Conan O’Brien has almost sold out his nationwide comedy tour — and all it took was a few Twitter messages.
Dewey Nicks/The New York Times Conan O’Brien, poolsideIt was an experiment of sorts for Mr. O’Brien’s team — and they quickly found out how loyal the comedian’s online fan base can be.
“It was expertly done,” said Geof Wills, the president of Live Nation Comedy, who said he was astonished to see how successful the untraditional communications approach was in selling thousands of tickets.
The O’Brien team relied on no traditional advertising, just the Twitter messages to his 600,000-plus followers.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Wills wondered, “Does this take your traditional advertiser campaign and knock it on its ear? It’s going to be a case study.”
Of course, “a certain amount of this has to do with the fact that he’s a huge star,” he said.
The Twitter announcement was planned days in advance by Mr. O’Brien’s team.
“Hey Internet: I’m headed to your town,” the @ConanOBrien account on Twitter said at 10:21 a.m. on Thursday. The message directed people to TeamCoco.com, which listed the venues and tour dates, but the site was quickly overwhelmed by visitors.
Half an hour later, the Twitter account suggested that people go directly to the Ticketmaster Web site to buy tickets.
Most shows were almost sold out in a matter of hours. Second shows were quickly added in New York, Chicago and Boston. And a representative for Mr. O’Brien said on Monday that a second show was also added in Las Vegas.