In all cases, though, Facebook beat its brethren handily, which is a big deal for Broadway because…
5) Demographics affect word-of-mouth, which affects sales. According to the latest Pew Research report, Facebook is favored by women, and used by more people over 40 than any other platform. It also has the highest percentage of users with a $75,000+ yearly income. Twitter skews young, non-white, and less financially comfortable; Instagram even more so. Given that the average Broadway buyer is a wealthy 45-year old white woman, this data is paramount to a show’s longevity. If your show is popular on Facebook, it will have a better chance of reaching a traditional buyer than if it’s popular on Twitter. Now, this may push producers to restructure their social media budget, but they shouldn’t, because…
6) Tweets about purchasing lead to more purchasing. According to the Goldstar survey, social media users (millennials in particular) are significantly more likely to buy a ticket to an event if a friend buys one first. In fact, 92% want to learn more about the event, and of those, 66% buy a ticket. This lines up with previous coverage on millennial spending which is driven by a ”pics or it didn’t happen” mindset, encouraging experience-sharing over tangible objects. So Twitter absolutely does sell tickets – it just depends on how vocal the buyers are. But all of this throws into light the big point…
7) Twitter isn’t designed to be a sales platform in the first place. Twitter is first and foremost a communication tool. It allows artists and brands to interact directly with their fans, and fans to share stories and reviews with each other. But because its data is trackable, it’s held to the same standards of measurement as direct-response marketing, like email blasts or mail campaigns. This should not be the case. Producers need to judge social media by the same standards as traditional advertising, not traceable sales. Damian Bazadona, CEO of digital agency Situation Interactive, summed it up: ”Nobody sees a taxi ad for The Lion King and says, ‘Driver, take me to Broadway!’ The ad is an entry point that generates interest, conversation, and hopefully a sale. Just because you can’t trace the sale’s path doesn’t mean your ads aren’t selling.”
So what are artists, producers, and advertisers to do? First, keep in mind that no one – not even Twitter itself – has a unified way of organizing all the data zooming around. It’s a huge undertaking and very much in flux. The next conversation needs to be about measurement: creating systems to capture data reliably without compromising the user’s experience. Fans will dry up if you start dictating the ways in which they’re “allowed” to talk about your brand, so the work has to be on our end, behind the scenes. Broadway’s got a long way to go, but it’s getting there – and as long as we avoid duels at high noon, we’ll stay ahead of the curve.
(Bonus factoid: It turns out non-profits are tweetable – just not as much as commercial shows. Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Roundabout all logged decent numbers, but only Lincoln Center measured up to the list of top Broadway brands – and that’s only because its tweets included fashion shows, opera, ballet, etc. These numbers also account for the hashtags by which each theater delineates its season. Stats below.)
Lincoln Center: 275,000
Roundabout: 40,000
MTC: 25,000