Nielsen Brings a New Marketing Strategy to Broadway

August 1, 2006
Nielsen Brings a New Marketing Strategy to Broadway
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

“Wicked” is a show for 14-year-old girls. At least that’s what everybody on Broadway was saying. So one of the show’s producers, David Stone, decided to hire a relatively new research firm called Live Theatrical Events to find out if the assumption was true.

The firm springs from a surprising source: Nielsen. Yes, Nielsen, as in television’s Nielsen ratings. Live Theatrical Events is the product of a partnership between Nielsen National Research Group, or NRG, a corporate cousin of Nielsen’s television-rating unit, and Broadway.com, the ticketing and theater news Web site.

Using Hollywood-style data mining techniques and the Internet to contact hundreds of thousands of theatergoers, Live Theatrical Events is changing the way shows are marketing themselves, on and off Broadway. And its managing director, Joseph Craig, who has a long history in the film industry, is quietly becoming a sought-after player in New York theater.

Nytimes