Reimagining the Movie Exhibition Business

It’s time to re-imagine the key channel of movie exhibition business, which are the movie halls.

This is essential to motivate the movie lovers to prefer the ‘big screen’, instead of watching the same content on the OTT platforms or YouTube, and within the comfort of their homes. Of course, assumption being that the quality of the movies are worth a visit to the movie halls.

Besides, our smartphones and more specifically, the ‘forwards’ in our WhatsApp chats, have become a kind of addiction to most of us, and have the potential to keep most of us away from the movie halls.

Some broad ideas for leading players in the movie exhibition business, and having screens in multiple cities could be:

1.Conceptualizing a guest culture in their movie halls for all the visiting patrons, by ensuring a warm welcome to each patron upon arrival, service with a smile during snack-breaks, and then a warm send-off post the show,

2. Creating an entertainment ecosystem by exploring strategic alliances with establishments such as - some reputed restaurants, hotel chains etc for mutual cross-selling of offerings to the visiting patrons,

3. Conceptualizing gift cards, which would also have special offerings from the participating establishments of the entertainment ecosystem. Assuming an attractive entertainment ecosystem in place as conceptualized above, every visiting patron would gain more than just few hours of entertainment in the movie hall, by reaping benefits extended by participating establishments in the ecosystem,

4. Positioning such gift cards as unique stress busters with various add-on features, and marketing of the same by such players in movie exhibition business to entities such as - 'A class' commercial buildings, MNCs, co-working spaces, 5-star hotels etc for their employees/clientele. While steadily increasing the number of their loyal patrons, such gift cards would also benefit the participating entities through better loyalty and productivity from their employees/customers,

5. Identifying loyal patrons city wise, and working out Privileges cards for them, which would entitle them to discounted movie tickets in such the movie halls of such leading players in other cities as well, as and when such loyal patrons travel to those cities. They would also be entitled to benefits being extended by the establishments, which are part of the entertainment ecosystem in those cities, and

6. Enable feedbacks on the movies being screened from the patrons via an app/website, which can be collated and shared with those producers/directors. Each feedback needs to be duly acknowledged, and valuable ideas to be given due recognition, say by way of a poster of that patron in a movie hall in the city where that patron is based. Furthermore, such producers/directors could make use of such feedbacks in their next production.

And so on..

Back-to-office strategy

Those CEOs who wish to see their respective colleagues back-in-office, should first revisit their respective "Employee Value Propositions", jointly with their respective functional heads.

They need to emphasize to all their colleagues down the hierarchy, that each one of them is a highly valuable resource, and all efforts would be made to ensure a warm welcome back-to-office, besides ensuring a memorable work environment.

Needless to add, such caring attitudes by the senior management need to be convincingly demonstrated, not only by the respective HR Heads, but also by each Functional Head under the able guidance of their respective CEOs.