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[0:03] Hal Luftig: Hi everyone, this is Hal Luftig with my Broadway Podcast Network show, Broadway Biz, where every episode I will chat with my friends, some of the top theater professionals in the business about the business of Broadway.

[0:28] Hal Luftig: You'll learn to raise cash to open your smash. You'll be all the rage from the patron stage. In no time you'll know the business of show, the greatest job there is. So join our squad as we unplug our Broadway business.

[0:49] Hal Luftig: Let's get busy with the Broadway Biz.

[0:56] Hal Luftig: Sandy Block currently serves as communication strategist at the Roundabout Theatre Company here in New York. Sandy also served as associate producer and marketing director for Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish and the Broadway revival of Children of a Lesser God, both of which I had the honor of producing. So it's a true pleasure for me to welcome Sandy Block to Broadway Biz.

[1:25] Sandy Block: Hey.

[1:26] Hal Luftig: Hi Sandy.

[1:27] Sandy Block: Hey Hal, how's it going?

[1:29] Hal Luftig: What's up?

[1:30] Sandy Block: Good, I'm great.

[1:31] Hal Luftig: How are you?

[1:32] Sandy Block: Great. Uh so Sandy, what is the what is marketing and how does marketing actually differ from advertising?

[1:43] Sandy Block: What's what's funny about that is the word marketing means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In the theater business, I think sometimes by necessity and sometimes just over the years of the nomenclature we've developed, we sort of tend to refer to marketing as two things. And I don't think quite honestly, the limitations of our of our business and our industry.

[2:28] Sandy Block: So marketing to me encompasses everything you might do to adjust and finesse how you put your product or your show in front of the public. However, in our business, there's like some fundamental things like supply and demand, which is an inherent principle of marketing, that we are practically incapable of adjusting. We make eight a week for the most part. We make eight a week in February, we make eight a week in December, we make eight a week in July. You know, still doesn't have an 11 a.m. curtain. And a show with absolutely no appeal to students and families still has to do a couple of matinees a week.

[3:32] Sandy Block: Advertising is purely the direct uh promotional communications you put out. So advertising is a small slice of marketing. And marketing live entertainment is a small slice of everything that marketing can actually comprise. Does that does that make sense? And was that a way longer answer than you were expecting?

[4:00] Hal Luftig: No, no. There's no long answer. There's no long answer. And you knew you were talking to me, so you were expecting long answers.

[4:08] Sandy Block: Yeah. So I just want to, you know, break that down for our listeners a little bit, because I think most people would think of advertising as, you know, the things you put in the New York Times ads, or the thing that goes on your website, or the graphic that, you know, may be in Times Square on a billboard. Um and marketing is that, you know, other catch basin uh that they don't really know what it is, or even when they're being targeted by marketing, they they're not aware of it.

[4:44] Hal Luftig: Do you think that theater could adjust its marketing seasonally?

[4:49] Sandy Block: I mean, yes, and we do. The mountain that we had to move to establish seven o'clock performances on Tuesday was massive. The pushback, the fear, the anger, the competition for just saying at the time, and I remember this well, but that was marketing, and we just don't tend to think of it as broadly as we should. Tuesday nights were the worst night of the week for many, many shows. But it was a way to address not just what we say, but what we do. Everybody finally got on board to launch something called Tuesdays at 7 when the public had said we would like to go early, and let's give Tuesday night an actual, an actual distinction. Make it actually something else that is available, which is if you want that choice, if you want to get home early, if you don't want a big dinner, you can go seven o'clock and get home at night, get out at 9:30 if you like that sort of thing. And it turned out the public loved that sort of thing.

[6:14] Sandy Block: And very quickly, Wednesday became our worst night. Yeah, we added on Thursday soon. There's also God, again, it's gonna be a long answer. But there's also, if you look at the movie business, they decide when they are launching a film based on its appeal, the competition, something else huge is opening that Friday, so we're bumping a week. Broadway doesn't get to do that. There's a theater available and you're in rehearsal. You jump, you don't get to choose. You know, this is a family show. I want to launch in the spring. Your actor's ready, your director's ready, and there's a building available. You don't get to choose that based on what the public wants. You get to choose that based on the 90 things you as a producer hope to align and get to land at any one moment.

[7:18] Sandy Block: So there are things we can do, but when you're talking about live actors and live everybody, it's really hard.

