Boxoffice Pro - April 2020

THEATER ANNIVERSARY
the AMC Stubs loyalty program or whether
it would, for simplicity’s sake, stand as its
own service. Eventually the decision was
made that A-List would be the highest
tier of Stubs membership; the logic being,
Colanero says, that A-List subscribers, as
AMC’s best customers, should get the best
treatment, including all the benefits of
Stubs’ paid Premiere tier.
“From the data perspective,” explains
Colanero, the existence of AMC Stubs
gave the AMC team a “rich database” of
customer information that “enabled us
… to identify which of our guests would
benefit from the A-List program and to be
able to share communications with them
at a level that maybe we didn’t with the
broader audience. … And [it] enable[d]
us to communicate more directly and
more quickly with an open, interested
audience that was looking for more from
AMC. We were able to make that connection
pretty quickly.”
That targeted, data-led approach meant
that, ultimately, the digital and in-theater
marketing plan for A-List could be “pulled
back” soon after the launch; so many
signed up so quickly that “we didn’t need
to lean too extensively on any marketing
to drive that membership.” In the nearly
two years since its launch, A-List now has
more than 900,000 members.
From a technical perspective, the years
AMC has spent building up “our skill set,
our tools, our capabilities” with AMC Stubs
gave the company “the platform to be able
to accomplish what we were able to do with
A-List, because we had the infrastructure
ready to back it up and to deliver what we
knew guests wanted and valued, without
burdening the program with things that
they didn’t value,” says Colanero.
Valuable resources, too, were AMC’s
compatriots on the other side of the pond:
Image courtesy
AMC Theatres
100 YEARS
OF AMC
Courtesy of AMC
Theatres
1920
Maurice, Edward,
and Barney Dubinsky
purchase the Regent
Theatre in Kansas
City, Mo.
1961
Stanley Durwood
becomes CEO of
the company and
renames it American
Multi-Cinema.
1962
AMC opens the
world’s first multiplex,
the Parkway Twin in
Kansas City.
1981
AMC becomes the first
theater chain to add
cup-holder armrests.
1991
AMC introduces Clip, a
filmstrip character, to
serve as an ambassdor
of the brand and its
Silence is Golden
program.
156 April 2020