-By Andreas Fuchs

“I am a moviegoer, first and foremost,” says John C. Hall of Universal Pictures. “That’s why I got into this business.”

As the studio’s senior VP, exhibitor relations, Hall strongly believes “that you have to experience all the touch points of a theatre. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with seeing a movie in a screening room if you’re in the business—whether you be a filmmaker, an executive—and sometimes your time constraints force you do it that way. Being in theatre marketing, however, I have to go through the process that the moviegoer goes through. Otherwise, I don’t understand completely what the marketplace is all about.”

For our exclusive series on in-theatre marketing worldwide, Film Journal International spoke with Hall during the week of his 15th anniversary not only in the business, but also on the distribution and marketing side at Universal Pictures. Although he “certainly enjoyed the social expressions aspects” of his first position in sales and marketing for Hallmark Cards, Hall always “loved the movies and wanted to be in the movie business… I quit my job at Hallmark, packed up my stuff and moved to Dallas, Texas, where I started working at movie theatres.”

And what a theatre he landed at! “After about six months at several local AMC Theatres in the area [including his very first, the Hulen 10, now a Starplex Stadium Cinema], they asked me whether I wanted to be part of the opening team of AMC’s Grand 24 in Dallas.” As we all know today, “it was the first megaplex of its kind in the United States. I had certainly made my mark at the other theatres that I managed, but when this opportunity came about, I was like: ‘Wow, this sounds fantastic: a 24-screen movie theatre!’ I had never heard of such a thing. It’s one of those defining moments in your career, where a lot is about luck and timing. This was definitely timing.” (Just after we spoke with Hall, American Multi-Cinema, Inc. decided not to exercise its option to extend the lease for The Grand 24.)

Hall worked closely with Joe Brock and AMC’s marketing team on what came to be known as “The Big One.” “Nobody had done this before. Nobody had ever made the public aware about the opening of a theatre of this size. The Internet wasn’t even a factor, it was all traditional media, newspaper and radio. A lot of what we were doing was guesswork,” he admits, “and included expanding upon what we had done for other theatres.”

Nonetheless, this mega-moment meant going “well beyond what was done for an eight- or ten-plex,” Hall recalls. “To reach our customer base, we really marketed to a lot of zip codes in the Dallas market.”

When it came to visitors from Hollywood, “I took every studio sales team on a tour of The Grand, except for Universal Pictures,” he recalls with a laugh. “They came by on my day off.”

Right around the time of the opening, “I found out about an opportunity at Universal and applied for the job. They called me in to interview and, 15 years later, here I am.” Having left Dallas during The Grand’s opening week to relocate to Universal City, Calif., Hall actually never had the chance to enjoy the megaplex for in-theatre marketing projects. Moving in, however, he already used “what we thought at the time were really cool, rotating poster cases that held three one-sheets. Between cutting up the posters and problems with the rotation not always working, those things didn’t last very long.”

Digital poster cases, on the other hand, represent “the dawn of a whole new era. As a studio, we are already very involved with deploying them at several hundred theatres.” As the traditional one-sheet size is “a pretty close fit” for flat-screen monitors, “the digital creative that Universal uses includes the same key art as for the static posters. The difference being that it can now all be manipulated and is moving. That’s so much more dynamic and interactive. The poster almost comes to life, but it is a different medium than the trailer,” Hall has learned. “What you see play on the auditorium screen is usually two-and-a-half minutes long,” he elaborates. “Any given customer is walking by these poster cases with a lot less time. So, for the video portion on the display, we actually do create 30-second spots, much like on television, or even shorter.”

Will these flats become the next big battleground, just like screen time for trailers has become? Hall responds, “Right now, I don’t see the same kind of hypertension and tough negotiation process that goes on with trailer play week in, week out. But we certainly do schedule that medium carefully and are very well aware of what our competitors are putting up in those spaces.”

How individual circuits handle these installations is another factor. Companies like CinemaScene, he notes, “are creating in-cinema networks of digital poster cases. We get our content to them and they do the trafficking and scheduling.” In any event, “the more people get involved and the more posters we are all trying to get out there simultaneously,” he foresees, “it will become more aggressive, certainly.”

