Weather 
Creating a successful show on Broadway has a myriad of factors that all need to go right. There’s a strength of material that’s necessary, as well as strength of performances. Awards voters and critics need to respond well to it. But to quote the Commercial Theatre Institute “the only thing that will keep your show going for a long run is word of mouth”. But what does that mean?
Put simply, word of mouth is when people (consumers) talk about a product of some kind in their everyday life. According to a 2021 Nielsen poll, 88% of consumers (across all industries) trust personal recommendations over traditional media. The Broadway League’s surveys do not specifically delve into brand trust, but personal recommendation is the single largest motivating factor that convinces people to buy tickets to a Broadway musical across every demographic– and it’s most potent amongst New York City residents, at over 30% of tickets.
The important thing with Word of Mouth is that it’s both incredibly difficult to fabricate successfully, and very difficult to quantify. On Broadway, most of the time what Word of Mouth represents is something along the lines of “is this show/cast resonating with our primary audience”. Or maybe more simply “is it good?”.
Examples on Broadway of positive word of mouth taking place happen all the time, and in the past two years the power of WOM has been becoming more noticeable. Maybe Happy Ending’s rise to acclaim has been well discussed at this point, but their “little show that could” energy and the positive word of mouth that it was able to generate carried the show, and given the role or commercial emphasis on the Tony Awards, likely played at least some role in it winning Best Musical. That season also had Purpose and John Proctor is the Villain and Oh, Mary, all of which were able to successfully capitalize on word of mouth. Or even Hadestown’s business model– bringing in a new set of principal cast members every six months, has led to recent instances like the virality and strong word of mouth that Jack Wolfe’s portrayal of Orpheus enjoyed last fall, spurring the box office takings from an average of $750k per week at the beginning of the run to over $1 million per week for his final month in the role.
The results of positive word of mouth, therefore, can be relatively simple to see. But what signifies that this effect is taking place? In today’s day and age, more and more of our information comes from online sources. Instagram is the number one source of Broadway News (according to last season’s audience demographic survey). But historically, there was a sizable gap between what shows got buzz online versus what translated into ticket sales. An International Journal of Advertising article in early 2019 celebrated the rise of what they called “eWOM”, and credited it with creating the success off-Broadway and out-of-town of the musical Be More Chill. But that excitement dried up once they came to Broadway, and Be More Chill closed after 6 months of performances.
Even last season, when Audra McDonald’s performance of “Rose’s Turn” at the Tony Awards went viral, as the second most viewed performance across social media behind the reunion performance of Hamilton, Gypsy was unable to translate that into ticket sales, and the show closed less than two months later.
Of course, it’s far more complicated than that. The Great Gatsby has the largest online following of a show from its season. But on sites like ShowScore or Broadway Scorecard or even the Mezzanine app, Gatsby is near the bottom of the lists of shows on Broadway when sorted by Audience Score– yet they are well into their third year of performances on Broadway and won BroadwayWorld’s Theatre Fans’ Choice Award for Best New Musical in 2024. Gatsby has enjoyed many moments of virality, especially with its original cast but subsequently too. Even a show like the revival of Heathers, which might be considered to be more in the camp of a show like Be More Chill from an audience demographic standpoint, will have run for over a year off-Broadway and has plans for a US national tour after the off-Broadway production closes, which will almost certainly prove successful.
We’ve seen changes in real time over the past few years as to how word of mouth develops- as the way we engage with each other as a society has changed in the past six years. We’re all online more, we all have access to the world at our fingertips. That’s an opportunity for Broadway, but also a challenge to cut through all the noise.
The tide is certainly turning on e-word of mouth. The aforementioned John Proctor is the Villain had the highest following on social media of any show from its season, and though it did not recoup its investment on Broadway (a conversation for a different day), the brand the show built has carried it to success in London, and many regional theatres across the US are producing it next season. Building a brand on Broadway is a tough game, but the only real way brands can grow organically is through word of mouth.
