Lion King, first Broadway show to gross over $1 billion: 5 Lessons for Bloggers!

The Lion King has become the first $1 billion Broadway show in history.  That’s quite a bit of success for the show and its makers.  It’s not as if there weren’t any shows as good as this earlier there were.  Not as if this is the longest running or the one with the highest ticket money.  Far from that.

Lion King‘s success can’t solely be attributed to its longevity — it will soon overtake Les Miserables as just the fifth-longest-running show of all time — nor to inflated ticket prices. Even with the adoption of premium seating a decade ago, Lion King pricing remains middle-of-the-pack, averaging $130 per seat with a peak price of $199, compared with $171 and $477 for The Book of Mormon.

Then what is it that has ensured the success of this show to be the first to gross over $1 billion?

Instead the family-friendly musical has been rewarded by consistency, playing to packed or standing-room-only houses and dipping below 80 percent capacity fewer than a dozen times in more than 6,600 shows (typical Broadway musical production costs are $600,000 to $700,000 a week). “This humbling milestone is a testament to the vision and artistry of [director] Julie Taymor,” says producer and Disney Theatrical Group president Thomas Schumacher. Taymor’s Tony-winning direction and the property’s worldwide recognition — the show has grossed $5 billion across 21 global productions — have made it very good to be King.

The success lies in consistently bringing in audience which loved the show, due to the great vision and artistry of the makers of the show.  It brought to the audience, a quality and artistry on Broadway never seen before.  Everyone, from a kid to an old person, could enjoy the show multiple times.

Secret of Lion King’s Success Applies to Blogging

The same applies to blogging as well.  A Bloggers greatest gifts are:

Quality: One cannot succeed if one’s content doesn’t have any quality.  If 200 people are writing on the same topic with the same perspective, then there is no incentive for anyone to really read your content.  And the content needs to be correct grammatically and error free.  Beyond the basic “dialtone” quality parameters, the content needs to be factual and original.  That is what sustains it in the minds of the audience and get the Google search ranking.

Artistry:  Even if everyone and his brother is using WordPress, the premium theme, and writing on the same topic, one could, with enough imagination and artistry make his/her post stand out in the blogosphere.  Its not easy, but then high art is never so.  The commitment to the ‘special extra’ on your blog has to be passionate.  That much higher than that of the other bloggers.

Consistently:  Quality, that too Artistic quality comes with its own share of whimsical ways.  It is wild in its own way.  It is not easy to tame a great visionary and artist down to being consistent day after day for years, nay decades!  And, in there lies the rub.  Greatness is not only in being great and doing it in style, but being all that and being crazily consistent!

Appeal: Bloggers keep looking for niches.  Very essential.  But, whatever your audience, your work should have the capacity to enthrall even those who weren’t your audience initially.  Old and middle aged people needn’t have necessarily found the Lion Story very profound to read.  But the show had enough innovation, beauty and profundity to bowl over even the most cynical.  So, if you can win your “target audience”, then great.  But if you can win over even those who aren’t your audience, then you have the shot at the absolute top!

Whole is newer than the ancient parts:  The Lion King story is not completely a new one.  It is original in its synthesis, but ancient in its genesis.  The story takes place in a kingdom of lions in Africa, and was influenced by the biblical tales of Joseph and Moses, and the Shakespeare plays Hamlet and Macbeth. (link).  Something that is based on Biblical stories and Shakespeare’s two most popular plays, can’t be that original, can it?  But it is.  It is refreshing, it is emotional, it is exhilarating, it is motivational, it has love, hatred, enmity, triumph and loss.  Everything.  It sews characters and stories in a beautiful story and gives voice to the animals like none other had.  That is its greatness!

If a blogger can include these qualities in his/her blog content, then s/he too can make it big.  Real big!  🙂

Featured Image: photo credit: moriza via photopin cc