Going into the auditorium, “the trailer is usually what the moviegoer sees first. It’s almost always there before the one-sheet and standee. Except in situations like the Super Bowl, where there will be a spot for a big movie like Robin Hood, it’s always a lot longer before the TV media campaigns start. The trailer is also about long-form content. It’s the longest exposure to the film before actually seeing it. Moviegoers are allowed to be fully emerged in that trailer-bed setting right before the feature that they have paid to see. It’s part of the moviegoing process. Everybody wants to get into their seats in time to watch the trailers.”

Even Hall himself. “I see at least one movie a week, sometimes as many as three. It is rare that I don’t visit two to five movie theatres in a weekend. I do my best to drive up and park where the normal people do; to go to the box office, experience the ticketing. If there is a hold-out line, I go there. I buy concessions every single time,” confiding that “any kind of movie nachos” are his favorites. No tradeshow goes by either “where I don’t come back to the hotel one late night and open the free bag of nachos and cheese that comes in the goody bag.”

All this is part of him trying “to mirror the consumer experience and try to do exactly what the moviegoer would do” so that Hall can “see things through their eyes. Obviously, when I go out to a movie, it is still a business experience. The way I have been conditioned to see and interact with things, it cannot not be. But that’s how I learn. We have a Monday morning meeting here at the studio with all the department heads and they always look to the exhibitor-relations group for information… It’s part of my business. It’s what I have to do to know what is going on.”

As for the chain of command, “We absolutely fall under Nikki Rocco’s distribution umbrella. In terms of putting together the in-theatre marketing strategy, we also work very closely—on a daily basis, actually—with our colleagues in the studio marketing division on exactly what we want to communicate to exhibition, how we want to communicate it and when. It’s a very collaborative process at Universal.”

For deployment of materials and subsequent follow-up, Hall and his team use the Internet, newsletters and various forms of personal communication. “All of the above,” he assures. “We were the first to launch a business-to-business website for exhibition. It’s still in existence today after numerous updates and facelifts.” The address www.ExhibitorRelations.com is proof positive how early Universal was indeed.

“We actually claimed several names, just to make sure we had the jump on that,” Hall confirms. “We wanted to own that brand, if you will. Universal was the first studio to have ‘exhibitor relations’ under Steve Ellman. He’s really a legend in the business for having created it back in the early 1980s.” Today, “we put all of our communications, both trailer and accessory materials, on the site. We also give the managers coaching ideas on how to execute promotions. Any theatre manager in the country can log on and fill out the request-for-promotions form, which gets automatically sent to multiple people here at the studio.” That way, he finds “everybody in our operation knows what a certain theatre is attempting to do at the local level in support of our films. Once we review that, we can deploy in-theatre marketing or lobby kits to help them put together their programs.”

Is there actually any time left to go beyond the basics? “Theatre managers are certainly busier than they used to be,” Hall asserts. “That’s because running a megaplex is completely different than a six-, eight- or ten-plex. The management team has to focus on operations, absolutely.”

Consequently, perhaps, “we have sort of passed the days of the homegrown, old-style ‘project picture.’ The times when we as studios asked the theatre or marketing manager to go out to Home Depot and pick up a couple of pounds of plywood and build a submarine in their lobby are somewhat over.” Instead, this more classic approach, he opines, has “absolutely evolved into fully actualized marketing materials supplied to theatres. In-lobby is ‘just’ one more stage in that overall campaign. Getting those materials deployed is a top priority of in-theatre marketing right now.”

As little as five years ago, “theatres would only get involved if there was some kind of contest,” Hall observes about motivation and engagement. “Many of the circuits would insist that there’d be some kind of cash reward or a grand-prize trip for the winning manager to get mandatory participation in a project picture promotion. Today, I find, it’s more about the social-networking aspect.” In addition to “putting pictures on their Facebook or MySpace pages,” Universal has a dedicated section on its website. “Called ‘Lobby Shots,’ we encourage managers to take pictures of the promotions and activities that they executed and submit them for consideration. We post multiple pictures each week. So it’s no longer about you’re the first, second and third-place winner, [but more about] the pride of owning or operating their theatre, getting into the showmanship of ‘I’m here and I’m marketing my theatre, my lobby and the movies that I play.’ There are still prizes, though, and we certainly participate in those kinds of activities as well. We like to do anything it takes to make everyone feel part of the process.”

