Future of Movies & Entertainment

Project Brief

On two projects, two years apart, we worked alongside Cineplex to uncover consumer insights for their Gen Z market, exploring one big question: What is the future of entertainment in the eyes of Gen Z, and how do they expect it to be rolled out throughout the year?

Process

We designed and facilitated co-creation workshops for both late Gen Z (15-16 year olds) and early Gen Z (10-14 year olds), using play as a means of ideating with a blue sky. In a more focused workshop, we engaged the kids in a series of activities that pinpointed tone of voice, slang, and seasonal content interests. Between the lines of these unconstrained ideas, the Studio Bud team drew qualitative insight into their driving motivations.

Results

The first workshop resulted in five unique concepts, which we presented back to the executive and leadership teams with insights on potential future expectations for the movie-going experience. The second workshop and data informed the 2019 content calendar for Playdium, their newest location-based attraction.

Workshop 1: Reinventing the Theatre

What happens when you put 40 young and creative teenagers into a movie theatre for 6 hours, loaded with popcorn and pizza, and all the design tools and mentorship they could ask for? Their mission: to create the ultimate in-theatre experience of the future.

Studio Bud worked closely with Cineplex's Research & Marketing teams to better understand their Gen Z audience, and engaged a local high school to align research endeavours with educational opportunities in the real world. The workshop was aligned to Toronto District School Board curriculum for Communications Technology, and designed to ignite blue-sky thinking—allowing the kids to imagine to the ends of their creativity without constraints. Simply, we allowed teens to ideate with no boundaries, in order to see what an unfiltered view of the theatre may look like.

Five unique ideas were generated by the end of the workshop, after which the Studio Bud team worked with Cineplex to extract key insights that informed each idea. We discovered that they care about entertainment offerings that are relevant to their day-to-day social lives, go beyond what they can get on Netflix, and that will be a home away from home—all anchored around scalability, exclusivity, and shareability.

"Talking about what teens might want is one thing. Watching them design their own experiences and talking to them directly about it is a whole other level of depth and insight. Extremely valuable exercise."

Darren Solomon, VP Marketing, Cineplex Entertainment

Gen Z Ideation Workshop @ Scotiabank Theatre

Post-Workshop - Insights Report

We summarized the key findings and takeaways from the Ideation Workshop, drawing 10 Key Insights around the themes of Customization, Value & Affordability, and the Overarching Experience.

Workshop 2: How to Live Like Me

Two years later, Cineplex re-engaged Studio Bud as part of the development of a Marketing Communications Plan for the re-launch of Playdium in 2019. In order to best reach their young Gen Z audience (ages 10-14), Cineplex’s goal was to identify key insights into how, what, and when they should communicate with Gen Z through the Playdium marketing channels. The output of this project led to the development of their content calendar.

We designed a design thinking workshop that was framed as creating a guide to their lives, teaching a hypothetical new alien how to 'live like me'. What are your everyday carries in your bottomless backpack? What accounts are must-follows on your social media channels? For your end-of-year party, what does it look like and who do you invite?

Workshop 2 - Early vs Late Gen Z

How to Live Like Me Workshop

Post-Workshop - Insights Report

The final Insights Report built on what we learned previously, to become more focused on their content marketing strategy, as segmented by Young to Late Gen Z.