Imagine this for a pitch: a Broadway musical about the making of a fake Broadway musical based on a real TV show about the making of a fake Broadway musical.
If that made you dizzy, you might not have what it takes to work alongside Drew Hodges and Callie Goff, the creative team that was tasked with creating the ad campaign for Smash, a new musical comedy based on a short-lived NBC series from more than a decade ago.
The musical is set to begin preview performances in March at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre. Like the series, it pokes fun at the backstage intrigue and inflated egos that drive the madcap world of New York theater, all while charting the wayward creation of a fictional musical about Marilyn Monroe. Chaos, drama, and plenty of hijinks ensue in anticipation of one unforgettable moment, the kind that Hodges says is uniquely Broadway: a pulsating, blissful, adrenaline-filled opening night.
That’s the moment he sought to recreate for the campaign.
“It’s a really specific American piece of iconography,” Hodges tells Fast Company. “You’re a hit, and people drink too much, and they jump on top of a table and read a review. When you’re in the middle of an opening night like that, it’s kind of funny because it’s this classic idea of what a Broadway opening night is—but it actually still happens.”
Hodges should know. He has worked in the business for well over three decades, helping to create the visual identity for musical hits from Rent to Avenue Q to Hamilton. He founded New York’s SpotCo advertising agency in the 1990s and now works as an independent creative and designer. For Smash, he collaborated with Goff, SpotCo’s managing director and chief creative officer, along with noted portrait photographer Jason Bell.
“We wanted it to be real”
The team captured the impromptu emotional purity of an opening night with an elaborate red-carpet photoshoot that included the entire cast, members of the Broadway press, and plenty of easter eggs for theater lovers.
The result is a splashy campaign that’s as meta as the musical itself, one you can stare at for hours and still find something new. Look closely beyond the red-carpet barricades and you’ll spot theater-industry stalwarts such as NY1’s Frank DiLella, Broadway.com’s Julie James, and Tony-recognized theater publicist Irene Gandy, along with theater-press newcomers, including teen influencer Joel Crump.
Hodges calls it a “Broadway Where’s Waldo?” or maybe a “Sergeant Pepper’s thing.” And it’s not an overly Photoshopped composite. Everyone in the photo is actually there in real time.
“We wanted it to be real,” he says. “That’s the fun of working on Broadway. You get to have these pinch-me moments. We wanted to bring everyone else into that.”
The shoot took place at Pier59 Studios on Manhattan’s West Side and made use of a curved, high-definition screen that stretched some 70 feet wide, projecting the Imperial’s exterior. A 3D title treatment was added once the image was set. (Hodges says his original plan to shoot in front of an actual venue proved logistically impossible given that most Broadway theaters are filled with audiences and people running the shows.”) Outfits had to be built specifically for the photoshoot because costumes for the final production weren’t finished yet.
Goff, who has worked at SpotCo since the beginning of her career, admitted to feeling some trepidation early in the process for Smash when it came time to enlist real-life industry types for the shoot.
“We weren’t sure what was going to happen when we started reaching out to them,” Goff says. “The exciting moment was when we started getting positive responses. For me, that was the moment when I was like, ‘Oh, this could come together. The community is rallying behind this.’”
Plenty of Broadway shows wink and nod at their target audiences with theater references and inside jokes about the business and fandom of Broadway. What makes Smash different is that it is overtly about the business of making theater, an insider comedy for an industry where proximity is everything.
Only time will tell if that premise will work for or against the show when it opens this spring, although putting prominent members of the theater press in your actual campaign is not a bad way to hedge against negative reviews.
If it stumbles, it won’t be for lack of talent: Smash features a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman; direction by Susan Stroman; and it counts Robert Greenblatt, Neil Meron, and Steven Spielberg as producers. The NBC series was created by playwright Theresa Rebeck.
For Hodges and Goff, the goal was simply to create something entirely new. If Smash doesn’t look like other Broadway campaigns that came before it, well at least it made you look—probably more than once.
“I mean, you could just make a mask logo and call it a day, but I’m a more-is-more kind of person,” Hodges says.
