Blue Man Group is a Boston Theater District staple – it’s always there. In the words of Blue Man Co-Founder Chris Wink, many people in the city have the attitude that “they’ll see it sometime.” That’s not the same mind as the cities the Blue Man Group visits on a national tour, where the audiences have a short window to see the show.
Basically, in Boston, it’s trickier to attract the locals who still haven’t gone to check out the Blue Man Group’s entertaining, multi-sensory experience.
But Wink, whom we spoke with about the Group’s new campaign centered around the slogan “Dare to live in full color,” isn’t necessarily trying to sell tickets with the Group’s latest marketing effort. He actually doesn’t even consider it marketing.
Of the new campaign, he said:
“We never looked at ourselves at having an earnest, lofty ambition, but we’ve always inspired to do more than entertain. We’ve aspired to energize you, inspire you. I feel like we’re coming clean – this is who we are. We’re not just some weird blue men who are here to make you laugh and play a song.”
If that’s what you previously thought about the Blue Man Group, then let Wink tell you about their mission, which is to get viewers to live life in full color, to open their eyes, and to maybe even spark some creativity of their own.
HM: How does the new campaign speak to the Blue Man Group’s mission?
CW: I think the genesis of this is that we’ve found that most people who come to the show really came from word of mouth. What we also found is that when we did advertising that just showed a Blue Man, if there wasn’t someone nearby to explain what it was like, sometimes people will say ‘I don’t get it.’ And it was sort of difficult to articulate who we were, and what we’re excited about with this campaign is getting to express more clearly what we’re all about. It isn’t just the color blue, it’s the experience that those characters create for the audience.
The reason people have come for so many years is all that happens in that space. Sometimes we call that the ‘fourth Blue Man.’ There are three blue men, but it’s not that they’re in a blank space, it’s this world they’re in and there’s this experience that unfolds. We wanted to put words to our own creative mission, and whether or not that sells more tickets or not, we’ll let the chips fall where they may, because we want to articulate who we are and why we do what we do. That’s what I like about this phrase – we’re saying look, this is an experience, a celebration of living life in full color.
HM: Blue Man Group advertisements have always been somewhat mysterious. Does the new campaign play that up or reduce it?
CW: It’s a little of both – on the one hand, there’s still a mystery attached: what does it mean to live full spectrum? Which way do they do that? It puts the emphasis beyond the three characters, what the characters do or what they’re like, and it’s more about what the show’s like, what the experience is like. It opens it up more for that ‘fourth Blue Man,’ and I don’t think we’re killing the mystery, just being more specific about what we’re promising to deliver.
HM: Why do you think now is the best time to launch this campaign?
CW: We feel like – look – we want to own the fact that we’ve been around long enough to be a part of the community. We’re not new on the block, but it’s important that we’ve kept the show fresh and relevant. When we go on a national tour, it’s in town for a weekend, people think ‘I have to go now.’ If you’re in Boston, you think ‘Oh, I’ll go sometime.’ We want to remind people why they would go.
We wanted to put words to our own creative mission, and whether or not that sells more tickets or not, we’ll let the chips fall where they may.
We don’t want to ‘market,’ per say, or have advertisers. We want our creativity to extend into the public domain. [We thought] ‘Let’s just start getting our message out’ – some people won’t come, and that’s fine, but at least they’ll know more about our DNA. We just want to let people know why we’re doing this, and it’s because we’re excited about a full spectrum, full color life. We never looked at ourselves as having an earnest, lofty ambition, but we’ve always aspired to do more than entertain. We’ve aspired to energize you, inspire you. I feel like we’re coming clean – this is who we are. We’re not just some weird blue men who are here to make you laugh and play a song.
HM: With this message in mind, is there anything new or different that the audience will pick up on?
CW: For someone who hasn’t seen it in a while, I definitely think it will be pleasantly gratifying to see the new material that’s in there. There’s an element of the signature pieces that may never change, but there’s another thread, pop culture, technology, that’s ever changing – it has to. I think our show is really one of the ways you can look at it is that they’re constantly juxtaposing the two. And that’s on purpose, we constantly want to juxtapose the modern and the ancient. I don’t think we could say its a brand new show, but its the show that changes to stay the same.
We’re not just advertising our show, we’re promoting the idea of live experiences – going out and seeing theater, sports, art and, also beyond your comfort zone. We’re hoping this provocation, “dare to live in full color,” will get people out [of the house] to not just see something, but to be inspired to make things themselves.
