How ‘Paranormal Activity’ on Broadway modernized its film franchise’s marketing playbook

It’s rare that a marketer seeks to strike fear in their audience’s heart. But for the folks behind Paranormal Activity on Broadway, there’s no better feeling in the world.

The stage show based on the hit film franchise was recently extended following a successful initial run, and just in time for peak spooky season, too—the show is now running through February 28, 2027. Audiences and critics alike have delivered rave reviews, and even before extension, the play was attracting attendance numbers at near full capacity every week. Box-office revenue has increased nearly every week since previews as well, with a recent week exceeding $1 million in ticket sales, per Broadway World.

Though Paranormal Activity’s creative team certainly deserves its flowers, the show’s marketing team, led by theater marketing agency SpotCo, has been working to support those records. In the run-up to the show’s August opening and throughout its run, the team has used social media to modernize a similar marketing playbook that the franchise’s original film followed. The show has benefited from considerable word-of-mouth excitement, which Callie Goff, co-managing director and chief creative officer at SpotCo, said the team looked to amplify—even before Paranormal Activity made it to New York City.

One of the biggest challenges for the agency team has been marketing the show to horror and non-horror fans alike. “How do we keep the specificity of what this is, and the excitement of what this is as a true horror property,” Goff explained, “but also [make sure] people know that even if you don’t love horror movies or if you consider yourself a scaredy cat, there’s really something still here for you in this experience?”

Setting the scene

Before Paranormal Activity got the stage treatment, the first movie in the film series figured out that letting the scares speak for themselves was a great way to get butts in seats. Ahead of the film’s 2009 theatrical release, Paramount Pictures, the film’s distributor, focused part of its marketing campaign around trailers using night-vision video footage depicting audience reactions, building the experience of communal watching into a key value add. More than 15 years later, its Broadway adaptation deployed the same strategy, made maybe even more pertinent by the live-performance factor.

“I think it works because it’s so singular. You don’t see reactions like that to typical things, and I think we can all relate to it,” Goff said. “At SpotCo, we talk a lot about when we’re selling a show, we’re not selling the plot. We’re not selling literally what happens on the stage. We’re selling the emotional promise and a sense of what the experience you’re going to have is going to be.”

The team captured audience footage at several shows before and during the play’s official Broadway debut, including at touring shows in London and Boston as well as New York’s first preview performance, Goff said. Each of these tapings had different aims, ranging from capturing invited content creators’ reactions to regular theatergoers, whom Goff said agreed to be filmed for promotional materials at select shows. A mix of both ended up in social videos and digital billboards around New York.

The hero reaction video, posted on the show’s account on Instagram and TikTok, has racked up 2.4 million views across both platforms, and Goff teased that more reaction-based creative, this time focused on audience heart rates, is yet to come.

Cast list

While content creators feature in some of the reaction footage, they played a perhaps even bigger role in spreading news and awareness about the show. Word of mouth, Goff said, was an important lever to pull from the very beginning, and she looked for ways to fuel it early.

That meant inviting a strategic mix of 800 people, including creators, theater fans, and other assumed advocates, to the show’s first 12 performances. Goff said SpotCo also arranged a special trip to Boston for 10 additional creators to see the show early, giving that group even more time to talk about the experience, and ultimately all leading to user-generated content about the show. Much of the UGC came from unpaid creators delivering genuine reactions, and the SpotCo team reached out to turn some of this into paid advertising, Goff said.

“We saw the UGC was incredible and could really do more than even the advertising could do,” Goff said. “As consumers, I think we sometimes can get a little jaded. You’re not going to trust, necessarily, the brand to tell you how great it is, but when a person who you admire, who you trust their opinion, is also telling you, ‘No, it’s really, really good,’ [you might].”

With marketers across industries focusing on eventizing campaigns and word of mouth playing a big role in entertainment IP’s success, it seems the Paranormal Activity team has struck the right chord, and Goff said the increasing shift toward appreciation for live events is heartening to see.

“In a world where we are more isolated, more digital, you can stream anything at home by yourself, there is this urge to experience things live and communally,” she said. “You can’t duplicate this experience. You can’t duplicate what’s happening on stage a second time…You certainly can’t duplicate what happens in the audience.”