By Phil Rabin, editor, Capitol Communicator
It’s not surprising that the pending arrival of “Hamilton” at the Kennedy Center in D.C. generated an overwhelming demand for tickets, given the fact that the Broadway production has been a sellout. From a marketing standpoint, however, it interesting that the Kennedy Center and the show’s producers had to do little or nothing to set off the firestorm.
Imagine launching a product with basically no advertising or publicity, only social media and word of mouth.
WTOP had a report, in part below, that captured a bit of the frenzy surrounding the launch of “Hamilton” ticket sales.
“When Kennedy Center members logged online Wednesday morning, they entered a virtual waiting room where they found themselves in a very long queue for pre-sale tickets.
“This virtual waiting room was created as a way to prevent the website from crashing, as it has in the past during such hotly-anticipated shows as “The Book of Mormon” and “Wicked.”
“Members who logged online prior to 10 a.m. were randomly assigned a number and put into a formal queue ahead of anyone who jumped online after 10 a.m.
“At 10:30 a.m., WTOP’s Sue Rushkowski found herself in 47,269th place in the queue. As for 5:30 p.m., she still had 27,000 people ahead of her. She finally got to the front of the line at 10:38 p.m. but decided against buying the remaining premium seats at $625 a pop.
“At its peak, roughly 70,000 users were in the system.”
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