2021 has been a year of many returns, for the film industry, the return of travel, the return of operations, industry events, and of course most importantly, the return of moviegoers. The past years have required drastic changes, innovation, and despite the pains, have produced some incredible creations and solutions.

As we look back on 2021, these are the highlights that rise to the surface for Movio. New and returning innovations from our teams, positive shifts in the industry as moviegoers returned to the screen, and new ways of seeing the people behind the box office numbers.

We introduced Bramble

Early in 2021, the Movio engineering team excitingly released Bramble, a federated GraphQL gateway implemented in Go, as an open source project available for download on GitHub.

The project came about from a desire for better ways to share data and functionality between teams, so we set about creating architecture for consistency, universality, and seamless use across different cases.
Internally, these tools proved an incredible boon to our engineers’ productivity, and we were incredibly excited to share it with the world.

First-party data: the new superhero of advertising

Data was an important theme this year. With moviegoers returning, successful marketing became ever more paramount, and in order to achieve that, marketers have to use the most powerful tools in their box: data.

In a series of blogs and interviews, we explored key recent changes to the data landscape, and the next steps for marketers to take.

Kicking off our data series, we explored the imperative use of first-party data. With increasing privacy concerns, iOS updates and plans for Google Chrome to block third-party cookies and tracking, advertisers need to shift away from third-party tools.

How they make use of first-party data, collected consensually through trusted consumer relationships, will define the success of future marketing. We explored just what this looks like.

Elevating Movie Marketing with Behavioural data

Continuing our exploration of data and marketing, we invited Gabriel Swartland, our Regional Director of EMEA, to break down the differences between demographic data and behavioural data, why understanding the difference is key to using them to their fullest, and how it can redefine and elevate the way you market your movies.

Omnichannel for Movie Marketers

After a year that saw the largest shifts in purchasing habits of perhaps the last decade, it’s vital to ensure you’re creating marketing strategies that work. The 2021 landscape meant putting your moviegoer at the centre, and understanding how to create a true Omnichannel experience. From multi-channel attribution to community emphasis, we took a deep look at how our industry is prime for omnichannel success.

We launched a Podcast!

In June, Movio and Numero launched Behind the Screens, an industry podcast providing weekly actionable insights on the moviegoers behind the box office.

Over the course of the year, our hosts Matthew and Simon went on to have many incredibly insightful interviews from all angles of the industry, from Movie Marketing with StudioCanal, to what we can learn from the Retail industry, to talking film production, and covered the box office highlights throughout the year.

Behind the Screens’ final episode for the season airs next week, so be sure not to miss the end of the year instalment.

The return of Weekend Insights

Weekend Insights—which has provided timely moviegoer analysis for the entire industry since 2018—relaunched in October with a new and improved form.

With the pause of theatrical releases and closed cinemas intermittently over 2020 and 2021, our Data Science team were given the time to re-evaluate our approach to providing these insights, improve the delivery, and add more audience segments to our analysis. The result was a smoother, deeper breakdown every week of our Weekend Insights.

Reflecting on more than 2021

As we look back on the highlights of 2021, Movio's co-founder and CEO, William Palmer, also reflects, looking back on his history with Movio during his last week at the company. Along with Matthew and Simon on the Behind the Screens podcast, he reflects on the past decade with Movio, and our achievements within the industry.

2022 will be with us before we know it, but there's still so much we can learn from reflecting on the year that has passed.

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