Design leadership extends beyond mere visuals and audience journey — it’s about aligning solutions with business objectives to drive real measurable impact. As a design leader, I aim to connect the power of problem solving using design principles with key business priorities, ensuring that my team goes beyond surface-level visuals to understand what truly engages audiences and delivers measurable value. This case study showcases how I led my team in establishing a northstar for strategic transformation, using design and innovation to advance an entertainment leader’s mission to provide exceptional movie-going and entertainment experiences for all guests.

Cineplex Overview

Cineplex initiated a strategic project to increase the frequency of movie-going at its theaters, maximize box office concessions per patron, and increase customer lifetime value by integrating its core businesses: theaters, bars, and amusements.

Background

Cineplex Inc., Canada’s largest cinema chain, operates movie theaters and family entertainment centers from its Toronto headquarters. As of 2019, it managed 165 locations and captured 75% of the domestic box office. To drive additional revenue and enhance the patron experience, Cineplex sought opportunities to integrate siloed theater and amusement business lines through loyalty initiatives and other streamlined offerings. Additionally, Cineplex wanted to reimagine onboarding customers to the core theater experience by creating more connected engagement and improving transaction efficiency for moviegoers.

Strategic Innovation

My team delivered an engagement model that included key findings and actionable recommendations derived from deep digital experience analysis, ethnographic insights, and a strategic co-creation workshop.

Discovery and research.

Through an in-depth analysis, several opportunities were identified to leverage personalization, streamline checkout processes, and activate Cineplex’s digital ecosystem. A critical area of focus was mobile, which received the most significant customer feedback.

A competitive benchmark analysis revealed that Cineplex lagged behind its peers in onboarding and identified gaps to improve digital self-service, purchasing, and post-purchase experiences. This necessitated reimagining digital ticketing to streamline checkout and leveraging a data-driven foundation for personalization to enhance Extend and Support journeys.

Ethnographic research

We interviewed over 78 Cineplex patrons (frequent moviegoers, and amusement customers) to understand their motivations, purchasing decisions, frustrations, and ideas for improving their experience. Additionally, we conducted interviews with Cineplex executives and staff to explore how they implemented features and content, identified capability gaps, and discussed potential solutions.

Digital benchmarking

We implemented an objective, rigorous method of performance benchmarking against peers and competitors to identify key digital and engagement gaps. I developed the framework and methodology for this benchmark report with assistance from members of my team.

Discovery outcomes

Through our discovery process, we gained deeper, more detailed insights while also confirming key assumptions.

Problem definition.

Despite its strong community presence, Cineplex faced several key challenges:

• Technology Gaps: Limited patron profiles and siloed customer data across business lines due to an outdated technology platform. The current data infrastructure lacked a comprehensive, unified patron profile system. The absence of actionable customer profiles hindered personalized engagement and re-engagement efforts, as well as sharing customer data across the business.

• Omni-Channel Personalization: Despite strong positive brand recognition, Cineplex’s lack of tailored experiences for different user personas led to one-size-fits-all rather than 1:1 engagement for distinct profiles (e.g., moviegoers with specific seating, concession, and genre preferences; amusement customers with food, beverage, and entertainment preferences; hybrid customers who enjoyed both movie-going and amusements). Lacking the ability to integrate this data represented a missed opportunity for both Cineplex and its customers.

• Experience Gaps: While Cineplex benefited from a wealth of engaging content from movies and gaming, its limited ability to generate and scale content across various profiles and channels restricted personalization. This reduced the opportunity to drive emotional engagement on a large scale. Additionally, despite 60% of patrons citing socializing with friends and family as their primary motivation for movie-going and amusement, Cineplex had yet to leverage the power of social experiences within its customer experience (CX) strategy.

• Enhancing the post-purchase experience: 40% of customers highlighted post-purchase upgrades like in-seat concession delivery and self-serve social seat selection as major benefits. Limited options for add-ons and upgrades presented a significant missed opportunity for revenue growth and customer lifetime value. By expanding these offerings, Cineplex could have enabled patrons to elevate their experience with premium, personalized upgrades, leveraging unique differentiators and customer loyalty to drive engagement.

Workshop and co-innovation.

