Corporate Sponsorship Is a Broadway Hit

During a recent commercial break from the warbling singers of The Voice, you might have caught an ad featuring Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, riding statesman-like in a white Chrysler 300 Motown Edition. The cinematic spot follows Gordy, 83, as he and his Chrysler soar from his label’s original Hitsville U.S.A. building in Detroit to the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York, home of Gordy’s new Broadway show, Motown: The Musical.

Motown, which opened on April 14 to strong advance ticket sales—it’s the eighth-highest-grossing show on Broadway—has forged an unprecedented deal between a musical and a corporate sponsor. Two years ago, Motown began talking with Chrysler, a company “in the business of selling cars, but also in the business of celebrating Detroit,” says producer Kevin McCollum. Since then, Chrysler, which in 2011 rebranded itself “Imported from Detroit,” has contributed an estimated $6 million to $8 million to promote Motown, with $2 million toward ads alone. “Regardless of my passion for Motown music … I would not have pushed a tie to [the show] if there wasn’t this new Chrysler story,” Olivier François, chief marketing officer at Chrysler, told the New York Times. Ilene Rosen, associate chief operating officer of SpotCo, an arts ad agency that worked on the Chrysler-Motown partnership, points to the deal’s rarity. “This pairing came from the top level of the company, and so the show didn’t have to pitch itself,” she says.