Lion King and SA Tourism a hit in Germany

MORE than 1 800 invited guests attended the opening night of Disney's Broadway Musical 'Lion King' held at the harbour theatre, Hafentheater in Hamburg, Germany - featuring seven South African cast members with music arrangement by SA composer Lebo M - including South Africa's Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Dr Ben Ngubane. This ambitious stage production, which opened on December 2 will run for three years - with the possibility of extension - and SA Tourism Germany has seized the opportunity to highlight the South African touch by utilising a number of marketing opportunities presented by the producers of the show. Explains Maureen Posthuma, marketing manager: consumer and media for SA Tourism, Germany: "As part of the promotion, a Lion King exhibition was held for one week in September at the Axel Springer Verlag, the biggest German publishing house. The exhibition mainly portrayed the history of the musical but South African Tourism had the opportunity to ensure a South African element by creating a link between the organizers and an importer of Proteas South African wine distributors and suppliers of South African Arts & Crafts. A South African chef prepared South African speciality dishes." In joint venture however with Stage Holding, T-Online, one of the biggest German internet providers, and Stern, a popular German magazine with a circulation of up to 1,4 million copies, South African Tourism sponsored the main prize, an exclusive 10-day trip for two people to South Africa. The kick-off of Lion King received a six-page promotion in the Stern edition of November 29. This promotion included a CD Rom, which focused on the main prize to South Africa. T-Online created a hyperlink to SA Tourism's website, free of charge. SA Tourism committed to advertising in the theatre's glossy Hafentheater Produktionsgesellschaft's A4-size Lion King program (with a circulation of 200 000 copies) until November 2002. "The German producers, Stage Holding confirmed too that they are willing to enter into more promotional activities together with South African Tourism during 2002. Some brainstorming will be done in this regard before the end of this year. We are considering SA promotions and exhibitions at the theatre or for example. a special promotion at the ITB in Berlin where we could include a special homage to Solomon Linda, the composer of The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Disney's Lion King has been performed since 1997 (world premier, New York), in Japan (Tokyo and Osaka), in London, Canada and Los Angeles. (Adéle Mackenzie)