The theme for Vista Group Conference 2019 was ‘A Cinema Love Story’, and at Movio we certainly felt the love! We had the opportunity to finally share our mission and objectives for the coming year with global exhibitors, and had more presentations than ever before. From busting the buzzwords to a campaign tips-and-tricks panel discussion to unveiling our massive new data strategy, there was a lot to talk about.

We also filmed a number of videos with our clients during the action-packed three days and took them through a special behind-the-scenes tour of product creation, which we’ll be sharing in the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are the best bits of the many talks we held during the week.

Leading with innovation

Opening the week, our Chief Executive, Will Palmer, gave an overview of the numerous developments and improvements we plan to release in coming months. This included updates to key Movio Cinema features – like Movie Insights – and the connections we can make with moviegoers along their entire theatre-visit journey. He also touched on the Movio ecosystem he envisions for the future: a world of support across all channels, wherever moviegoers are.

Advanced personalization

Movio Cinema’s Global President, Matthew Liebmann, went deeper into moviegoer journeys, taking delegates through the many customer touch points that can and should be accessed along all stages. We’ll be sharing this presentation in more detail in an upcoming blog post.

Stories from the front line

Our Managing Director and Senior VP of EMEA, Sarah Lewthwaite, invited key spokespeople from the cinema industry to discuss the successes and challenges they have experienced in their respective regions. Kelly Nash (Goodrich Quality Theatres), Jocelyn Davies (VOX Cinemas), and Alexandra Holden (Event Cinemas) all shared stories of how understanding their particular moviegoers has helped to tailor campaigns entirely to suit.

Our moviegoer data strategy

Perhaps the biggest splash we made at this year’s conference was with the announcement of our data warehouse solution. Our Chief Executive, Will Palmer, and Head of Technology, Nicolas Maquet, shared how we are decoupling the data from our products to allow for more moviegoer connections than ever before. We'll be revealing more about this innovation in the coming months.

Future trends in data, digital and moviegoers

In this panel discussion, EMEA’s Client Services Director, Gabriel Swartland, broke down the many buzzwords currently bubbling around our industry to get to the very bottom of them. Our key business leaders examined the relevance and application of things like chatbots, artificial intelligence, programmatic advertising, micro-moment marketing and voice recognition. The verdict? There is a place for them all, but the ones we’re watching are voice, AI and DMPs.

Collective innovation with Vista

In our last presentation of the week, our Head of Product, Ryan Scott, partnered with his counterpart from Vista Cinema, Mark Pattie, to share how the two solutions work together to attain faster, cleaner moviegoer data, greater reach, more personalized movie recommendations and customized offers. This is one of the two presentations Ryan shared from a product perspective, the second of which we’ll be shining the spotlight on in our behind-the-scenes video soon.

A brilliant week, it was an excellent chance to reveal some of the exciting things we have been working on, our upcoming projects, and gather feedback on existing ones. We also enjoyed a fabulous evening with guests at our Friends of Movio party – a big thank-you to everyone who came. We’ll see you in 2020!