Contemplating his “favorite and most interesting experience” promoting a movie, Hall names King Kong, “our most ambitious in-theatre campaign of all time and largest execution ever.” This summer brings “the only movie to even rival the work that was done for King Kong”: Despicable Me. “As our first animated picture in 3D, it covers all sorts of realms that we are first getting into.” Another title he’s eagerly awaiting, “and surely many teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings too,” is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with Michael Cera. (See story in this issue.) “It’s a genre-bending movie that totally delivers. I’ve seen it already and am so excited. It feels to me as important as when I saw Breakfast Club for the first time. Obviously, I’m a lot older now,” he laughs, “and not in tune with the kids who read the graphic novels and stuff. But I absolutely think that it is completely relevant. At heart, it is a love story.”

Since he worked on both the originals, another definite favorite on the 2010 radar is Little Fockers. “That is always fun to say,” he notes, recalling a related anecdote. “We were at a major theatre convention when the sequel came out and my colleague, Scott Rieckhoff, was swearing that he was going to pronounce it correctly. He gets up in front of some 600 managers and makes the mistake of saying Meet the F**ckers.” Whatever the pronunciation, “Universal created a franchise with this series, and coming out at Christmas, Fockers is going to do a lot of business.”

Potentially undermining the entire idea of in-theatre marketing, this author suggested that this kind of movie doesn’t need much more than a handwritten piece of paper with the title and opening date. “Not completely,” Hall counters. “We used to say we need to support the smaller movies. But, truthfully, the bigger movies need full attention too. There is so much competition out there… It has been since 2004 since Meet the Fockers came out. So you need to remind people why they liked the first two films so much, why this one is relevant and why they absolutely need to see it.”

Absolutely the “worst thing ever” happened when the sequel to Jurassic Park came out, he now laughs. “Steven Spielberg wanted this lenticular one-sheet for The Lost World deployed in high-profile theatres. As part of a contest, moviegoers were going to win them through radio promotions. Lenticulars are fairly common nowadays, especially in support of 3D movies, but back then they were few and far between,” he remembers. “I had to hand-deliver some of them while explaining to managers how we were going to use them. How they should be displayed for six weeks and the winner from the radio contest would get the one from his or her local theatre. Coming back to my office some 45 minutes later, I had a message from one of the managers that the poster I had put up had already been stolen by an ambitious moviegoer. I was thinking: How am I going to explain to my higher-ups that one of those precious lenticular one-sheets was already missing after only one hour in the field?”

Asked to name his favorite movie theatre, Hall feels we’re putting him on the spot. “When you go to as many theatres as I go to in my market tours across the country and over the course of my 15 years, I’ve seen it all: From the small theatre to the biggest megaplexes, each one of them has its particular charms. I’m not trying to be cheesy here, nor all political and such,” he assures. “I just recently saw a film at Gold Class, which is a completely different experience from your local neighborhood theatre or from going to the next megaplex. They all have different things to appeal to moviegoers. And I kind of like them all. I just love going and usually can find something in all of them.”

Even better if that something includes trailers and a standee for a Universal picture.

The Universal Exhibition Team
John C. Hall, Senior VP
Scott Rieckhoff, VP
Lisa Holland, Director
Cynthia Orellana, Manager, West
Nickie Sandoval, Coordinator, West
Stephanie Ricks, Manager, Central/South
Elvira Golden, Manager, Central/South
Peter Wright, Manager, East
Sharon Irwin, Manager, Canada

To order trailers, one-sheets, ad slicks and minis, call Universal Pictures Fulfillment: 1-800-718-2926 (7 am – 7 pm PST)