shakespeares marketing plan preso 072710
TRANSCRIPT
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Shakespeare’s Marketing Plan
The Business of Stage Plays in 16th & 17th Centuries
Shakespeare’s Comic World
Oxford University
Jim Mukerjee
July 29, 2010
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The Play is the Product
• 16th century England: burgeoning growth of book trade• Catalyst for growth in writing, publishing, selling & reading • Advent of stage playing as a new trade and profession• Shakespeare capitalized on his intrinsic histrionic talents:
acting and writing human poetry and plays• Irresistible new idea if one could write uncommonly well
• Stage plays became innovative product for the entertainment industry: least respectable, risky, but potentially very profitable
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Audience is the Customer
• Public theatre audience (mixed crowd, diverse tastes)• Touring company under patron’s patent (pastoral
audience, pedestrian taste)• Town halls (bureaucrats, clerical audience, conservative)• Inns of Court (educated lawyers, discriminating taste)
• Aristocratic households (socialites, cultural literati)• At court (royalty, foreign dignitaries, aristocratic taste)
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Marketing Strategies
• Entertain, please and delight audience (engagement)• Innovate and introduce plays rapidly (transformation)• Make plays portable, mobile (reduce production cost)
• Affordable pricing (increase volume, gross revenue)• Maintain competitive differentiation (innovate)• Cultivate patronage & investment (venture capital)
• Contemporary social media (sonnets, poems, jigs)• Create trust and brand recognition (Shakespeare)
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Patronage & Benefactors
• Royalty (Chamberlain’s Men King’s Men)• Civic authorities (Lord Mayors, Master of the Revels)• Resourceful individual investors (Hounslow, ROI ~30%)• 1571 Usury Law allowed money-lending at 10% interest• Public theatre owners (rent, share costs & profits)• Both: sharer (partnership) and housekeeper (ownership)• Networking is key
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Conclusion
• Shakespeare was an astute businessman
• His histrionic talents and love of language and poetry were linchpins of stage play business
• Secret to success: Deep understanding of the popular appeal in “Power of Transformation”
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Power of Transformation
“Shall we their fond pageant see?/
Lord what fools these mortals be”.