Boxoffice Pro - April 2020

INDUSTRY INDIE INFLUENCES INFLUENCERS
“They had never done cinema before. We
introduced them to the space—and they
were exclusive with Spotlight,” says Sakin.
“That’s when we felt we had arrived, that
we were actually making a difference in
the marketplace.”
Spotlight’s biggest evolution among
its exhibitor partners developed during
the company’s early years. “We started to
see these really high-end theaters start
opening up in the United States, where
you could screen commercial films but in a
high-end environment to continue reaching
a luxury audience,” says Sakin. “It was
the ideal model to expand our horizons.”
Sakin remembers taking a road trip to
San Diego to see one of Cinépolis’s first U.S.
locations. Mexico’s leading circuit opened
its first U.S. cinema in 2011, strategically
opting to enter the market with luxury
theaters. “We were blown away,” he says.
“This was full waiter service at your seat,
reclining chairs, sushi, and martinis—at a
ticket price that wasn’t ridiculously high.
We knew right there and then, this is our
market. This aligned naturally with the
brands we were signing to Spotlight Cinema
Networks. We knew that if we could get on
the ground floor with luxury theaters, we
could enhance [them] and grow with them.”
It took some convincing. Although
well versed in cinema advertising through
its global circuit, the Mexican chain
originally opted to forgo ads on its screens
in the United States. Spotlight appealed
to them by linking their art house connections
with the luxury-cinema model;
both overlapped in terms of consumer
demographics. Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas
signed on to Spotlight Cinema Networks,
and the company went on to sign additional
exhibitors, including Silverspot Cinema
and CinéBistro, that featured upscale
auditoriums at a time when the concept
was just beginning to take off in the U.S.
“At that point, I don’t think any of us could
foresee how much that space would grow
in the ensuing years,” says Sakin.
Today, Spotlight Cinema Networks
boasts an exhibitor community of nearly
1,200 screens—an early, and self-admittedly
arbitrary, benchmark of 1,000 screens
was set by Rakfeldt and Sakin when they
launched the company in 2010. The
growth over the past decade is founded on
a strong feeling of trust among Spotlight
and its partners. “It’s fundamental to our
success,” says Rakfeldt. “The art house
community and luxury sector care deeply
about their brands. We have to care about
that just as much as they do in order to
maintain their trust. Our cinema advertising
model has been the same from the
very beginning: every exhibitor sees and
approves every ad.”
“That level of trust has to exist with
both our brand and exhibitor partners.
We need to be extremely selective about
what appears on our screens,” says Sakin.
“Everything we do is with the exhibitor’s
seal of approval. I think that’s what
opened the door into the luxury space; no
one else was willing to do that. We take
a big risk because we could potentially
sell to an advertiser that gets rejected by
all our exhibitors. There are advertisers
that would love to be on our screens
because they want to be in the world of
independent film and luxury cinemas.
They see our smaller commercial loads,
knowing their share of voice would be
larger. But if they’re not upscale enough,
or if the creative isn’t up to the standard,
that doesn’t work for us or our exhibitors.
That’s why we have to be diligent about
anything we bring to the screen.”
Rather than defining itself exclusively
by cinema advertising, Spotlight has
grown to become a vertically integrated
partner of art house and luxury cinemas
in a number of different sectors. In 2017,
the company announced it would start
its own event-cinema division, CineLife
Entertainment, which has already
made significant strides in the market.
That same year, the company acquired
Storming Images, a digital distribution
firm with a focus on trailer, pre-show,
and DCP delivery. Storming operates
independently and works with three other
cinema advertising companies. “Spotlight
is our B2B ad sales entity and Storming is
our foray into digital delivery distribution.
We’re also building a B2C brand through
CineLife through our mobile app and
our event-cinema division, CineLife
Entertainment. Our ambition is to make
CineLife a household name in the next 10
years,” says Sakin.
To achieve that, Rakfeldt offers a
succinct summary of the company’s focus
as it enters its second decade: “The media
landscape changes quickly and we must be
innovative, flexible, and entrepreneurial
to stay ahead of the game to drive results
for our exhibition, advertising, media, and
content partners.
64
April 2020