Winners & Shortlists

PAY PER LAUGH

Grand Prix
TitlePAY PER LAUGH
BrandTEATRENEU
Product/ServiceTHE AIM WAS TO BREAK DOWN CONSUMERS’ RELUCTANCE TO CHOOSE A FORM OF LEISURE LIKE
Category A01. Innovation
Entrant Company THE CYRANOS McCANN Barcelona, SPAIN
Advertising Agency THE CYRANOS McCANN Barcelona, SPAIN
Production Company CANADA Barcelona, SPAIN
Credits
Name Company Position
Leandro Raposo The Cyranos Mccann Creative President
Pablo Colonnese The Cyranos Mccann Executive Creative Director
David Fernández/Joaquín Espagnol The Cyranos Mccann Creative Director
Eduard Cubel/Oscar Amodia/Alejandro García The Cyranos Mccann Art Directors
Jaume Rufach/Marc Sánchez/Nil Murtra The Cyranos Mccann Copywriters
Oriol Bombí The Cyranos Mccann Head Of Strategic Planning
Alba Riart The Cyranos Mccann Production Manager
Marta Grasa The Cyranos Mccann Account Director
Jesús Vergés The Cyranos Mccann Account Executive
Glassworks Post Production Company
Marc Oller Canadá Director
Oscar Romagosa Canadá Executive Producer
Alba Berneda/Laura Serra Canadá Producers

The Brief

Teatreneu is an independent theatre company which has seen an alarming decline in its audiences due to the economic situation and the increase in taxes on arts performances. After finding that older systems such as conventional advance ticketing had lost their effectiveness and ruling out charging on a voluntary basis as too subjective, the conclusion was reached that the only way to build up audiences and raise the average ticket price was to come up with a new formula. This is how Pay Per Laugh was born: the first comedy theatre where you only pay for the laughs you get. To do this we installed facial recognition software in each seat to detect every smile and count them. Instead of paying in advance for comedy with no guarantee of it being minimally funny, we thought of paying at the end and only for the laughs you got, at 0,30 euros per laugh. A way of encouraging people to come to the theatre while avoiding the anxiety involved in making the right decision at a time when people cannot afford the luxury - never a truer word - of getting it wrong.

We fit out each seat with a facil recognition system that detects the smile, and proposes the following deal to spectators: 'Entrance will be totally free. If the show produces no laugh, you don´t pay anything. However, if you laugh, you have to pay for each smile'. Each smile produced is worth 30 euro cents, something that in this day and age is quite a reasonable price. And so that no-one would cry for having laughed more than they could afford, the maximum amount to pay was 80 laughs or 24 euros.

The average ticket price was up by 6 euros on traditional performances. The system was covered in the leading national media. This generated more publicity and, as a result, 35% more audience. Each Pay Per Laugh performance took 7,200 euros, compared to the 4,400 euros they had been making before. The Pay Per Laugh system is currently being replicated in other comedy theatres around Spain. A mobile app was created to use as a payment system in other independent venues. And the first payment by the number of laughs and not performances was successfully launched.