Guerrilla marketing on Broadway
With Benjamin Brooks Cohen in his first Broadway play, Gypsy, starring Bernadette Peters -- a play that has been teetering at the brink of closing -- so Cohen decided to help with his own guerrilla marketing efforts by organizing the cast members to work the crowds outside the TKTS booth that sells discounted tickets to the show according to this New York Times story (registration required):
"Most people have no idea what they want to see," explained Mr. Cohen, who plays one of the dancers in Rose's vaudeville act. "So if you give them a reason to come, like 'I'm in the show,' they'll usually come."
It is a grass-roots effort that might be working. Since March 10, the cast's first day on the TKTS line, the show has been averaging sales of more than 300 half-price tickets a day. Prior to the campaign the show rarely broke 200 at the booth.
..."We have a young cast, and for a lot of them this is their first Broadway show," Ms. Peters said. "The kids come back and say, `We sold all the tickets at TKTS,' and they're just thrilled. It's infectious."