Staging some amazing press!
This year, the Anat Gerstein team has been promoting National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's Off-Broadway presentation of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. We've always worked with arts and cultural venues, but this was our first Off-Broadway show! And it didn't take a miracle - just hard work - to get amazing media coverage. The show has done so well that this week it was officially announced that it will continue on through 2019 (and tickets are still available at www.nytf.org by the way!).
We began our work months before the show began; and we have garnered international coverage on all media platforms, including stellar reviews. The result: the show's brief run has been extended four times already!
Our Joanne King secured much of the Fiddler press. She shares a few lessons that can help in your press strategy:
Great PR comes from a great client partnership. We can't do it "to" the client or "for" the client. To be successful, it has to be "with" the client. Folksbiene let us inside so we could discover engaging story lines. They also understood that media is 24/7 and were flexible about doing interviews when and where the opportunities arose.
There is no media outlet too large or too small. Every tweet, every local weekly news outlet, and every online outlet helped to build the buzz that led to the smash success. We worked closely with the cast to share media hits so they could spread the word - and this increased engagement and attention.
Ditto: there is no media opportunity too early or too late. We worked with outlets round-the-clock; staffing visits to television stations at 5:30 AM and managing media requests long after hours.
Great visuals made a big difference. Folksbiene always provided professional photos and b-roll footage that were eye-catching and colorful. It was a great investment. The media adored them, and it pumped up the amount of space they got on every page and website.
There are many angles to every story. We used every one we could find including hometown newspapers and special interests of the actors. For instance, we noted that a group of actors lived in one neighborhood, and secured a front-page piece in a Queens newspaper.
And, the people working hard behind-the-scenes also have stories to tell: The New York Times profiled one of the ushers! We even attracted New York 1's Michael Scotto to learn the show's iconic bottle dance. And, there's even more on the horizon!
