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Broadway goes Wilde for Jersey Shore

Roundabout Theatre Company uses MTV series to promote "The Importance of Being Earnest"

With a recent web series promoting its latest Broadway production for Playbill.com, the Roundabout Theatre Company seems to have found a recipe for the perfect digital marketing campaign. It looks a little something like this.

First, have the brilliant idea to take characters from Oscar Wilde’s play and give them dialog from MTV’s hit reality series, Jersey Shore. Then, get it beyond Playbill’s usual web audience and put it on YouTube. Both inspired moves, but if this and a penchant for pop culture dressed as English gentry was all it took, Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer would be a very rich man. What puts this over the edge is when British actor, writer and prolific Twitterer Stephen Fry passed it along to his more than 2.5 million followers. And voila, almost 600,000 views for the five-part series and untold in earned media exposure.