[7:26] Hal Luftig: Yeah, to yeah, it is. And you know, you the way you choose a date to open is prior to your opening, you have to register that date with the Broadway League, which we've talked about in earlier episodes. If that particular date is taken, um, you're not, you can't open your show on that date. You know, if something, heaven forbid, happens to the to the second show that's you know wanting to come in on that date. If something happens and the reason why they need a new date is because the show has something technically went wrong, or or you know, whatever glitch the glitch may be, the star is sick. And you're getting down to the Tony cutoff date, you have to open the, you know, and so there have been instances where a show is opened on a Wednesday matinee or uh you know on a Sunday afternoon. It's it's it does happen, but you know, Sandy is right, it is predicated on a whole bunch of different factors.

[8:27] Hal Luftig: So I mean, but but for example, if there are two, if two producers have had two very, very family-friendly musicals on track, there is nobody looking at the overall marketing picture to say for the public's concern and for the benefit of each show, let's delay one of them six months. Disney would not launch Disney the movie studio would not launch two giant tent-pole animated features within four or five weeks of each other. Broadway would in a minute because they were each on their own path. And suddenly you realize I don't mean these specific shows, but suddenly you realize Cinderella and Anastasia are opening the same day or the same week. That's flooding the public with two competitive things, and they're gonna divide the business somehow.

Marketing would tell you, hold one of them for six months and they'll both do better. So we end up with it with our limited toolkit trying to make up for that through the marketing and advertising that is at our disposal. But it's an ex it's an existential um we are we are able to operate with a very small slice of the spectrum of everything that other industries have at their command.

[10:20] Hal Luftig: What are some of the things that you might consider um in how to break away from the pact? You know, does that always imply, you know, just throwing more money at it?

[10:33] Sandy Block: Oh no, absolutely not. I mean, I think the hardest thing to do in our business because it takes so long to get a show up, it is so difficult to maintain perspective. You know your show, you love your show, you have been living, breathing, revising, and discussing your show. I mean, okay, Hal, here's a question for you. In the last two decades, what's the quickest? What's the quickest you've put up a show really from um from initial impulse to having it be on stage on Broadway?

[11:26] Hal Luftig: The quickest, yeah.

[11:27] Sandy Block: Yeah, I agree with you. I'm gonna say four, five, maybe six years. The ability, the ability to maintain perspective in talking to somebody who has not been in the soup. Is that that's that's that's an almost impossible assignment to ask a producer to do. Right?

[11:51] Hal Luftig: Yes.

[11:52] Sandy Block: No, it it you know it is. Um, but that then again, it leads it makes me ask, in your opinion, so I know I'm doing a show. I know I'm doing uh Becoming Nancy, which isn't been in development and workshopping and all of that, you know, four years now, and we have at least another year before, you know, we can, you know, certainly we're on hiatus now, but but but before that can ever have some realization of a of a commercial production. Uh, but from the beginning, we always talked about what that look, you know, quote unquote, the look of the show, the feel of the show uh would do. So, you know, how far in advance do you think it's advantageous to have that person on as part of the creative process?

[12:49] Sandy Block: I would say I don't think there's a flat answer to that. I don't think there's a number, but having worked, which makes me particularly weird answering this question, having worked on both sides of that equation, both on the producing side and on the advertising marketing side, I would put forth to you a thought having somebody on the advertising/slash marketing side really early to get a sense of the real inner heartbeat of your show, the real human pulse of it.

[13:36] Sandy Block: I think if you are working with an advertising or marketing consultant agency, whomever's on that team, you will get to a place of trust. And how much you think you need to be allocating in the early stages of an ad budget, a marketing budget. I think a trusted consultant or a trusted partner can start to inform that.

[14:06] Sandy Block: I think it's more important to think big picture, and I think producers very often want to know how fast are they gonna have artwork or how fast are they gonna have a logo? And honest to God, I think you should try to delay that as much as you can, especially in the current world that's not based on your New York Times print ad and your billboard. I think to a degree, your visual identity is not as important as your personality and a sense of how much you're gonna spend and knowing that sooner, I don't think it's the first step, and I think it's something producers ask for first.

[14:50] Sandy Block: And I don't believe that the people you are working with can even do a really good job of coming up with that, because the show you intend to produce may not be the show you will actually have up on its feet. I don't think shows should advertise their intentions, I think shows should advertise their feeling, and I don't think you know the feeling of a show that early. Does that make sense?

[15:24] Hal Luftig: Well, yeah, totally, totally. And I just uh I want to mention uh to our listeners, because I've said this before, that every show that I produce, uh, win, lose, or draw, I try to walk away from it having a tangible lesson that I've learned, or um a knowledge about something that I previously didn't have. And uh it so happens that you're my guest, and you taught me two very important things, which is one uh in the early days when we were still lighting theaters with candles.

