Turn on Your Cell Phones!

During Intermission, Cellphones Are Brandished in a Promotion

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN
Published: June 18, 2007

Typically you are told to turn off your cellphone before a performance. But at a recent Saturday matinee of “Spring Awakening,” the Broadway musical that garnered eight Tony Awards last week, the audience was told to do just the opposite.

“Win Your Chance to Come Backstage!” said a flier inserted into the Playbill, which encouraged theatergoers to send the text message “bdway spring” to a five-digit number before the end of intermission.

After the show, Becky Mitchell, 18, received a text message that she had won, and she bounded onto the stage with Alyssa Navia, 19, a friend from Boston College, where both are freshmen. “This is my first Broadway show,” said Ms. Mitchell, who wore a rugby shirt and Ugg boots. “This is fantastic.”

The production’s company manager, John E. Gendron, showed them the trapdoors in the stage from which, only minutes before, two actors had risen from a dry-ice ground fog.

But what the play’s producers hope to make magically appear in the future are audiences. At the performance, 62 people sent text messages, which included their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, in hopes of winning the contest. All of their information went into a database that will be used to pitch Broadway tickets and other promotions.

In exchange, contestants were sent a ring tone of a popular song in “Spring Awakening” and a photograph from the show to use as wallpaper on their phones. Both of the souvenirs are potential conversation starters with friends, whom the producers think of as would-be ticket buyers.

“Those are numbers talking to numbers talking to numbers,” said Damian Bazadona, president of Situation Marketing, who is working with the producers and the owner of the theater, Jujamcyn Theaters, on the pilot program. “A year or two years down the road, that’s how you’re talking to markets.”

Americans sent 18.7 billion text messages in December 2006, nearly double the 9.7 billion that were sent the previous December, according to CTIA, a wireless industry trade group. While various companies have tried to beat a path from consumers’ phones to their wallets, theater promoters, weary of phones ringing infuriatingly during denouements, have held back.

Until now.

“There’s a tendency for Broadway not to be an early adopter, but that’s changing,” said Jordan Roth, vice president of Jujamcyn, which owns five theaters in New York, including the Eugene O’Neill Theater, where “Spring Awakening” is being staged. “Most producers now are really looking for new ways to communicate with our audience.”

The musical’s producers are sharing data with Jujamcyn, which is signing up participants for Broadway Phone, its wireless service for ticket deals and show information. Since the production draws young audiences with its themes of adolescent angst, it was chosen for the maiden cellphone effort. “But our goal is to expand what we’re doing to many shows,” Mr. Roth said.

As for whether this will result in more ringing during performances, Mr. Roth said that it has not been a problem, but that the promotion might not suit every production. “Will it interfere with the show?” he said. “Yeah, that is one of the things that is open for discussion.”

About 8.5 percent of audience members have been sending text messages in the 14 contests that the production has done so far, but organizers expect participation to reach 10 percent.

For a similar promotion with a tour of the rock-oriented theatrical production Blue Man Group, an average of 16 percent of audience members sent text messages, Mr. Bazadona said.

In a tour that covered 60 cities in 90 days, about 50,000 people sent text messages. “This means that each night, 16 percent of the house is leaving the theater with Blue Man Group somehow represented on their mobile phone,” Mr. Bazadona said.

At the Eugene O’Neill Theater that afternoon, the two students were enjoying their behind-the-scenes access when Stephen Spinella, who plays several characters in the musical, strode onto the stage on his way out of the theater. He asked Ms. Mitchell what she had done to win the contest.

“I texted,” she replied. “One of my favorite things.”