THE HIGHLIGHTS
How Secret Cinema has used data to become a digital innovator
Cult entertainment brand Secret Cinema is bouncing back from the pandemic with a new immersive, bespoke digital platform, as marketing director Ayomi Rupasinghe revealed in a Festival of Marketing session hosted by consumer research company Attest.
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Secret Cinema was one of many brands hit hard by Covid-19. Its signature live reimaginations of popular films, television shows and music albums were brought to a standstill throughout the majority of the pandemic, thanks to the shutdown of events and the ensuing social distancing laws.
But embracing online connections as part of its audience’s ‘new normal’, Secret Cinema has been inspired to launch a new digital product, following the success of its home film club collaboration with Häagen-Dazs during lockdown, dubbed Secret Sofa.
“With the gradual reopening of the world, we have had to pivot and we have had to learn new behaviours, some of which are here to stay. So connecting with people online has become part of our behaviour now, and it's going to continue as people work from home and find it a lot easier to connect online,” Secret Cinema’s marketing director, Ayomi Rupasinghe, explained at the Festival of Marketing.
“We have been exploring a digital product and how we can create [an] immersive, bespoke digital platform. It's a completely new product that we've had to research from the ground up.”
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Rupasinghe added that Attest’s consumer research tools have been instrumental for the brand, in asking consumers what aspects such as timing and pricing they want from a digital experience, and comparing the findings across markets for what will be a global product.
An announcement from Secret Cinema will be coming in the next month, Rupasinghe promised. In the meantime, she was able to share further insights on how Attest’s research data has formed part of the brand’s marketing and development strategy.
“Our job is to find the stories that connect with audiences and engage customers.”
Emily Latham, Channel 4
Benchmarking and testing
“[The film, TV or album] title remains a central part of our events, whichever format they are in - title is the key selling point for us. Testing demand and potential audience size for individual titles is really important, so we aggregate as much data as we can on these, looking at various sources, like rankings, reviews and sentiment,” Rupasinghe said.
“We use previous productions to benchmark them, so we can rank them against each other and look at the size of the potential audience to understand demand, and help us to gauge where it would scale - or understand if we need to pivot into another area. It’s fundamental to understand this before we launch a production because it feeds so much into targets and into budgets.
“And once we do get into the planning phase of the title, we will then test drivers, messages, characters and locations, so we can understand what it is that fans love about the [film, programme or album], and how we can use that to develop and form our content strategy.”
This is particularly important when working with older franchises, Rupasinghe added, because there tends to be less data about them, making it harder to understand what people loved about them.
Blockbusters like Blade Runner, Casino Royale and Moulin Rouge have been amongst Secret Cinema’s most popular titles, Rupasinghe noted.
“Everyone knows and loves Bond - it resonates across every different age group. But in terms of numbers, the title people look back on with the most love would probably be Moulin Rouge. It's always a fan favourite. It was just so vibrant, uplifting and full of song and dance. It was just a beautiful show.”
Rupasinghe’s personal favourite, though, is Secret Cinema’s staging of the Netflix hit Stranger Things. “It was the feel of the 80s music, and how different this completely new format was,” she said.
Click here to watch the session on demand at the Festival of Marketing
Secret Cinema's Ayomi Rupasinghe explains how the brand tests and benchmarks different film titles
Use every data point
Presenting the Festival session, Attest’s head of customer success management Chris Dingley noted how important it is to take an “agile” approach to consumer research, especially in times of profound change such as the pandemic, as it makes it possible to “get business-changing insights fast”.
He admired how Secret Cinema “really understood and connected with customers, and by doing that, [was] able to adapt as the world was changing around them in real time”.
Rupasinghe’s advice to brands is to take advantage of every data point possible to innovate based on real insights, as Secret Cinema has done with Attest.
She said:“Consumers are more open to different ways of living and different ways of working. This also brings with it new sensitivities and considerations. So I think it's the job of the marketer to go back to the drawing board, to understand and respond to the changes in their target customers, because we're just not the same people that we were two years ago,” she said.
“The consumer landscape is still changing, so this is a great time to just try new things.”■
THE HIGHLIGHTS