Two ideas for the future of independent cinema exhibition
Being overly rational is your critical mistake, especially for capturing younger audiences
As we’re thinking and building towards the future of cinema exhibition, I think they’d help us not only see a brighter future, but thrive while building it.
I’ve been working on projects that help make independent and pop-up cinemas more appealing for younger audiences for a few years now. I believe the way we approach some things truly is an impediment to making great progress on that front.
While I’ve been thinking about these subjects for a while, I’ve tried to keep them brief.
If you’d prefer to listen, this article is available in audio (9 mins) and is read by its author. Listen here. Happy listening. 🤔 🎧
#1
Irrationality should get a place at the table
We know we do audience surveys. Very few are statistically representative enough of the work, and are often too biased to base much evidence on. While they sometimes have a genuine place, I think demoting them in favour of a little more irrationality is much more audience centred.
It is only when we abandon a narrow logic and embrace an appreciation of psycho-logical value, that we can truly improve things.
- No one before Dyson came along thought they wanted an £800 vacuum cleaner.
- No one before Starbucks came along thought they wanted to pay £3 or £4 for a drink they can make at home for a few pennies.
- No one thought they wanted a really expensive drink that comes in a tiny can, and tastes kind of disgusting. Yet Red Bull now rivals the position of Coca-Cola as the world’s second-most-popular cold nonalcoholic drink.
If you had pitched any of those businesses to customers in advance, most of them would have told you where to go. These companies would never have succeeded, or even started if it was by consensus, yet they’re some of the most successful companies today.
Once we are honest about the existence of unconscious motivations, we can broaden our possible solutions. It’s not enough to say we’re customer-centric even, we must also appeal to the customers unmet needs. By definition unmet needs are also (mostly) unspoken.
Being a bit irrational will open us to untried spaces. The importance of experimentation is a tricky thing to champion in a world where our cinemas are mostly publicly funded. I get that. But we must. Especially if we are able to discover what our potential customers really want, rather than;
a) what they say they want or;
b) what we think they should want.
David Ogilvy, the man who invented one of the most influential ad agencies in the world said:
“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.”
The most obvious, logical method of solving a problem, or crafting a screening event is for your customer likely, expected, normal, average. How do we make experiences unexpected? A little bit extraordinary?
What do those words mean for you? What’s unexpected? How do you make your venue more Instagrammable? What do you give your customers that they weren’t expecting? Which brands appeal to you most? Why does it appeal to you? What qualities does it have?
I’ll always remember a cinema marketer saying to me, that they wouldn’t like to proceed to offer a new, unique membership model for younger audiences, because no other cinema offered it.
This is the “logical” sense of making a decision. While I could think of another few adjectives to describe that same example, it’s the safest option. Though at the expense of something worthwhile trying. It’s much easier to get fired for being illogical than it is for being imaginative. This kind of thinking pervades the cinema exhibition industry.
I’m not calling to abandon logic entirely. The balance between “logical” and “psycho-logical” is just way off. We just need to re-think it. Too much reason can, and is, stifling creativity.
You know the marketing adage “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is I don’t know which half.”? Ajay Banga, the ex-CEO of Mastercard says in response to it, that “I need the half that’s wasted to make the other half work.”
You see this is the trade off, between exploration and exploitation. Exploitation things that you already know work, then exploring what which you don’t.
To paraphrase a consultant from a behavioural science firm called Chris Graves, “Just because something makes sense, doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because something makes sense, doesn’t mean it’ll work. Just because something doesn’t make sense, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It might just work in ways you can’t quantify, or ways you can’t predict, or ways you can’t explain.”
#2
The race to the bottom on price for young audiences is likely wrong
Take this analogy when the low cost airlines launched, they made a lot of noise about the things you don’t get. You don’t get checked luggage, your bag can be no bigger than this, no meals, no pre-allocated seat, and you buy your own coffee. Why?
Because if the same airlines said, “we’re the same as British Airways, but cheaper”, nobody would believe them. You’d think that makes no sense. And for good reason. You’d be thinking their pilots are novice and they probably don’t service their engines.
But after knowing why Ryanair is cheaper, and if you don’t care much about what you lose, the whole decision makes much more sense. You have to understand the decision to take it.
So when we talk about cheaper cinema tickets, lots of our customers are thinking, what’s the greater risk?
Often, as you see from that example, the role of marketing isn’t to justify a high price, it’s to de-stigmatise a low one.
So, your customer is measuring up their decision. They’ve put on good clothes, they’re making a day of it in town. They’re with their friends. They’ve been howling at the DIY disasters of GraceOHeeron on TikTok. They’re on a buzz.
When they consider your cinema venue to top off their day, the thought passes through their mind. What’s the best average experience I can expect? And how could things be if things went really wrong?
As you’ll well know, you’re trying to minimise the chance of your cinema experience being shit. And in the independent cinema world the percentage chance of having a bit of a shit experience is perceived as higher than the multiplex (at least by some), why?
Well because it’s built into the nature of the product in one sense. By its nature independent films are generally not manufactured for mainstream audiences. It’s usually niche. Or at least much more niche than the multiplex. It’s by nature going to appeal to some much more than others. For some it’s hell on earth. Providing value in this environment is tough.
I can understand why one of the first reactions is to make the ticket price cheaper, to lower the risk. Because even if you had a shit experience, at least it didn’t cost much. Though wouldn’t it be better to focus energy on it’s actual or perceived value, rather than attempting to de-risking it through this single metric?
This isn’t a proposal to hike your prices either. The value of having cheaper prices is often spoken about as making things more accessible. This is true. What I’m proposing is not mutually exclusive to having cheaper ticket prices for those who cannot afford cinema tickets.
How can our buildings which have rarely been re-contextualised in the last 125 years just be more surprising, unexpected, Instagrammable, be destinations rather than fleeting visits where you’re ushered out the side door, passed the bins and the shuttered food kiosks at 11:30pm.
The thing about making only rational decisions is that all of your competitors will be doing the same. You’ll all arrive at the same point.
The great thing about experimenting with things that don’t seem to make sense, is that your competitors won’t be doing those things. Even if your competitors aren’t so much each other, as much as it is TikTok, Twitch, Youtube or Fortnite. So when you figure out something that works, you’ve found a great competitive advantage.
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Do share your thoughts in the comments below! I love getting feedback, so thanks for sharing it. I’m also on Twitter @aaronguthrie.
This was originally published on ‘No Content Available’ a Substack publication from British Film Institute’s collective of Young Consultants who try to connect the dots between existing cinemas and arts venues to more ✨younger vibes✨ so the work of cinema exhibitors has more impact and resonance with younger folk.
