Brands should look to movie theatres to learn how to engage audiences
One of the biggest challenges brands face in marketing themselves in today’s world is figuring out how to best engage their target audience. Consumer habits are changing rapidly, leaving brands racing to keep pace or chance losing out to a more innovative competitor.
Evan Turner
We’re already seeing new location technologies – geo-targeting, geo-fencing, beacons, etc. – being utilized within a variety of sectors today that are enabling brands to more successfully reach their target audience with personalized content that is more timely and contextually relevant. These data-driven strategies, which deliver local-focused content in real-time, have proven to be valuable to brands trying to reach consumers out of home and on the go.
But can this technique be scaled for brands that demand broadcast-level reach while refusing to forego impression-level targeting? Are there ways to capitalize on the “old world” rituals each of us ascribes to? Certainly there are specific times and places when large, relatively homogenous audiences gather together with those who share highly comparable preferences and lifestyles. If this mass already exists, how can you leverage similar data-driven techniques to drive scalable messaging for a brand?
One such market opportunity, and its millions of loyalists, is ripe for brands to take advantage of – movie theaters. In 2013, 1.34 billion movie tickets were sold in the U.S. and Canada. That’s a massive, captivated audience open to your messaging. I cannot speak for everyone but when I go to the movies, I want to relax, unplug and stare straight ahead for 2+ hours of audio/visual stimulation. The likelihood of me actively blocking out anything that is projected on the screen is effectively nil. Consider these facts:
-People still love movies. Nearly 62 per cent of American adults go to the movies every year. Even with all of the streaming and on-demand options, people still love seeing films on the big screen and will continue to spend money to do so. The evidence? April 2015 was the highest grossing April of all time. Imagine the attendance when Hunger Games, 007, Jurassic World and Han Solo hit the big screen later this year!
-Adults prefer to go to the movies than to bars and nightclubs. Adults ages 21 and older are almost three times more likely to go to the movies than to a bar or nightclub once a month or more. This is important, as this age range is the one with the most spending power.
-Moviegoers are out and about. More than half of movie theater patrons (55 per cent) go out to eat before or after their film, while almost a quarter (22 per cent) go shopping before or after. Clearly, a movie night puts consumers into a spending frame of mind, providing a valuable opportunity for advertisers to deliver relevant content to consumers who are looking for other local activities to partake in. Add value to their night out by engaging them with meaningful messaging and they’ll welcome you openly.
So how can brands take advantage of these large audiences who are already in the consumption mindset? Considering most theatergoers enjoy the large format advertisements before the show, integrating a precision-targeted ad to complement this broadcast format would be wise. Through the use of available mobile technologies, brands can bring addressable ads into theaters so that the emotion created by the ads on the screen can be instantly acted upon once the moviegoer departs the theater.
Cinema’s larger-than-life format has and will always provide a tapestry for premium content and advertising; paired with a technology native to each theatergoer (i.e. their phone) and informed with 1:1 mobile data, cinema’s content will be brought to life in innovative ways that both inspire audiences to action and move the needle for brands. By understanding a theater population’s characteristics and being able to act upon that shortly after a large format ad has inspired them, brands will be rewarded with fans that continue to engage with their content and products.
A prime example? A national restaurant, like Buffalo Wild Wings, runs one of their humorous ads on the big screen before the show, advertising its late night bar menu and drink specials (and ability to influence the outcome of a game). Once the movie ends and patrons leave the theater, BWW can retarget them with a mobile ad that not only continues the pre-show dialogue and brand building, but also achieves a business result by providing a 15% off coupon to the theatergoer.
Due to advanced data collection methods, these ads can be delivered to a very specific audience rather than pushed broadly. A mom who just took her two daughters to see Frozen might get a video ad for NBC’s newest family show, while a group of high school kids who saw the latest action movie might be retargeted with a mobile video ad showing the trailer for XBOX’s newest game.
The possibilities for brands to reach consumers in this manner are endless because theatergoers are a “captive audience,” even if they’re on their smartphones during the preshow content. This combination of the big screen and mobile second screen provides a dynamic opportunity for brands to have a huge summer at the box office.
Evan Turner is the senior director of national channel sales at SITO Mobile