[16:01] Hal Luftig: I remember those two. You know, a producer would walk into an ad agency and say, show me some artwork, and then we would spend you know weeks of I like the color of this one, but the lettering of that one, and I like her dress and this, you know, and it was you know, it was tedious. And I never knew or never thought about it until the point that you uh pointed out to me, is that that process is not only extremely time consuming and in some times tedious for the agency for the people who are doing this, but it's expensive.

[16:39] Hal Luftig: You are dedicating a lot of resources within your company to create these things. Um, and I never knew that. So I think you know, we might be moving towards uh an era where, as you say, it's we walk into an agency and say, forget the artwork, don't show me any artwork, we'll get there. Uh, but I'd rather hear how you feel about the show and what are some of your ideas about how you will I guess this is marketing, sell the show. What is our message to the public?

[17:22] Sandy Block: Um, because you also you know taught me very wisely that a piece of artwork is not going to, you know, sell the show. It's that's not its job, you know, to look at it and go, oh, that's you know, I get what that is. And so uh, you know, I know a lot of people, myself included, have adapted to that new way of thinking um so with that in mind wait can I can I jump in for a sec before you jump to your question if Le Miz had flopped back in 1987.

[17:39] Sandy Block: That's right if Le Miz had flopped a woodcut of a sad little girl would have gone down in history as one of the worst art images ever there is no meeting there is no focus group that that art would have survived in a in today's world we we are addicted to data and data is great for informing choices but not making them and there is no focus group and there's probably no committee of producers that would have not said you've been in enough meetings and you've been in enough meetings with me where if I had come out with a woodcut of a very sad big eyed girl you would have said show me something else that doesn't make me feel like crap the show's already called Le Miserable show me something else quickly or you are fired don't you think?

[17:39] Hal Luftig: Well you know I don't I I'm gonna to uh I'm going to rebuff that by saying I never said that but I'm sure I'm sure there are producers who have uh but they certainly were not me but yes, I I know what you mean. I know what you mean. And there's so the assignments, so the assignment sometimes, the assignment sometimes is branding or establishing something that may not be right, but that is ownable and distinctive and has legs for the future, but maybe is not.

[19:37] Hal Luftig: Doesn't do everything you think it needs to do, because what it needs to do is be yours. Right. Right. That's very true. Um that's that's very true. And you know, I'm wondering, in your opinion, um, given that we agree that you know the whole feel of the show should be the focus until we know what the show really is and what the look should be.

[20:05] Hal Luftig: Um you come on to a show as a marketing supervisor or consultant, what is the your first step in that process? What is the first thing you think of? What is your first consideration to get that ball rolling down the hill?

[20:27] Sandy Block: I'm gonna say it's probably two things, and then I may end up saying more than two, but I think it's gonna be two, which is what not what trying to have enough conversations and spend enough time talking, both with the people with whom I'm working as well as with the people involved with the show itself to think about it from the audiences or the potential ticket buyers' point of view, not what do we want to say, but what do they want to hear?

[21:03] Sandy Block: Meaning what is the visceral theatrical experience you are offering, not what is the content of your show. Are you promising me what is the promise of these actors doing this material, telling this story? What's it gonna feel like? Because while we have to suggest something about what it's quote unquote about, the reason people go is because it is the right event at the right time, and it's a feeling they want to have.

[21:51] Sandy Block: How do we find a niche? How do we find a feeling? How do we find something, a color, a graphic, a feel, um, an emotion that somehow is distinct, even by a little bit from everything else that's playing right now? You know, how soon do you want your artwork? Well, if I don't know what environment we are opening in, that choice may have been correct or incorrect because I know what's coming down the pike, but if something unexpected lands big and it does every year, something we expect to succeed fails, and something we expect to fail succeeds.

[22:38] Sandy Block: So, what we are asking the public to choose among is very hard to predict. What else is in the marketplace and how is this gonna stand out? You know, Sandy, I remember when we started working on Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, uh, and we were trying to figure out what that particular artwork uh would look like. I remember we came into the ad agency one day, and you said something that at first I laughed at, and then it's very true.

[23:09] Hal Luftig: You said we shouldn't focus on what we like, but rather what we thought would work. So the question is how do you balance you know your personal taste when you're evaluating you know, artwork or marketing ideas or anything like that.

