Destination Cinema

I had the distinct pleasure last week of having time to think while watching the goings on of a lake with an area of 330 square miles. I was on vacation and really had time to slow down and reflect. The slow lapping of the waters, coupled with the antics of over friendly mallard ducks transported me to a reality that was clear, unconvoluted, and honest. When it got too hot I would gingerly wade into the cool waters of this great northern lake and slowly cool. The experience was total and offered some truths.

?This lake was at its core a destination; it offered an environment and an opportunity to engage in activities created by the marriage of its sandy beach and cool waters. You could define yourself by this experience and shape your outlook. The idea of a movie theater as a destination arose and how we, as an industry, should try to affect our future by providing for our customers a similar enveloping offering as this lake. To say that a theater is just a place to watch movies is short sighted and eventually defeating.

Destination marketing is a form of marketing in which a theater is promoted to your audiences in order to increase the number of people that want to take part in your theater's offerings. At the end of the day, the purpose of making your theater a destination is to further define why your location seems more attractive than the Regal or Cinemark 3 miles away. There has to be a reason that your theater is just not a place that screens movies, but also a venue for engagement and experience. What makes you different? What makes you just not a ceiling, walls, and a floor? What is the reason your audience engages with your theater?

The world is a different place and much of what is being marketed today is not products but rather experiences. To be relevant in today’s market you have to sell experiences. The key in your case is how the audience engages with your movies, your concessions, and other offerings. This is “engagement marketing''; it is a real time marketing strategy that invites your audience to interact with your theater and define for a wider mass audience. It is key that you are yelling from the top of your lungs what makes your theater different.

1. What makes Your Theater Different

Arguably the single most important step for any movie theater engaging in destination marketing is to take the time to clearly define what makes your theater unique. The Roxy Theater in Pennsylvania dresses its ushers in old fashioned usher garb giving the audience a key reminder that this is part of a tradition and this is a classical movie going experience. Celebrate the theaters’ history. Recall the past and celebrate the tradition that your theater represents. Nostalgia is big. Define and celebrate the technology

2. Define Your Audience and Define Your Market

A key marketing strategy involves you and your team identifying your target audiences. Who do you want as your audience members and how do you shape your messaging in order to attract them? If you want to be prudent you should aspire to attract several core audience groups. How do you populate your theater on weeknights and how do you populate your theater on weekends? Try to find programs that attract both young and old.

3. Utilize Data for Analytics

Ask yourself questions based on your box office and your audience. Why are they coming, why aren’t they coming. What movies are creating a loyalty effect because the audience feels that you are directly speaking to them. This will tell you what’s working and what’s not working.

4. Brand Your Moviegoing Experience

The process of branding is about being recognizable and being different from your competition. This can be organic, using images and colors that make your theater easily recognizable. Build hashtags for Social Media so that you can express a consistent and defined message that can become embedded into your local culture.

5. Involve Your Entire Town

It is important that you make the other stakeholders in your town know that your success is in reality their success. The more people going to the movies, the more people will patronize restaurants, be driven to a certain area which will promote retail activity and in reality widen the tax base for local government and your economy. Potential partners could be your city, village, or state, as well as hotels, attractions, restaurants, shopping venues and folks like your local Mainstreet.

6. Create a Virtual Reflection of The Experience You Are Offering

Through a snazzy website and social media placement you should provide your potential audience with the taste of what your theater can offer. To be frank, this is usually where most theaters really fail. They buy templates from bored web developers and the same site is online for a theater in Poughkeepsie as it is for Flagstaff Arizona. While inexpensive, the site really does not show your audience why you are an experiential value proposition and why you are different.

7. Every Community Has Influencers, Work With Them

Modern advertising has deep problems.? Most of your potential audience has a natural distrust for direct advertising and other in your face marketing methods. The best form of advertising has been word of mouth and by engaging with social media influencers you can shape your own word of mouth advertising. By engaging with influencers, you can promote your theater across different platforms, especially to niche audiences you want to reach, they will trust an influencer's opinion much more than any slick campaign.

It’s a new world; a cynical world, and a more reflective world that is aware of the falsehoods of past marketing tools. It is imperative that you sell the experience of what you are offering which is much more than a movie.? Just take a look at some of the work of William Castle and Kroger Babb, who at times spoke crassly but they knew how to hit the heart of an audience.

Meanwhile I will get back to work and dream of the cool waters of a lake.