How we helped Picturehouse level up their social media game
The backstory
Picturehouse Cinemas is a network of cinemas across the UK. They cover 27 locations, including the Duke of York's in Brighton, the oldest continually-running cinema in Britain. While the network is well-known for cinema, Picturehouse wanted to promote their food and beverage (F&B) offering better using social media.
"We wanted to be renowned for food and drink – as trusted by our customers for F&B as we are for our film content, said Picturehouse Head of Drinks, Simon Woplin. "We needed a consistent, well-planned strategy where food and drink was no longer a secondary part of the business.
"We were experiencing low levels of engagement with our F&B marketing and there was a lack of integration with our other marketing strategies. Our social content and activity did not reflect the customer experience and we wanted to address this."
How it went down
We split our work with Picturehouse into three phases. Phase 1 was discovery. We spoke to the marketing teams in five cinemas, each with different food and drink offerings. These ranged from a simple kiosk to a large restaurant and bar.
Next, we carried out a social media audit and shared our report. This provided a clear picture of how Picturehouse's food and drink offering was being shared, both by themselves and by customers.
"The key thing we had noticed was that F&B content was secondary to film content," explains Simon Woplin. "We felt this was down to a lack of understanding from film marketers who needed knowledge and insight into F&B on social media."
To help Picturehouse's great film marketers become great F&B marketers on social media, Phase 2 was training. For this phase, we ran bespoke social media workshops. These focused on best practice, internal communication, resource allocation and ideas for balancing food and drink content with film and community content.
After taking the strategies learned into the business, the teams reported back to us after six weeks. Simon Woplin explains: "The team Kerry trained, executed trial F&B strategies over a period of six weeks before reporting back so that Kerry could complete the final phase and refine and develop a number of strategies we could implement in all of our cinemas."
Based on the feedback from the team, the final phase was developing a tiered, tailored content plan for Picturehouse to roll out across the whole company.
The results
Significantly improved results for food and drink
Extended opening times in all cinemas due to increased demand for F&D
"Externally, by the rest of the world, we're now viewed as one of the best stadia visitor attractions for food and drink."
Here's what they said
"Kerry demonstrated an excellent understanding of our business and produced a plan that was actionable and realistic. We now have a sound and reasonable platform for Picturehouse to implement across the rest of the estate. I can thoroughly recommend Kerry as a social media trainer and consultant for any business, she's just so skilled at what she does. She just gets it!"
— Simon Woplin, Head of Drinks, Picturehouse Cinemas
"Kerry's training sessions were incredibly well tailored for our needs. Giving us a good insight into how to be more creative with our posts and also helping us become more inventive in how we organise the teamwork that goes into them."
— Kirsty Jones, Hackney Picturehouse Cinema