20 Year Media’s reel change: Building a startup’s content strategy from social data intelligence

The film distribution chain has changed drastically in the past ten years. With the meteoric rise of home streaming services like Netflix, HBO Go and Amazon Prime, people are changing the ways they engage with movies. They prefer to consume films at home (at a reduced or no cost) through personal devices rather than regularly patronizing theatres and enjoying the cinema experience. Vancouver startup 20 Year Media aimed to address this pressing issue by developing technologies that could aggregate film demand and deliver these insights to theatres so that they could program their screens and market their events more effectively. The idea is that this demand-driven model would resuscitate ticket sales and “make movies social again.” This report outlines my contributions to 20 Year Media as their Marketing Intern and later on, Content Specialist, from May 2014 to April 2015. It will present how I was able to establish and engage both moviegoer and exhibitor audiences for the innovative company with my flexible promotional content strategy. It will describe how I was able to consolidate marketing, public relations and community management roles with a focused and resourceful content plan and ongoing audience research.