[23:31] Sandy Block: When we were just talking about the time spent prior to an artwork presentation about talking about the show and how it feels and how it might feel to an audience and what the experience is. So if you've boiled it down to a handful of goals, you can establish some criteria and say we have decided, we have been talking back and forth for weeks, maybe longer.

[24:03] Sandy Block: We could talk about a handful of things. Then when you're looking at artwork, you're measuring it against criteria, not just because artwork is so subjective, not just what is visually appealing or aesthetically satisfying, because that can always get fixed. And it's so difficult to look at stuff and check your subjectivity first and put it away.

[24:36] Sandy Block: So I remember that meeting very distinctively. There were things that were there was a variety of stuff. Actually, I'm telling I'm thinking that was Children of a Lesser God, not Fiddler, because we honed in on this on Fiddler quickly. Children of a Lesser God was a bigger, a bigger thing to try and solve. And I remember saying before you react to colors and feelings and choices, this one is playing up love story, and it lands love story. This one is playing up the divide between these two people. This one is playing up a powerhouse performance.

[25:18] Sandy Block: Let's choose which of those feels like a better choice to make, and which of these is not ticking any of the boxes of the criteria we assigned to ourselves.

[25:31] Sandy Block: One of the favorite things a producer ever said to me was they were leaning toward one piece of art and they saw my face kind of get sad, and was somebody I'd worked with a long time. And he said, What? I'm like, no, no, no, it's fine. A couple of my co-workers like kicked me under the table because it's like, oh my god, they're about to buy something. Why are you screwing this up? And I was like, yes, that is the better looking poster. That one over there says and does the things we said we wanted to accomplish in this marketplace for this play. That does it better. It's just not as pretty. Damned if the producer didn't say to me, I see your point, I think you're right. Can I have this one for my house?

And let's use that, and let's use that one. It wasn't ugly. It wasn't ugly, but it wasn't as beautiful as the wrong one. And I was like, wow, that's a producer I admire. And that's a producer who's willing to check his subjectivity and make this be a marketing choice, not a subjective taste choice.

[26:41] Sandy Block: How do you know if the artwork is doing what you want it to do, which is evoking the feeling or the spirit or uh you know the the flavor of the show that that you'll get?

[26:56] Sandy Block: We we we don't. Okay. There's a famous quote, I want to say it's from the the guy who ran like the old way before both our times, Wanamaker's department store, where he said, I am positive, somebody can look this up. Um I am positive that 30% of my advertising is working. I just don't know which 30%. It has forever been thus. That sort of goes back to the lay Miz joke from before, because if you had shown in a focus group, like like we were saying, here's like, you know, hot soldiers at the barricade, because you know somebody in a focus group would say, but all those young men, they're so attractive. I would go see that. And then you put up like this sad little girl with big eyes, they all would have said that doesn't tell me anything about the play. It's not about a girl, it's about Jean Valjean. It's about a guy and fighting us, fighting a you know, a sergeant who's chasing him. It it says the right thing at its core, and it's distinctive.

[28:06] Sandy Block: How many times do you say, you and I have had this conversation, but why are people not buying tickets? Or why aren't more people buying tickets? And I always kid with you and say the same thing. Because most of the time, people are not buying tickets. That's their default behavior. Look, just now I didn't buy a ticket. Oh, look, I just didn't buy a ticket again. It's it's we gotta compel a bunch of. I want to find out why the people who did do. Because not buying a ticket is not an action, it's a lack of action. So let me ask you, what catches your eye as a ticket buyer? What what do you respond to?

[28:49] Sandy Block: I think I respond most of all. That's a good question, but I think I respond most of all. And it's hard sometimes, and I think it's hard for all of us as consumers, because we we wouldn't be in this business for the most part if we were also not avid voracious theater lovers and theater goers. So can you look at something and take off your your producing side hat, whether that's actively producing or being on the marketing side or whatever, and and put on your theater fan hat. How quickly can something that looks honestly, first of all, distinctive? Something that looks that doesn't look like that that looks unexpected, that looks that it that strikes me viscerally, not intellectually. It could be a color, it could be a type treatment, it could be just a feeling or an impact where I'm like, oh, and you know, we'll we'll we'll throw around like jargon words like cut through the clutter, or that's just wallpaper.

Um but that's sort of the world. It's like I think we tend to look too deep. Is this is this communicating everything we want? That's why I keep going back to does it feel and look like its own thing? How quickly can it will I recognize it when it when I see it the second time? Does that make sense?

[30:17] Hal Luftig: Yes, completely. Um yeah, you know, I have a everything you have said has been so you know intriguing and interesting that I've had now more questions than we possibly have time to. So I think one of the only you know solutions that I can think of is you're just gonna have to come back.

