“We’re here to talk about something that never sleeps,” proclaimed Stan Ruszkowski, CEO of The Boxoffice Company, at the outset of a panel discussion at this year’s CineEurope. Titled “From Scroll to Screen: Turning Social Buzz into Box Office Sales”, the session came on the first day of the conference, held in Barcelona, Spain from 16-19 June.

Ruszkowski was of course talking about social media — and he’s right. To use it effectively (in this case specifically for business) requires constant ‘feeding the beast’ in terms of content output, constant experimentation and constant keeping up with what’s trending in order to connect with those you want to reach. To discuss and provide some practical advice on this evergreen issue, the panel of experts joining Ruszkowski on stage at the conference was Carla Boyd (Senior Social Media & Content Marketing Manager, Cineworld), Mariano Otero (Senior Vice President of Business Development, Fever) and Adrien Chabal (Director General, AlloCiné).  

And let’s face it, for people over a certain age, it’s a necessary evil to (learn to) navigate. But for those under a certain age it’s probably already a best friend, somewhere an unhealthy amount of time is spent. That divide alone shows why cinemas must harness its power to reach audiences. In the UK, for example, 57.6 million people — 82% of the population — use social media. 

And there are, of course, countless social media platforms offering different forms of information and entertainment — TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, to name a few. So, how should cinemas be approaching this critical marketing channel?

Ruszkowski kicked off the discussion by stating the importance of these platforms in the discovery of movies, “Moviegoers spend more time watching content that discusses or unpacks movies than really seeing them themselves. Trailers, breakdowns, they’re all there. And in a recent YouTube trend survey, it’s probably 66% of Gen Z that has agreed [with this].” 

Indeed, social media now influences not just which films are hot but whether people go to the cinema at all. Studio marketing still matters, said Boyd, but user-created content often drives excitement. “You can still comment under the trailers. But I would say that there’s also a lot in the kind of content that can be produced by people just to kind of lean into the excitement […] and give people an extra reason for why they should come to the cinema to see the film.”

AlloCiné, the French entertainment website focusing on cinema and TV, is a 30-year old company now pivoting heavily to social media, with 18 million followers across its channels. Chabal made the point that users log on for both information and entertainment — summarised succinctly as “info-tainment” — to check what’s trending, what friends want to see, and even what algorithms recommend. 

Success by Candlelight
Otero reminded the audience that social media’s very purpose is to keep the user glued to their screens. By contrast, cinema operators (and other out-of-home entertainment purveyors) ask people to “put phones away and go out and do something and meet their friends,” i.e. the opposite of what these platforms are intended for. Otero emphasised that, it is vital for exhibitors to insert themselves earlier in the decision-making process. 

He pointed to Fever’s Candlelight Concerts as an example. What began five years ago as an experiment mixing classical music with candlelit settings in unique locations evolved into a global hit. “Today, 2025 you know, and candlelight concerts are the biggest product in the market,” Otero reported. “More than 10 million people are going to go to a candlelight concert in more than 60 cities and 45 countries around the world.”

Otero’s point? Be creative. “The lesson that we draw from that is how can I do more creative marketing to draw to your product an audience that wasn’t considering you, considering your type of experience?”

Best and Worst Practices
Boyd’s answer to the question of what she considers to be best practice with social media was to “Stop thinking of social media as another PoS [point of sale]. Social media has to be bespoke and it has to be thought about in a different way.” 

She emphasised how one size doesn’t fit all platforms and different types of content work for different purposes on different platforms. But one of her main preferences is video content, if done correctly, “You can expand the impressions of your content by creating video content. But it needs to be done in funny ways, like the ‘info-tainment’ that people [on the panel] have referred to.”

Chabal’s take on a worst practice was that trailers built for big horizontal screens are often discovered on tiny vertical ones. “We should all as an industry, try to duplicate the creativity from the horizontal [to] the vertical or scrolling field that we all know, and especially the Gen Zers and the Millennials,” he said, “The first contact between the movie and the audience is through the phone.”

One best practice – or worst, depending on how you look at it – was brought up by Otero who said that if a campaign or post is geared towards conversion, then the sales funnel must be integrated, simple and efficient, “If you’re seeing that for [the candlelight concerts] in two clicks, you’re going to be able to buy a ticket […] and just making it as easy as possible, that’s been something that’s very appreciated.”

Best-placed Focus
With so many channels available it becomes difficult to know where to focus to achieve one’s objectives. When Ruszkowski asked Boyd where to focus, she advised for someone who has money but limited time would be to “focus on the platform that’s going to help you drive sales. For [Cineworld] that’s still Facebook, Instagram.”

But, Boyd said, there has to be a good enough understanding of the platforms and what they’re best placed to do. Her team creates funny, staff-driven engaging videos, which helps not only with engagement but brand awareness – content is filmed in Cineworld venues while on shift. Younger staff members are often passionate film fans with their finger on the pulse of what’s trending, as well as being regular users of social media themselves. They’re natural ambassadors to engage in these kind of promotional activities.

Chabal’s advice, when time is limited, is to collaborate and work with influencers, inviting them into a particular venue to create and film entertaining content. One example of this went a bit further, “With the [“How to Train Your Dragon”] movie, we bring in a fresh actor, who is well known for his viewer content, and he was just casually eating popcorn in front of the big screen, and then suddenly [he’s] actually immersed into the movie, and he even could interact with the characters,” he recounted. “We did that in four languages and we put that on social media, through the Kinepolis account at the cinema and also Universal accounts.”

Otero rounded off the discussion by observing that becoming an influencer has become a  desirable career for a lot of Gen Zers, so it’s important to find a way to match up that medium with cinema itself. “If you actually ask Gen Zers what they want to be when they grow up, 50% of them are saying they want to become influencers,” he said. “Ultimately, the people that are on the screen are the ultimate influencers we have. How do we get what’s happening on social media to be more present on the screen, so that those people can more identify with what’s happening on screen and get back to the movies?”

Ruszkowski concluded with a big picture message: social media isn’t a “nice-to-have,” it’s a “must-have.” This is, he said, “where your audiences are spending most of their time, and unpacking all the content and the love that you have for your theatre,” which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the attention these platforms garner. For cinema operators of all sizes, the challenge — and the opportunity — is to meet audiences where they scroll, so they’ll return to the big screen.