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Cstands for Subscription<br />
STUDIO C MAKES THE LEAP<br />
INTO SUBSCRIPTION WITH C REWARDS VIP<br />
BY REBECCA PAHLE<br />
›› 2019 was an eventful year for<br />
Celebration Cinema by Studio C. In<br />
addition to celebrating its 75th anniversary,<br />
last fall also saw the long-awaited<br />
opening of its Studio Park, a mixed-use<br />
development located in Studio C’s home<br />
city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. While<br />
Studio C doesn’t own the hotel component<br />
of Studio Park, clarifies president<br />
J.D. Loeks, “all of the rest of it”—including<br />
retail and music space, apartments,<br />
an outdoor screening venue, and<br />
a nine-screen theater—“is ours. Which<br />
means that we effectively launched six<br />
new businesses on the same day in early<br />
October.”<br />
There’s another new launch, and it’s a<br />
biggie: In November, Studio C officially<br />
cut the ribbon on a beta version of its<br />
subscription program, C Rewards VIP.<br />
Loeks, like many in exhibition,<br />
was put off somewhat by the meteoric<br />
ascent-turned-crash-and-burn of<br />
third-party service MoviePass, which<br />
the executive says cast doubts on whether<br />
movie theater subscription services<br />
were viable in the long term. “We<br />
started with many of the concerns that<br />
those that are holding out have, which is<br />
if this is not sustainable, if it’s not a net<br />
add to our business model, there’s the<br />
fear that we’re devaluing our products.”<br />
Movie theaters—preaching to the<br />
choir here—are not exactly cheap to<br />
run, and the experience Studio C provides,<br />
Loeks says, “is worth pretty close<br />
to our average ticket price.” Would turning<br />
to the subscription model, Loeks<br />
wondered, create a mindset similar to<br />
that held by many a subscriber to Netflix,<br />
Disney+, or Prime Video?: I should<br />
get the movies I want, when I want them,<br />
for free. “[People think,] ‘Oh, yeah, it’s<br />
free to watch movies at home.’ Well, it’s<br />
really not. You’re paying a monthly fee.<br />
But that’s how it’s perceived. And if [a<br />
movie theater subscription plan] collapses,<br />
as some third-party subscription<br />
plans have collapsed, then we could be<br />
doing some long-term damage. So that<br />
was the initial hesitancy.”<br />
That initial hesitancy was combated<br />
by research into the experiences of other<br />
exhibitors who have jumped into the<br />
subscription space, both by comparing<br />
the basic specs of various plans—the<br />
cost, the number of movies offered,<br />
etc.—and by having conversations<br />
with fellow executives. “Whether it was<br />
going well or not. Whether or not they<br />
thought that they were going to need<br />
to adjust it. And what we found pretty<br />
much across the board from those that<br />
we talked to was, that while tweaks were<br />
necessary, it was going well, and they<br />
intended to expand the offering.”<br />
It’s also worth noting that some of<br />
these fellow exhibitors who had already<br />
launched subscription programs had<br />
begun to cut into Studio C’s bottom<br />
line. “Our guests are asking for” subscription<br />
services, says Loeks. “They<br />
want this. And they are in some cases<br />
going to our competitors, because they<br />
have it and we don’t. So, much like<br />
other innovations in our industry, from<br />
digital projection to recliners chairs<br />
to bars, you have to keep up or you<br />
become less relevant over time in the<br />
mind of the consumer.”<br />
Once Studio C decided to launch<br />
C Rewards VIP, they didn’t skimp on<br />
R&D to come up with what, exactly,<br />
the program should look like. They<br />
consulted customer attendance data—<br />
gleaned through their C Rewards<br />
loyalty program—to decide upon<br />
offering three movies a week, including<br />
Imax, for $19.95 a month. Online<br />
ticketing fees are waived for movies or<br />
concert tickets, and subscribers have an<br />
exclusive 24-hour window in which to<br />
buy tickets to Studio Park’s Listening<br />
Room shows before they become generally<br />
available.<br />
Midway through 2019, Studio C<br />
reached out to their loyalty club members<br />
to ask whether they’d be interested<br />
in joining a subscription program and<br />
what form they would like that program<br />
to take. “We saw several thousand<br />
people respond right away: ‘Yes, we<br />
are interested in something like that,’”<br />
Loeks recalls. “That gave us a database<br />
to work from” when it came time to<br />
launch the beta version, which is capped<br />
at 5,000 members. “At this point, close<br />
to half the people that suggested they<br />
80 / FEBRUARY <strong>2020</strong>
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