The essence of good marketing is about making sure the maximum number of people who might be attracted to a new production, are aware of it, even before tickets go on sale. But for His Dark Materials it began even earlier. Marketing Director Chris Harper and National Theatre Director Nicholas Hytner faced the challenge of persuading a family audience to commit to coming to two three-hour plays. They decided the answer was to offer children’s discount tickets at every performance and to price the seats so that an entire family could see both plays for less than the cost of a show in London’s West End. The next step was to spread the word, beginning with the enormous number of
Philip Pullman fans. Chris used every trick in the marketeer’s book creating a wealth of
marketing materials: advertising, posters, mail shots, and promotions. He contacted fan web sites; to make sure they knew about the production. And when tickets went on sale, he offered them priority bookings, along with the Friends of the National Theatre. The campaign was been so successful that the plays were sold out by the time of the technical rehearsals, even before the first reviews appeared.