Playbill® Launches Playbillvip.com The First-ever Do-it-yourself Playbill!

PRLog (Press Release) - Jan. 22, 2013 - January 22, 2013, New York, NY— Playbill Inc., the 128-year-old theatrical publishing company, has launched PlaybillVIP.com (www.PlaybillVIP.com (http://www.playbillvip.com/)), the first-ever do-it-yourself program allowing users the ability to make their own Playbills both online and to distribute in theatres.

This new innovation is designed primarily as an audience-building tool and a fundraising apparatus for colleges, schools, amateur and community productions. This new website also gives these productions the capability to leverage the power of the Playbill brand to create their very own professional Playbills—much like the kind Playbill produces for Broadway and professional theaters around the country.

This new service consists of several fully-customizable and sharable unique features: a Playbill-branded Save the Date; a Playbill theatre program with billing pages, Who’s Who bios, embedded photos and videos, local advertisements and more; and Playbill Express, a service created with licensing companies Music Theatre International, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Tams-Witmark Music Library, which allows users to upload pre-populated programs for well-known titles. These pre-populated Playbills, designed for fast and easy utilization, are complete with information and credits for individual shows (i.e. title page credits, proper creative billing, character names for easy-to-create cast lists and song lists).  Playbill Express currently has over 300 pre-populated programs in the system with new titles being added daily.

Playbill’s CEO and Publisher, Philip Birsh remarked, “Playbill has spent the last 17 years building our digital presence. We’ve created close to ten websites—including Playbill.com, PlaybillVault.com. PlaybillStore.com, PlaybillClub.com, PlaybillMB.com, PlaybillPro.com and now PlaybillVIP.com—all with the goal of creating an entire universe for all different types of theatregoers and theatre professionals. At the heart of our company is and will always be our beloved magazine, which now serves close to 4 million theatregoers in over 120 theatres across the nation. We believe that PlaybillVIP will not only help introduce our brand to new generations of theatre lovers but also provide a great resource to schools to help better promote their shows and serve as an excellent new fundraising tool to help schools defray the cost of their productions.”

Playbill VIP is free to use and share in its virtual form. A $50 donation to charity is required to create a printable version to hand out in theatres. Playbill has chosen Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, The Actors Fund and UNICEF as its three charities of choice.

For more information, visit www.PlaybillVIP.com