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AMC Theatres focuses on matching mobile content to film tastes

AMC Theatres is centering on creating more personalized advertising campaigns through social media, mobile and digital to reach the correct demographic with appropriate content, with a focus on generating more buzz for independent films that tend to get lost in the content overload. 

The movie theater chain is partnering with Movio to create these campaigns and will be paying attention to data from its loyalty program and social media to ensure that each consumer receives content specific to his or her film interests and habits. This highly personalized content is important in the mobile sphere due to the individual habits of consumers, but also as the independent film industry has a specific following, making it important to focus on finding those consumers.

"Personalized content makes messages more effective," said Shuli Lowy, marketing director at Ping Mobile, New York. "If you send consumers 30 trailers a month, most of which are for movies that are not their taste, consumers will loose interest and your branded messages will loose their influential weight. 

"If, however, you send consumers 2 trailers a month for movies that you know they will enjoy, they will be a lot more likely to watch your trailers," she said. "Personalized pushes also benefit small budget or independent films. 

"Films which cannot run media takeover campaigns that major blockbuster films run will benefit from being able to target a small but relevant audience."

These campaigns will be released this July with film trailers, promotions, movie news, show times and opening day details.

Social media data
AMC Theatres is no amateur to taking advantage of social media. The theater chain has over 4.3 million likes on Facebook, 269,000 followers on Twitter and a highly developed YouTube channel. 

Each social media channel has content developed that works best for that channel. The partnership with Movio will further this initiative in sharing appropriate content on the corresponding platform. 

For instance, on YouTube, AMC Theatres has multiple shows that directly engage the movie fanatic such as AMC Movie News, AMC Heroes, AMC Mail Bag, AMC Rewind and AMC Indie Spotlight. Each of these episodic YouTube shows engages a specific demographic interested in a particular movie facet, such as AMC Heroes accessing the superhero franchise fan and the Indie Spotlight reaching the independent movie enthusiast. 
Data from consumers viewing these channels will be carefully monitored. For instance, users watching the AMC Indie Spotlight YouTube show will start receiving ads that showcase independent films coming to theaters in their area. 

"[The partnership] allows us to connect with our guests with content that is relevant to their interests and in a way that is meaningful to them through social media," said Ryan Noonan, director of corporate communications at AMC Theatres, Kansas City, MO. "For example, a movie fan who visits AMC?s YouTube channel to watch an independent film trailer can now receive a promotion for that independent movie when it begins showing at the local AMC theatre.

"It is a critical part of our marketing strategy and is a tremendous way to connect with our guests, not just for a one-sided promotional communications but for a dialogue that can benefit everyone," he said. "During the last five years, we have been very successful in building that relationship with our guests through social media. 

"Our immediate objective is to provide AMC guests with more personalized and relevant movie content across all digital and social platforms, including web, email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter and, YouTube. We can marry specific movie-related content to avid moviegoers based on their behavior and social actions, which will support AMC?s goal of driving independent, foreign language film fans into the theatres."

The consumers that visit those YouTube videos are more likely to be interested in independent films, in turn making them more likely to attend an indie film viewing in theaters. 

Specialized content
Data-driven ad campaigns are greatly beneficial in the marketing industry and extremely important when it comes to social media marketing. 

Recently, Facebook shifted to providing ways for brands to use its data to more effectively target consumers on mobile and is being repaid with swelling mobile ad revenue figures as usage grows (see more). 

Also, Kia Motors doubled the impact of its social media marketing at less than half the cost by targeting paid posts to social media users who were most likely to engage with the content (see more).

"Mobile and social media play a huge role in promoting any movie," Ms. Lowy said. "Consumers often look up movie times and theaters on their phones, providing an opportunity for cinemas to influence their audience at that key moment, when consumers are deciding what to watch and where to watch it."

"The AMC roll out is strategically planned because it puts the control seat in the users hands," she said. "The goal is not to drive consumers to view trailers specifically on social media, mobile, or desktops, it lets the consumers decide how they would like to engage and gives them a tailored, seamless experience wherever they come to engage with AMC. 

"Providing a seamless cross channel and offline experience requires a lot of integration, it is no simple task but ultimately leads to a drastically improved user experience. It also gives marketers actionable data from which they can see how consumers respond to marketing pushes, that data is invaluable."

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily