Selling Angels
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So far the show’s lead producers, who include Chicagoans Robert Perkins and Windy City Times publisher Jeffrey McCourt along with the team that mounted the Broadway production, have pursued a surprisingly mainstream marketing strategy. Says Perkins: “The work has a proven appeal and is attracting older, family kind of people, though it may not have the appeal of a mainstream musical.” Newspaper ads, all of which feature the signature image of an angel with outspread arms, have played up the show’s Broadway lineage and its Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning status, steering clear of any suggestion of the work’s highly sophisticated adult content, including simulated gay sex and blunt discussions about homosexuality and AIDS.
Like the print ads, radio spots thus far have generally tried to play up the big-event aspect of the production and avoid detailing its provocative subject matter. (No television commercials are planned for Chicago, though one is being readied to hype the Broadway production in the waning days of its run.) And the producers’ choice of radio outlets clearly indicates how strong the push is to sell the show’s high-priced tickets to an affluent, mainstream audience that may not respond to frank talk about homosexuality or AIDS. Spots have been airing on a mix of stations that includes news-oriented WMAQ AM, classical WNIB FM, new-age WNUA FM, and, perhaps most surprising of all, WLIT FM and WGN AM, two stations with a proven appeal to older, conservative listeners. Long-standing WGN personality Roy Leonard (who has yet to see this show) has preached the gospel of live theater to a loyal, largely suburban following for years. His fans are one of the markets that producers of glitzy musicals and fluffy comedies traditionally hit hardest.
Flores Strikes Again
