A recent survey completed by Greystripe, a mobile advertising network, found that smartphone and iPad owners rely heavily on their devices for movie-related information. Half of smartphone and 44 per cent of iPad users decide which films to see based on movie ads. When it comes to m-commerce, 15 per cent of smartphone users and 13 per cent of iPad users have purchased movie tickets on their mobile device.
With these findings, it’s no wonder Canada’s largest film exhibitor company, Cineplex, turned to Xtreme Labs to develop its mobile strategy. The Cineplex app was created in HTML5 and can be used across all major platforms including iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.
Not only can users purchase tickets right from inside the app, it also has excellent functionality. It features
• a Cineplex and non-Cineplex brand theatre locator;
• a SCENE Points Balance tracker, complete with a barcode that allows users to scan and collect points from their phone; and
• connects movie goers to Facebook making their movie experience social.
The creation of the app has helped Cineplex leverage its online presence and develop an integrative social-mobile strategy. The app uses Facebook’s Open Graph, which is responsible for enabling the experience of using the app to become social. Open Graph allows third party websites and pages that people have ‘liked’ throughout the web to be included on Facebook’s site as an extension of its social graph. Users can instantly update friends by using Facebook actions found inside the app. Users can let friends know what movie their seeing with the “I’m Going” button, which posts a movie title with a theatre location; they can share movie information via the “Tell Friends” button and “Like” different movies.
Cineplex has experienced a surge of engagement online as a result of the creation of this fantastic application. Having successfully found a comprehensive way to search for movie information, the Cineplex app makes going to the movies even more social.
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