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[Instrumental music from RENT]
PAUL: Hi there, RENTheads. My name is Paul Allen, your official RENT blogger for siteforrent.com.
I'm here with Drew Hodges and we're going to be discussing some aspects of the show. Thank you for meeting me today.
DREW: You're welcome.
PAUL: Awesome. Now marketing for RENT must be different from marketing a fresh, new show.
Is there a balance between advertising the old and new aspects of the show and, if so, what is it?
DREW: Well, RENT was my very first Broadway show, so the look of RENT is very personal to me.
So, you know, it's obviously different when someone hands me a revival of a show that I didn't work on before because then we all just want it to change it all the time.
Whereas on this one, there are elements that, you know, we felt like, okay, we must change that.
And even people here brought me designs where they would make bigger changes, and I was like, "Yeah... no. We're not doing that."
So in a very real sense, the RENT mark is one of those rare things that people have so much attachment to
so we were not gonna, you know, suddenly have a new logo for RENT 'cause it would seem inauthentic.
But we did know that, you know, they're doing a lot of new things with the show, and so I wanna give that sense -
that it's the RENT you know and love, but there's some cool new stuff with it.
We would do that even if it was, you know, the ninth year. You know, we redid the RENT campaign several times within it.
The logo always stays the same, but the colors, the pictures... And I think the thing that stays the same the most is sort of the attitude, the approach.
I mean, we all know the show really, really well, love the show so deeply. It's pretty hard to get off track. I mean, everyone knows what is and what is not RENT.
The producers know it, I know it, and we just kinda know it.
And so we make a bunch of stuff, we all look at it and go, "That doesn't seem right. That's too young. You know... that's not rough enough, that's too rough, this."
So with RENT, it's easier than almost anything else I've worked on, because you just know what it's supposed to be inherently.
PAUL: Awesome. Now if you walked down the street to Times Square, you'll see a plethora of advertisements
for other Broadway shows, so how do you really set RENT apart from those other shows?
DREW: You know, the nice thing about RENT is it was there from the very beginning.
I put out this idea, when I first saw it, that RENT should be the young Broadway - that RENT should be unlike anything else that was there.
And so those very first ads were the black logo with the white page.
So, in many ways - [gestures to person off-camera] - so in many ways, that always helps separate RENT from all the sort of rainbow of colors the rest is.
So we kinda went back there for this. We've done some more colorful things for the tour, and then when we got to here I said,
"What if we just strip it back? What if we really pull it back to the black and white and simplify it, go almost back to the very beginning?"
And so in that case, nothing else looks like RENT, which is sort of a joy
It's also a testament to the producers because they don't feel that need to sort of fill it all in with a bunch of quotes and crazy stuff.
They get the fact that less said, more impact.
PAUL: With a show like this, is it as important to market to new RENTheads prospects or the pre-installed fanbase of RENTheads?
DREW: Well, the answer's both. But I would say you're really talking in the beginning to RENTheads.
That - I think that - you know, that's who we are, that's who we expect people will be. [laughs]
And obviously I think there's a zillion people who are gonna come to town and have never seen it and gonna say, "Oh... oh, RENT," you know.
I don't even think many people will - I think a lot of the new people will not actually realize that RENT has been closed for a little while.
I think it's such a classic brand, after touring and the movie, so I don't think that that's really so new to people, but we're starting with the people who know and love RENT.
And they'll bring friends, family, kids, generational, grandparents, you know. We just always saw that with RENT.
I mean, one of the most fascinating things we saw with RENT was this seating pattern of three tickets bought with two tickets and then a third several rows back
and we've never seen that in any other show.
And what we came to find was that it was a lot of sort of new teenagers with their mom, because they couldn't drive or take transportation by themselves.
But they were embarrassed to sit with their moms, so they would sit with their friend.
So RENT has always been a great first show and a great next-generation show that people hand down.
So I think it's the RENTheads first, but those RENTheads are a bit older - or new from the movie, from the soundtrack - and they're gonna bring everybody else.
PAUL: Cool. Are there any exciting new campaigns or forms of advertising
that you're looking forward to implementing for the revival?
DREW: The revival is a lot more on web. I mean, honestly, the very beginning of RENT was outdoor and was print.
It was newspaper ads - big, white newspaper ads. And now we're really, you know, we're really YouTube, we're really online.
So in that sense, you know - you're an example of a new way to market that wouldn't have been available to us - a blog.
I mean, none of that stuff existed that long, long time ago when RENT started, so it's really the digital that's new, and it's exciting.
And it actually takes the best advantage of how many RENT fans there are out there, so that's the most fun of the new campaign -
sort of hooking into everyone who loves RENT and using that, versus in the beginning, when it was an unknown thing.
PAUL: Now, in the last few years - this is my big question - Broadway has been having an affair with recognizable properties -
everything from The Addams Family and Legally Blonde to Mary Poppins and Elf.
I'm curious to get your opinion on why we're not seeing as many original properties, and whether that stems from the difficulty of marketing a new show without name recognition.
DREW: Well, one, we should say The Book of Mormon's a brand new show and the biggest smash we've seen in five years.
So it's still very much the case that you can have a really great show, have it be a smash. So was Jersey Boys and so was Billy Elliot.
So, interestingly enough, the producer's probably the only really big - you know, if you go back fifteen years, and take the big hit shows - I'll leave some out -
but let's say it's RENT, Chicago, Producers, Jersey Boys, Billy Elliot, and Book of Mormon. And that's sort of the pattern.
I'm leaving out the Disney shows in there, but Lion King certainly. And interestingly enough, a lot of those are still originals.
It's very clear that when people go to buy a ticket, they wanna test now the economy, whatever, your tickets are more expensive.
They wanna know what it might be like to go.
And so if you have an idea what the show is about, that's a plus... in the beginning. It can also be a negative.
I mean, we've certainly seen people decide that they've seen that movie and so even if the show is different, they don't have to really see it.
So, you know, I would say that it's easier for people to buy in and get excited about a show they have some idea what the story's about early.
And I would say that long-term, the success of that show has very little to do with that -
that if it really is gonna work, the show itself once you're launched is gonna have to be really good, whether you're brand new or something.
But it is easier to start - get going - with a known property. It just is.
There are a lot of new musicals that have known properties attached to them even though that thing isn't attached to them - Mamma Mia! and ABBA, or any of that.
So familiarity is helpful to get people to understand.
PAUL: Obviously... you're clearly a RENThead, being with RENT from the very beginning.
Every RENThead has their favorite character and their favorite song. I would like to know yours.
DREW: Oh, that's such a good question! Mine is exactly the same as Jeffrey Sellers' 'cause we have discussed this, and it's Collins and it's "I'll Cover You."
PAUL: The reprise or the first one?
DREW: "I'll Cover You (Reprise)" is the most - is my favorite, favorite moment.
There are other things - I knew a lot of the original cast, so there are moments that Anthony Rapp had that I will always love because of loving him as a person -
and, you know, there are pieces that we all - will always, you know - Gilles, up high, singing "Honest Living."
You know, there are other pieces, but as a whole piece it's "I'll Cover You (Reprise)" from the beginning... you know.
That's my favorite moment. That's the moment that gets me.
PAUL: Awesome. Thank you so much for meeting me.
DREW: Thanks. It was fun.
PAUL: Very fun.