Last week, the Hair Spin Team aka Press Department taught us all a lesson in how to get attention for our shows.

Hair announced that they were having an open call audition for future replacements in the show. They didn’t care if you were from Washington, DC or Akron, Ohio.  They didn’t care if you were repped by William Morris or your Uncle William. They were going to give you the chance to audition for a place in the tribe.

The story got picked up by the New York Times and Gawker.

You know what’s amazing about this story?

It’s not that amazing.

Shows, movies, reality TV shows and more have been doing open call audition stunts for years. It certainly didn’t take a professor in public relations to come up with this story.

But what it did take was the astute realization that sometimes you don’t have to create the most outrageous story to get coverage.  Sometimes you don’t need to break world records, or create custom menu items, or even let virgins get in free.

Sometimes, to get good press, you just have to give people an honest and simple story that taps into your audience’s hearts and minds.

Now that I think about, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing on the stage as well?

(What’s cool about the Hair story is that there’s a built in follow-up feature on any kid that actually gets cast from that call.)