In this blog post I am going to address my personal experiences and how-to`s of marketing from the perspective of a small cinema in the middle of nowhere of Lower-Saxony.

Starting point

I started working at a small cinema in a small town called Alfeld. In its past days, the city which is inhabited by no more than 21.000 people, cinema business was lucrative, such that three cinemas found their respective place. But with time aminly younger people moved to bigger cities in order to find more attractive jobs than simple industry jobs could offer. All in all, only one cinema remained open, with three cinema halls only to provide movies for well aged residents. The cinema had lost its appeal to attract the younger folk due to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

First impressions

Once I started as a Deputy Manager, I was incorporated by the former Deputy Manager, who has worked in this cinema for over 9 years during which he lost his intereset and passion for cinema business. Instead of trying to make a change, he did what he had to do in order to guarantee a functioning cinema. I, on the other hand, was eager for change. Luckily, I was able to read some cinema business related magazines, which were referring to a certain Mr. Flebbe. This man built new cinemas with affordable prices but luxurious architecture, making cinema special again and making profit out of a “dead” business model. I knew, neither Alfeld nor the owners of the cinema had the conditions to refurbish the cinema, but I thought that there had to be another way in order to generate money far beyond the break-even-point.

Strategy employed

“You can not fulfill the wishes of those you don`t know.” Following this philosphy of mine, I started analysing the customers which frequented our cinema, categorizing them by

• genre of the movie
• age
• food and beverages ordered
• time of attendence

By that I was able to assess the needs of the customers and was able to consolidate our supply in such a way, that it fitted more our clients than the beforehand employed methods of “one size fits all”. But still, even thought I was able to cut costs by offering what was actually demanded, the struggle of having few customers or even customers from outside of Alfeld remained.

Events

In order to stand out from other cinematic businesses from surrounding areas, we had to offer something which would:

• gather much attention
• with low effort
• and mainly low budget

In order to gain access to the world of events and eventually some press work, we started initiating a campaign called “Seniorenkino” (cinema for elderly people) where we showed old movies, which where easy and feasible in rent and guaranteed great audiences in numbers. Further, we proposed to set this event once a month (to keep it special) and at 3pm, as our statistics showed this audience to attend cinema more frequently at these times. Since this time colides with tea time, we programmed a 15 minutes break mid-film during which coffee and cake would be sold.

Apart from full box office and cinema halls, local journals did their part in not only promoting but also spreading the news of our idea. One of many missions to come had suceeded.

As our goal was to be a family cinema for all ages, we started then with new campaigns for newwer releases in events as “Action fever” (mainly male audience, “Ladies Night” or “Sing-a-longs”. Rapidly, we had managed to gather people, but we had solved being overbooked for these events and for those only. Analysing our numbers I figured the age of our audience, which was still in the upper 40`s. In other words: We had the youngest of young (a genre which was never in trouble) and people seeking other hobbies than clubbing (Alfeld has not much more to offer). Bu tthe critical audience, those, who statistically make the difference in terms of money, the teens and young adults, hungry for adventure, were still missing.

Deadpool 2

So it happened before the release of this movie, that I started to think about a new way of promoting our cinema. Knowing of our problem-group in audience and their behaviour, I knew that marketing would not be over traditional means, as appearing in local newspaper or even social media, since our accounts were not maintained well and up-to-date. I knew, I had to take risks in order to gather attention: Three weeks before the release, I painted the ground of Alfeld`s dowtown area with the well-known Deadpool logo and painted it in such a way, that following the signs, one would end up in our cinema.

Local stores were infuriated with the paintings and comissioned local newspapers to write an article about it and setting a bounty on the person who did this. Before releasing the article, one journalist talked to me and we set up an article for the cover page, which was both making sure everyone got to know about the movie and setting the bounty. In order to maintain our disguise the collaboration between journalist and cinema was kept a secret. Since the chalk paint was washed away with the next rain, the bounty was disbanded but every single person in Alfeld was talking about us. Instead of making promotion, we made people promote the cinema.

This method was so well received by the film making studios, that I had been invited to the German premiere of the movie in Berlin. Together with one fellow colleague we attended this premiere and started using social medias as microinfluencers, posting every step we took, creating hashtags and gaining houndreds of followers. Moreover, we got not only to meet celebrities and big influencers at the premiere itself, no, we actually met the cadst of the movie and so did the audience which followed us on Facebook and Instagram. Further, I was invited to several marketing coaching to talk about my experience and the story of this campaign, called the “Guerillapool”, due to its guerilla like approach of promotion. Within one short campaign, we were able to make use of the AIDA-principle. Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.

I guess it is not needed to be said, that this movie was the start of people from all around Alfeld wanting to come and visit us, to talk to my colleague and I since nobody would have ever believed that such a small cinema from a town that is actually just one more small point on the map would be part of one of the greatest blockbusters of that year. By this we were making sure that even during the usually non-profiutable summer days money was coming and taking us one step closer to refurbishment.