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Last week saw the Event Cinema Conference and Awards take place at London's QE11 and below, DCM's Exhibition Director, Steve Davis, has the scoop...
Last Friday saw the Event Cinema Association’s (ECA) fourth annual conference take place, this time at th e QEII Conference Centre in Westminster. We were joined by Exhibition colleagues from the likes of Savoy, Picturehouse, THE Uckfield Picturehouse, Vue, Odeon and Broadway Letchworth, as well as a number of suppliers and partners from the world of event cinema.
Melissa Cogavin kicked off the day by talking about what a busy year it’s been for the ECA; having welcomed 50 new members in 2016. The organisation has promoted event cinema in Serbia, Amsterdam, Germany Las Vegas, Barcelona and Stockholm, working with the National Institute for the blind, expanding in the US and updating the technical delivery handbook.
Next up was Mike Sampo, who gave a thought-provoking opening session around the potential boundaries of Event Cinema in terms of relevance, diversity and sustainability and talked about 'out group harmongony bias' - the buzz term for the day!
Some interesting questions were posed such as “is event cinema a threat to theatre?” The answer, of course, was no, but beyond that the three biggest take outs for me were:
Marketing is key - I cannot underline this enough. Understanding your audience and aligning them to relevant events is key, as is promoting the relevant USPs for that performance. Most people watch event cinema due to convenience (not having to go to London), price (not having to go to London) and theatres selling out. These could be great USPs to communicate to your patrons when hosting an event, with the use of flyers for example.
Customers see event cinema as different to film - this may sound obvious, however, as your patrons consider film/event cinema as two different nights out, give them a ‘different’ experience and fundamentally increase the frequency by which they are coming to your cinema to spend their money!
People don’t care if it’s live – remembering this could help you in terms of scheduling, deal negotiation, increasing exhibitions and making the most of back catalogue material.
The conference kicked on with Fathom Events talking about creating ‘cultureplexes’ and how they created four +$1m events during the 2016 season, including Snowden Live - a Q&A held with Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt transmitted to 763 cinemas, and Woody Harrelson’s Lost in London live film shot on the streets of London and transmitted live to 604 locations. Fathom echoed ‘Marketing is key’ and went on to say that some cinemas could have put on Lost in London in multiple screens due to the PR the event picked up - reportedly over 500m impressions!
He slickest presentation of the day went to Cinevents. Its business model is about introducing new audiences to event cinema and getting them to come back again and again. It is focusing on the virtually untapped UK sectors of gaming, sport, music, kids and intelligence. The company has a clever model centred around data (smart distribution) and getting brands and media partners to enhance the experience and provide targeted marketing support through local press and radio. Cinevents was the only company that really seems to be supporting the cinema in terms of marketing at a local level. Find out more about its exciting David Bowie event in partnership with Mojo magazine here.
Finally, the ECA Awards 2017 winners were announced, too, and you can see who won what here.
If you’d like to find out more about the ECA, please contact Melissa Cogavin.