Over the years I’ve done my fair share of "database marketing," but that’s not what this category of QViews is about. One of the ways to build an audience is to follow the data, and oddly enough, it’s not very commonplace. One pioneer in this area is Off-Broadway producer Ken Davenport, whose data-based decision about when to send his email marketing we discussed earlier. Now he’s employing a new division of market research firm Nielsen, led by Joseph Craig, to help him decide what type of show to produce next.
We know there’s an audience for "alternative to the mainstream" (see Chris Anderson on The Long Tail), and Ken Davenport now has it in his sights.

NY Times: Nielsen Brings a New Marketing Strategy to Broadway, 2006-Aug-1, by Campbell Robertson

The key, Mr. Craig said, was to market Off Broadway as an independent, risk-taking alternative to the big Broadway players, sort of like a theater version of Miramax, the movie studio that has often presented the smaller, more eccentric films that the big studios bypassed.