Armed with validated insights and a strategic direction, my team delivered an in-person co-innovation workshop in Toronto with the Cineplex executive team to reinvent the experience and address gaps uncovered during discovery. This was a fun and immersive one-day session where we facilitated design thinking methodologies, including design charrettes, card sorting, and impact mapping solutions.

Output

• Aligned a backlog of transformational initiatives — generated through group ideation — to strategic themes of our engagement

• Validated dozens of use case concepts with customers, reworked and refined them for optimal impact

• Established value model to align use cases and priorities

• Built valuable executive-facing relationships, with impact on our biggest enterprise opportunities.

Recapture Dropout Persona

Collecting 1st party profile information about visitors allows Cineplex to recapture leads that drop out of conversion funnels over additional channels like email and text.

Friend Invite

Indicating Cineplex has likely delivered consistent results, patrons would recommend or invite friends signaling the theater is reliable and a safe choice for transactions.

Loyalty Programing + Referrals

Patrons stay engaged with the Cineplex brand when they’re incentivized to refer others, and the loyalty rewards encourage repeat purchases and long-term relationships.

Friend Invite: Receive Text

Inviting friends to join on movie night was a referral tactic and strong demonstration of loyalty.

Friend Invite: Receive Email

Inviting friends to join on movie night was a referral tactic and strong demonstration of loyalty.

Contextual Upsell

Instead of feeling pushy, a contextual upsell aligns with the customer's intent and boosts customer satisfaction because it solves a problem or enhances the original purchase, making customers feel like they made a better decision.

Contextual Upsell

Since the upsell is relevant to what the customer is already by arriving to the theater for their ticketed movie, they’re more likely to see the value and say yes.

Alignment on recommendations.

We created a North Star vision for Cineplex's transformation, illustrating how they could optimize digital ticketing to streamline checkout, establish KPIs aligned with personalization, and enhance customer profiles for greater business impact across lines of business. We provided these recommendations based on short and long-term desirability/feasibility alignment from the workshop.

Short term (3-6 months)

• Define internal programs for collecting and sharing enhanced customer profile data. This will help establish a personalization Center of Excellence across the whole business and inform the schema and architecture for implementing data-driven personalization.

• Develop and pilot loyalty programs to enrich the customer experience across theater and amusement business lines.

• Invest in developing or licensing technology to accommodate interoperability across business lines and support advanced personalization.

Long-Term (6-24 months)

• Configure more advanced Content Management Systems, Journey Orchestration, and Analytics Reporting to enhance engagement and conversion journeys.

• Create a new mobile channel rich with loyalty and personalization tactics to boost sales / increase customer retention and lifetime value.

• Operate a data-driven feedback loop between omni-channel CX performance and operations/programming to stay in sync with consumer expectations and achieve continuous value realization.

Follow-up Study

We re-engaged with a cohort of participants from our original discovery study to showcase the enhancements made based on their feedback. This allowed us to validate our direction and gather additional insights on how to refine and further improve the experience.

Expected outcomes and business impact.

By uncovering the outlined transformation strategies, we identified key areas for improvement in user experience, personalization, and operational efficiency for Cineplex. These findings and initiatives paved the way for a more engaging and seamless customer journey, ultimately driving higher attendance and increased revenue:

• Foundational Digital Maturity: Improving internal capabilities empowers Cineplex to offer more connected, personalized experiences for customers, helping them stay engaged and loyal.

• Enhanced Digital Experience: A personalized experience for theater and amusement customers that focuses on social and diverse preferences.

• Improved Loyalty Activation: Creating and testing loyalty programs that combine both theaters and amusements improves the customer experience and encourages long-term loyalty.

• Sustainable Growth: Data-driven feedback loop across all platforms ensures  Cineplex stays in tune with what customers want and keeps improving over time.

Within 6 months of aligning on a northstar vision and strategy, the second-largest film exhibitor worldwide, Cineworld Group, announced an agreement to acquire Cineplex for CDN$2.8 billion. Reimagining Cineplex offerings as a social, integrated, and highly personalized omnichannel VIP experience was a very exciting vision that engaged executives and illustrated the possibilities of digital transformation for Canada’s largest theatrical exhibitor.