Death to Secrets

As the final Austin Secrets show approaches (Saturday the 27th!), I’d like to reflect a minute on its success.

Via any measure we care to use, it’s been the most successful show The Hideout Theatre has put up… as least as far as we know. Every show since the first one has sold out, and we’ve regularly been turning away 15+ people from the box office. In fact, the past 3 weekends have sold out online before the physical box office opened, and with 33 presales already, the final weekend might even sell out before Saturday.

It’s one of those rare shows that audiences love, and that the performers equally love being in.

How do we know, beyond mere ticket sales, that audiences are loving the show? Well, it turns out, we actually have metrics for that.

On our website, when you purchase a ticket, it asks you how you heard about the show. You see a little dropbox with lots of options, like this:

Your answer gets stored in a database, and as time goes on and orders come in, we can run reports on the collected information. The report we’ve been running looks at all the orders placed for Austin Secrets, and for each option in the list, counts up the number of times people have cited it as the way they heard about the show.

What do you suppose is the number one option?

It’s Word of Mouth, hands down.

After running the most recent report, 64 people said “Word of Mouth”. 2nd on the list is “Internet Search”, with 8 (well, actually, it’s 4th. 2nd is people who left the field blank, and 3rd is people who chose “Other”, but didn’t fill in what that “Other” was).

Not only is that a strong result, but “Word of Mouth” is also proportionally higher for Austin Secrets than for other shows. That means that more people than usual are spreading the word to their friends and saying “You have to see this show.” That, as you might imagine, is a very good thing.

Word of Mouth is actually the ideal way to market a show. It’s buzz. It’s people talking about a show. It’s free. It’s also a little frustrating, because it’s largely out of your control. The best you can do is measure it after the fact.

If you’re really interested, here are the complete results of the most recent report:

   Word of Mouth             64
   Blank                     16
   Other                     10
   Internet Search            8
   Austin Chronicle Listings  7
   Facebook Status            7
   Checked Hideout Website    7
   Read a Review              3
   Don't Remember             2
   Google Ad                  2
   austin360.com              2
   Meetup event               1
   friend                     1
   Poster or Postcard         1

So that’s the technical side of things.

The more visceral side is that this show feels special. At its best, it’s a rollercoaster of extreme comic highs, and utterly solemn dramatic moments. Just reading the secrets sometimes evokes gasps, awwws, or riotous laughter from the audience, and they IMMEDIATELY get that the tone of the following scene will and should reflect the tone of the secrets. The Truth Chair segment, when it goes right, demolishes the wall between the performers and the audience, and suddenly we all feel like we’re on this crazy voyage together.

To quote one random person on FourSquare, “Austin Secrets show. It made me laugh AND cry!”… pretty much the perfect praise.

Okay, so I’m gushing and bragging. But so what. I’m insanely proud of this show, and as we head into the final weekend, the only question remaining in my mind is, “How soon can we bring it back?”.

Cheers,
Roy Janik
Artistic Director

P.S. There are still some tickets left for the final show as I write this. Click here to buy yours.