BoxOffice® Pro - June 2014

SHOWCANADA 2014
Has the SuperTicket been a successful
vehicle to drive your VOD efforts?
We have the SCENE loyalty program where
we now have 5.6 million members. So one out
of seven Canadians are members in our loyalty
program. That gives us phenomenal data that
allows us to communicate with them for things
like the SuperTicket and VOD. What we know
now are consumer habits, and we can basically
link up with that particular guest for that movie
or for another movie that’s coming out. And
it also allows us to sell them library titles that
other exhibitors can’t. There’s a lot of runway
in this business and it’s a business that I think
complements our existing services. It’s a new
business for us, and I see it becoming a “bricksand-clicks”
business in the long-term.
You decided to go with your own inhouse
online ticketing service, where
customers can buy a ticket to see a film
at one of your theaters—or at any of
your competitor’s locations. How did
you decide on this strategy?
We started with our own online ticketing
many years ago. We were trying to create a destination
where Canadians could find tickets by
just going to our website. We have a geo-targeted
app that will tell you the closest theater [for
the film], whether it is a Cineplex theater or
not. Fortunately, most of them are Cineplex.
If you look at the regular
ticket price, a film in 2D
at Cineplex today costs
less than it did ten years
ago. So our big focus
has been on 3D, VIP,
UltraAVX, IMAX, and all
those different alternative
ways of viewing.
Today we have more than 9 million people
who have downloaded our app; 25 percent of
Canada’s population has our app, and we are
now the ninth most popular mobile app in the
country.
At the end of the day, we wanted it to be
seamless for our guests so that whenever Canadians
thought about movies, they’d go to the Cineplex
app or website. That was the whole reason
driving the decision [to open ticketing to third
parties]. We don’t really see ourselves as being
competitive with other chains, we see ourselves
as competitive with what you’re going to do with
your entertainment time and dollars.
Cineplex is more than a theater brand,
it is now an entertainment brand that
offers a holistic media approach with
Cineplex Media. What are the trends you
are envisioning to develop advertising
opportunities around your brand?
The media business has grown for us quite
significantly. There are a lot of links between
the magazine, our website, and the loyalty
program. There is a lot we can do together when
an agency comes to us in order to create a fully
integrated advertising campaign. You’ve got a lot
of additional opportunities with the mobile app,
digital signage, TimePlay—which is another
innovation where we include interactivity as part
of a movie’s pre-show—and we’ve got ShowTime
advertising, lobby advertising, and marketing
partnerships with different Canadian retailers.
We just signed an agreement with 2,200
Tim Hortons locations to add Tim’s TV, and
we’ll be providing them with the installation,
content, and advertising for those locations.
The media business goes well beyond the
theater itself, so we can now do campaigns with
many tentacles that go into several different
areas reaching Canadians from coast to coast.
Our industry is about a best-in-class
consumer experience. What are your
priorities to enhance this experience?
Where do you see the future of the exhibition
industry heading?
From an industry perspective, I think you’ll
26 BoxOffice ® Pro The Business of Movies JUNE 2014