Case study

A New Approach to the Cinematic Experience

Photo Credit: Hannah Sorrell

WebsiteS

Industry

Cinema,

Fringe Festivals

Location

Northbridge, Western Australia

Customer since

2017

The Client: Fringe World

Girls School Cinema is a winter-warming pop-up cinema from the team behind the popular FRINGE WORLD Festival and Rooftop Movies. The popular venue features blockbuster and crowd-pleasing films, tasty pizzas, cozy bean bag seats and a lounge bar. This cinema experience is designed to feel like a deluxe movie night at your best mate's place...if your mate was the Great Gatsby. Girls School Cinema takes place at the castle-like, heritage Old Perth Girls School, which operated as a school from 1936 to 1962. In addition to general movie sessions, the venue also introduced special screening events into its 2019 program.

The Ticketing Solution: Red61

Red61 is an Edinburgh based ticketing software, services and consultancy business.  Red61 have delivered preeminent performance with its Ticketing System and Services in some of the most testing and complex arts environments in the world.  In working with their clients, they have developed a configurable software solution that allows clients to control - and change - their visitor experience.  Working in a spirit of constant innovation, Red61's audience engagement software and solutions now benefit major cultural venues and arts festivals worldwide. With every client, Red61 works collaboratively to eliminate traditional box office challenges and to figure out to use technology to enhance the visitor experience.  With a wide-range of audience management and ticketing expertise on their team, Red61 specialises in working with clients to build creative and flexible solutions that improve existing businesses or are the strong foundation on which to build new ones.

The Situation

The "Girls Night In" event was the first marathon event held at Girls School Cinema, featuring four romantic comedy films screened across one day. With the venue being so perfectly set up for an extended screening event, the concept was put into place to generate public awareness of the venue and target a young female demographic, as well as provide a unique entertainment opportunity to its audience.



Due to venue restrictions, there was the need to pre-order food to be able to supply a dining option to customers. This approach required a ticketing solution that could make the experience as simple and straightforward as possible. There was also the requirement to enable customers to book their tickets and pre-order their pizza all in one transaction for the movie marathon, or in a separate transaction if the customer decided at a later date that they did want to pre-order food after all.



The success of the Girls School Cinema event hinged on a simple concept: how to offer a tailored cinema and culinary experience that enabled purchasers to ultimately spend an evening with friends in a fun and unique setting!



The Solution

The Girls School Cinema used Red61's innovative quick sale tablet and mobile applications for door sales and attendance tracking at this year's event, while a customised ticketing website managed the ticket and pizza sales for advanced sales online. The ticketing website outlined what event goers would expect and what to bring to make their night comfortable, the ticket type options, and the extensive pizza menu.



The marketing strategy behind the sell-out event was so successful that the seat allocation was exhausted before the event, so there was no room for door sales. The box office staff were able to still process pizza orders for customers efficiently throughout the event.



With Red61's fully integrated multi-item online shopping cart, this year's one-ticket approach gave movie-goers four films for only $30, which included a $3 online booking fee.  As part of their ticket purchase, attendees were offered unlimited Tim Tams while enjoying the films.



They set up Red61's flexible Ticket Offers for each pizza type and used Red61's Automation Manager to automatically stop the sales at 5:30pm, to ensure the pizza supplier had time to fulfil the orders and deliver the pizzas to the cinema by the desired time.



Girls School Cinema innovatively used Red61's advanced ticketing features to creatively facilitate this unique cinema experience that was tailored for a female focused audience, enabling the skilled box office, front of house and marketing teams to work seamlessly together to present the venue's first movie marathon.



Photo Credit: Johannes Reinhart



Focus on the Promotion

This promotion helped drive ticket sales and attendees consumed a staggering 2,000 Tim Tams during the event!





The Results

This year's sold-out Girls School Cinema movie marathon was a great success - even more notable considering it was their first movie marathon. Similar events are now scheduled later this year, including a Lord of the Rings movie marathon.



Customer feedback was extremely positive, with one movie-goer saying, "I absolutely loved my first experience at Girls School Cinema. [I] have already recommended [it] to friends and family! Will definitely return."



And while the event presented very few challenges, knowing how many Tim Tams were needed to supply an unlimited amount to the attendees was a fun exercise in 'treats management'.

By the numbers:

 Girls School Cinema 2019 Ticketing

95 events

7,869 tickets sold 

23 events sold out completely

62% nightly attendance average

In Conclusion: Building for now - and the future



Fringe World will continue to partner with Red61 to carry out its comprehensive lineup of events, including Girls School Cinema in the winter and Rooftop Movies and FRINGE WORLD Festival, the world's third-largest fringe festival, in the summer. Running year-round programs - and highlighting events outside of the fringe festival - has truly made Fringe World a leader and destination in the region. Their growing experience in delivering unique experiences in innovative spaces is helping to enhance the quality of life in their community, the region overall and for their audiences. With the experience of successfully delivering this first marathon event, they will have many more movie marathons in their upcoming programs.



For more information about Fringe World and Girls School Cinema please visit: https://fringeworld.com.au/ and https://www.girlsschoolcinema.com.au/