[30:37] Sandy Block: Oh, and we can we can finish uh all the other questions that I didn't get to. But I still have a few minutes and I want to ask you um one more question, then we have a wrap-up set of questions. So uh before we have to leave, um, I would love your opinion on having been on both sides of the table, as it were. What do you think makes an effective producer?

[31:08] Sandy Block: What do I think makes an effective producer? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. In all areas, I think the the magic, I don't know, what do we what does I think the superpower is almost always perspective? It's whether the thing you're looking at at this moment is a hill you're gonna die on or not. How many times have we all seen a show out of town and that wasn't very good? And when it finally gets to New York, and you and I have talked about a bunch of these, and let's not name names because it's safer. But you look and you go, they went out of town for the life of me. I yes, there's a new song in act two, sure. And they replaced, you know, the choreographer or somebody. And for the life of me, I can't tell you what's different.

And then you see the producers afterward, and they're they're like, well, well, what'd you think? What do you think? Did you see, you know, her dress in act two? It's belted. You're like, what? Oh, you're you're you're Rika. And that can apply to your marketing. How because everybody gets in the weeds. It's everybody's job to get in the weeds. I want the lighting designer to be obsessed on every Vera light and every gel. And I want the choreographer to be obsessed on everybody's toe placement. And I want the art director from the ad agency to be obsessed about the typography. But I want the producer to say, I thought we said we were looking to convey more pain that this was gonna be something that was really gonna move you.

You lost me there. We're not doing the thing we said we were gonna do. Are we saying the thing that are we serving a bigger purpose or are we serving everybody's little thing for the day? And I think the producer's job is always to pull the lens out wider.

[33:20] Hal Luftig: Wow. Great answer. Great answer, I must say. Um, okay. Well, Sandy, uh, as all good things, this has been so much fun, but as all good things, it must come to an end. But I do asterisk that with saying, I'm just gonna have you back.

[33:38] Sandy Block: That that's it.

[33:38] Hal Luftig: Cool, cool, cool. That'd be fun. But before we finish, uh you're not done yet. I am going to ask you three rapid fire wrap-up questions. Uh, I ask these to every guest, and all I ask is that you just give me the first thing that pops into your mind. Don't overthink it.

[33:57] Sandy Block: Okay.

[33:57] Hal Luftig: Okay. So here's the first one. What is your favorite musical?

[34:02] Sandy Block: Sweeney Todd.

[34:03] Hal Luftig: Okay. What is the wackiest moment you've ever experienced in the theater?

[34:12] Sandy Block: Um wackiest moment, honestly, sure. Linda Ronstadt in Pirates of Penzance. Rex Smith like hugged her to right before an exit, right before a solo of his.

[35:00] Sandy Block: Yep. But however many decades ago that was the goodwill and the the joy of a mistake was was taught me something about theater that was also unique, one of a kind delight.

[35:15] Hal Luftig: Because I think you've just answered the next question, which was and the lesson learned from this wacky moment was that everybody in the building, even if they're not aware of it, there is a risk, there is a precariousness to the theater that is in some ways its most precious commodity because it is almost one of the only things in our world that still has that. Even if you're not aware of it, there's nine hundred things have to go right every minute. And that's amazing. And the audience does love it when it when it doesn't. Or when it does, it's it's not about the mistake, it's about we all knew there's that duality of we all know we're pretending that collective uh suspension of disbelief.

[36:18] Sandy Block: And and yeah.

[36:21] Hal Luftig: Very well said. This has been terrific. Uh I'm so grateful you joined us today. And uh, like I said, expect another phone call from me.

[36:38] Sandy Block: Excellent.

[36:38] Hal Luftig: Good.

[36:43] Sandy Block: All right. Thank you very much.

[36:46] Hal Luftig: Alright, thank you. Be well.

[36:50] Hal Luftig: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Broadway Biz. If you have any questions about today's episode or the business of Broadway in general, let me know on Instagram at Broadway Biz Podcast or via email at Broadwaybiz at Halluftig.com. Be sure to follow me at Broadway Biz Podcast for updates on everything Broadway Biz, the Business of Broadway. Broadway Biz is part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Huge thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, and Brittany Bigelow. This has been produced by Dylan Marie Parent and Kevin Connor and edited by Derek Gunther. Our fabulous theme music is by Nell Benjamin and Lawrence O'Keefe. To learn more about Broadway Biz, visit BPN.fm slash BroadwayBiz.