Safe Without Sorrys: Tips for Street Teams Taking on Times Square
Some of staff pictured at the Thanksgiving Day Parade promoting & Juliet!
Written by Colette March
Taking on Times Square is no small feat. New Yorker or not, everyone is generally aware that the epicenter of the city’s theater district is full of interesting characters and constant obstacles that make it quite a challenge to flyer. We here at Broadway Crew are constantly working to ensure that our Crew’s safety is the number one priority, as should be precedent for any street team! This has been a learning process as our business is constantly shifting and evolving, but thanks to the feedback from our incredible Crew members, we’ve gathered a stronger set of tips for keeping everyone safe and happy when promoting our shows and brands!
1. Travel in Twos
Something we value above all at Broadway Crew is our strong sense of family. When you are a part of the Crew, we want you to feel at home with everyone that you work with, and we never want to leave you alone for the hours you’re out flyering for our clients. That’s why we always send out teams of two for our shifts! That way you have a partner to show up for you if any conversations go awry, or you need an advocate or a hand to hold pushing through a big crowd. Every street team should be just that - a team. And we put that togetherness at the forefront of our work.
2. You Always Have a Home Base
We’ve curated a homey break room for Crew members to convene before, after, and during shifts whenever they need time to gather their flyers, a place to eat their lunch, or a safe space to escape from an escalation that took place while they were outside. We tell Crew members from the minute they’re hired - it’s just tickets! We emphasize that nobody should compromise their well-being or safety while flyering and that we can always shift strategies to make sure the client outcome is reached. But we can’t reach that outcome if we aren’t able to take care of the wonderful people who help us reach those goals.
Our senior staff has been at this for years now, and we’re well aware that it can be a scary place out there. So we always make sure to give the Crew as much of a support system as possible when unpacking what they experience and how to strategize new plans and policies to keep everyone as protected as possible.
3. Self-Care is Your Best Selling Point
This kind of work requires a lot of social energy, a battery that can quickly be drained in the jungle of New York City. We try to check in with our Crew before every single shift to make sure everyone’s feeling their best, making sure we can check all outside business at the door. This really helps us create a healthier relationship with our work, doing a better job to make sure we can get more work for our Crew to keep killing it. It’s a symbiotic cycle that keeps us constantly evolving our relationships with employees and clients simultaneously.
As we head into 2023, we’re working on a streamlined system to report incidents confidentially and support our Crew through all the experiences they may have out in the field. Our entire senior staff were once out on the field, knowing all too well what might come our way, so our growth as a company is dependent on that flow of trust and communication. We’re approaching all of the new adventures we’ve got in store for us with that at the front of our minds, and we can’t wait to establish even more support systems for everyone at Broadway Crew - which will hopefully set a great precedent for street teams throughout NYC!
