Hollywood Saves Theaters leverages the fame of the most well-known, most followed Hollywood stars, in order to make people who love them also gain interest in local theater.

The campaign used the PR value of 2 sets of people: 1) the Hollywood stars that recorded Cameo messages about the theater plays and 2) these were shared online by locally known household names: the local cast, actors and directors or the respective theater performance. These local artists have substantial followings on their Facebook pages. The videos generated engagement and were discovered and amplified by the press.

For years, Hungarian theaters have been under attack in a cencorship war. The government stopped funding all independent theaters that comment freely on societal issues. Many of these insitutions were forced to close as a result. The 6 biggest left joined forces and created an eCommerce website and hub for their art, called eTheater. This is a platform where people could buy tickets to the live performances, and also stream recorded ones.

The 6 theaters understood that now they needed new people to buy tickets: people who are not theater goers, but only consume pop culture. They needed a way to make them interested in their performances.

For years, Hungarian theaters have been under attack in a cencorship war. The government stopped funding all independent theaters that comment freely on societal issues. Many of these insitutions were forced to close as a result. The 6 biggest left joined forces and created an eCommerce website and hub for their art, called eTheater. This is a platform where people could buy tickets to the live performances, and also stream recorded ones.

The 6 theaters understood that now they needed new people to buy tickets: people who are not theater goers, but only consume pop culture. They needed a way to make them interested in their performances.

We needed to get non-theaters goers's attention and make theater appealing and exciting for them. They only consume pop culture, so we infiltrated that.

We got well-known Hollywood stars, who are familiar to our audience from their popular hits, movies, series and music to talk about what happens in a play by the non-traditional use of Cameo.

The Hollywood celebrity sends a message to one of the main characters of the play from another, thereby telling our audience the life event, or the main conflict that happens in the chosen theater drama.

We needed to get non-theaters goers's attention and make theater appealing and exciting for them. They only consume pop culture, so we infiltrated that.

We looked for Cameo artists that appear in the most popular and watched shows in Hungary, such as Breaking Bad, the Netflix film Falling for Christmas, Tarantino films, and other legends such as rapper Ice T who has a cult following in Hungary.

We ordered the Cameo videos from celebrities in the name of a main character, gave them clues about the main conflict in the drama and got them to address another main character. This way, the celebrity excites the audience about the main conflict and the situation of the drama.

Then, because Cameo can only be shared by a person, not by any organization, we had the local Hungarian cast or director of the play to share the Cameo message on their own personal Facebook page. All these Facebook pages had substantial followings, as these local theater actors and directors are household Hungarian names.

From then, the press picked it up and shared it further.

28% of the people who bought a ticket during the campaign period bought a theater ticket for the first time. They are the future audience our institutions need.

The campaign also covered funding for all 6 theaters for a full season.