A brand-new Broadway musical opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on Sept. 25. No tickets were sold. It closed the same night it opened.
But the house was packed, and producers called it a hit.
The one-night-only run of “Bill Pay: The Musical” was the latest marketing stunt from Ramp, the fintech company behind the eponymous business platform for managing expenses, accounting and other finance operations. Playing to an invited audience of customers, prospects, influencers and press, as well as 200 winners of free lottery tickets for the general public, the Ramp-backed tuner trumpeted the benefits of the company’s AI-powered Bill Pay product in a zany, hourlong musical featuring tap-dancing hobbits, a Shakespearean rap and big-deal Broadway talent, including Jessica Vosk, Billy Zane and Tony Award winner Billy Porter.
The show was also the latest example, and evolution, of the industrial musical. These corporate song-and-dance shows, often performed solely for the employees and stakeholders of a business, took hold in the 1950s and 1960s, when splashy musicals about new car models, consumer goods and life insurance became increasingly commonplace at company conventions and other gatherings.
Commissioned as an entertaining way to educate employees, motivate performance and boost morale, industrial musicals fell out of fashion by the 1990s, thanks both to rising production costs and audiences’ preference for screens leading into the digital age. Now, however, as companies look to turn heads in a noisy world, newfangled industrials like Ramp’s “Bill Pay,” the 2024 Tim Hortons musical and the pre-COVID Skittles musical suggest that musicals have become freshly appealing as brand activations and marketing stunts.
